But strength of youth, or valour of the brave,
With nobler contest ne’er renown’d a grave. 
Such were the games by azure Thetis given,
And such thy honours, O beloved of Heaven! 
Dear to mankind thy fame survives, nor fades
Its bloom eternal in the Stygian shades. 
But what to me avail my honours gone,
Successful toils, and battles bravely won? 
Doom’d by stern Jove at home to end my life,
By cursed Aegysthus, and a faithless wife!”
Thus they:  while Hermes o’er the dreary plain
Led the sad numbers by Ulysses slain. 
On each majestic form they cast a view,
And timorous pass’d, and awfully withdrew. 
But Agamemnon, through the gloomy shade,
His ancient host Amphimedon survey’d: 
“Son of Melanthius! (he began) O say! 
What cause compell’d so many, and so gay,
To tread the downward, melancholy way? 
Say, could one city yield a troop so fair? 
Were all these partners of one native air? 
Or did the rage of stormy Neptune sweep
Your lives at once, and whelm beneath the deep? 
Did nightly thieves, or pirates’ cruel bands,
Drench with your blood your pillaged country’s sands? 
Or well-defending some beleaguer’d wall,
Say,—­for the public did ye greatly fall? 
Inform thy guest:  for such I was of yore
When our triumphant navies touch’d your shore;
Forced a long month the wintry seas to bear,
To move the great Ulysses to the war.”

“O king of men!  I faithful shall relate
(Replied Amphimedon) our hapless fate. 
Ulysses absent, our ambitious aim
With rival loves pursued his royal dame;
Her coy reserve, and prudence mix’d with pride,
Our common suit nor granted, nor denied;
But close with inward hate our deaths design’d;
Versed in all arts of wily womankind. 
Her hand, laborious, in delusion spread
A spacious loom, and mix’d the various thread. 
’Ye peers (she cried) who press to gain my heart,
Where dead Ulysses claims no more a part,
Yet a short space your rival suit suspend,
Till this funereal web my labours end: 
Cease, till to good Laertes I bequeath
A task of grief, his ornaments of death: 
Lest when the Fates his royal ashes claim,
The Grecian matrons taint my spotless fame;
Should he, long honour’d with supreme command,
Want the last duties of a daughter’s hand.’

“The fiction pleased, our generous train complies,
Nor fraud mistrusts in virtue’s fair disguise. 
The work she plied, but studious of delay,
Each following night reversed the toils of day. 
Unheard, unseen, three years her arts prevail;
The fourth, her maid reveal’d the amazing tale,
And show’d as unperceived we took our stand,
The backward labours of her faithless hand. 
Forced she completes it; and before us lay
The mingled web, whose gold and silver ray
Display’d the radiance of the night and day.