Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen,
To vernal airs attunes her varied strains;
And Itylus sounds warbling o’er the plains;
Young Itylus, his parents’ darling joy! 
Whom chance misled the mother to destroy;
Now doom’d a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy. 
So in nocturnal solitude forlorn,
A sad variety of woes I mourn! 
My mind, reflective, in a thorny maze
Devious from care to care incessant strays. 
Now, wavering doubt succeeds to long despair;
Shall I my virgin nuptial vow revere;
And, joining to my son’s my menial train,
Partake his counsels, and assist his reign? 
Or, since, mature in manhood, he deplores
His dome dishonour’d, and exhausted stores;
Shall I, reluctant! to his will accord;
And from the peers select the noblest lord;
So by my choice avow’d, at length decide
These wasteful love-debates, a mourning bride! 
A visionary thought I’ll now relate;
Illustrate, if you know, the shadow’d fate: 

“A team of twenty geese (a snow-white train!)
Fed near the limpid lake with golden grain,
Amuse my pensive hours.  The bird of Jove
Fierce from his mountain-eyrie downward drove;
Each favourite fowl he pounced with deathful sway,
And back triumphant wing’d his airy way. 
My pitying eyes effused a plenteous stream,
To view their death thus imaged in a dream;
With tender sympathy to soothe my soul,
A troop of matrons, fancy-form’d, condole. 
But whilst with grief and rage my bosom burn’d,
Sudden the tyrant of the skies returned;
Perch’d on the battlements he thus began
(In form an eagle, but in voice a man): 
`O queen! no vulgar vision of the sky
I come, prophetic of approaching joy;
View in this plumy form thy victor-lord;
The geese (a glutton race) by thee deplored,
Portend the suitors fated to my sword.’ 
This said, the pleasing feather’d omen ceased. 
When from the downy bands of sleep released,
Fast by the limpid lake my swan-like train
I found, insatiate of the golden grain.”

“The vision self-explain’d (the chief replies)
Sincere reveals the sanction of the skies;
Ulysses speaks his own return decreed;
And by his sword the suitors sure to bleed.”

“Hard is the task, and rare,” (the queen rejoin’d,)
Impending destinies in dreams to find;
Immured within the silent bower of sleep,
Two portals firm the various phantoms keep;
Of ivory one; whence flit, to mock the brain,
Of winged lies a light fantastic train;
The gate opposed pellucid valves adorn,
And columns fair incased with polish’d horn;
Where images of truth for passage wait,
With visions manifest of future fate. 
Not to this troop, I fear, that phantom soar’d,
Which spoke Ulysses to this realm restored;
Delusive semblance!-but my remnant life
Heaven shall determine in a gameful strife;
With that famed bow Ulysses taught to bend,