“Diana! speed thy deathful ebon dart,
And cure the pangs of this convulsive heart. 
Snatch me, ye whirlwinds! far from human race,
Toss’d through the void illimitable space
Or if dismounted from the rapid cloud,
Me with his whelming wave let Ocean shroud! 
So, Pandarus, thy hopes, three orphan fair;
Were doom’d to wander through the devious air;
Thyself untimely, and thy consort died,
But four celestials both your cares supplied. 
Venus in tender delicacy rears
With honey, milk, and wine their infant years;
Imperial Juno to their youth assigned
A form majestic, and sagacious mind;
With shapely growth Diana graced their bloom;
And Pallas taught the texture of the loom. 
But whilst, to learn their lots in nuptial love,
Bright Cytherea sought the bower of Jove
(The God supreme, to whose eternal eye
The registers of fate expanded lie;
Wing’d Harpies snatch the unguarded charge away,
And to the Furies bore a grateful prey. 
Be such my lot!  Or thou, Diana, speed
Thy shaft, and send me joyful to the dead;
To seek my lord among the warrior train,
Ere second vows my bridal faith profane. 
When woes the waking sense alone assail,
Whilst Night extends her soft oblivious veil,
Of other wretches’ care the torture ends;
No truce the warfare of my heart suspends! 
The night renews the day distracting theme,
And airy terrors sable every dream. 
The last alone a kind illusion wrought,
And to my bed my loved Ulysses brought,
In manly bloom, and each majestic grace,
As when for Troy he left my fond embrace;
Such raptures in my beating bosom rise,
I deem it sure a vision of the skies.”

Thus, whilst Aurora mounts her purple throne,
In audible laments she breathes her moan;
The sounds assault Ulysses’ wakeful ear;
Misjudging of the cause, a sudden fear
Of his arrival known, the chief alarms;
He thinks the queen is rushing to his arms. 
Upspringing from his couch, with active haste
The fleece and carpet in the dome he placed
(The hide, without, imbibed the morning air);
And thus the gods invoked with ardent prayer: 

“Jove, and eternal thrones! with heaven to friend,
If the long series of my woes shall end;
Of human race now rising from repose,
Let one a blissful omen here disclose;
And, to confirm my faith, propitious Jove! 
Vouchsafe the sanction of a sign above.”

Whilst lowly thus the chief adoring bows,
The pitying god his guardian aid avows. 
Loud from a sapphire sky his thunder sounds;
With springing hope the hero’s heart rebounds. 
Soon, with consummate joy to crown his prayer,
An omen’d voice invades his ravish’d ear. 
Beneath a pile that close the dome adjoin’d,
Twelve female slaves the gift of Ceres grind;
Task’d for the royal board to bolt the bran
From the pure flour (the growth and strength of man)
Discharging to the day the labour due,
Now early to repose the rest withdrew;
One maid unequal to the task assign’d,
Still turn’d the toilsome mill with anxious mind;
And thus in bitterness of soul divined: