“He ceased:  heart wounded with afflictive pain,
(Doom’d to repeat the perils of the main,
A shelfy track and long!) ‘O seer’ I cry,
’To the stern sanction of the offended sky
My prompt obedience bows.  But deign to say
What fate propitious, or what dire dismay,
Sustain those peers, the relics of our host,
Whom I with Nestor on the Phrygian coast
Embracing left?  Must I the warriors weep,
Whelm’d in the bottom of the monstrous deep? 
Or did the kind domestic friend deplore
The breathless heroes on their native shore?

“‘Press not too far,’ replied the god:  ’but cease
To know what, known, will violate thy peace;
Too curious of their doom! with friendly woe
Thy breast will heave, and tears eternal flow. 
Part live! the rest, a lamentable train! 
Range the dark bounds of Pluto’s dreary reign. 
Two, foremost in the roll of Mars renown’d,
Whose arms with conquest in thy cause were crown’d,
Fell by disastrous fate:  by tempests toss’d,
A third lives wretched on a distant coast.

“By Neptune rescued from Minerva’s hate,
On Gyrae, safe Oilean Ajax sate,
His ship o’erwhelm’d; but, frowning on the floods,
Impious he roar’d defiance to the gods;
To his own prowess all the glory gave: 
The power defrauding who vouchsafed to save. 
This heard the raging ruler of the main;
His spear, indignant for such high disdain,
He launched; dividing with his forky mace
The aerial summit from the marble base: 
The rock rush’d seaward, with impetuous roar
Ingulf’d, and to the abyss the boaster bore.

“By Juno’s guardian aid, the watery vast,
Secure of storms, your royal brother pass’d,
Till, coasting nigh the cape where Malen shrouds
Her spiry cliffs amid surrounding clouds,
A whirling gust tumultuous from the shore
Across the deep his labouring vessel bore. 
In an ill-fated hour the coast he gain’d,
Where late in regal pomp Thyestes reigned;
But, when his hoary honours bow’d to fate,
Aegysthus govern’d in paternal state,
The surges now subside, the tempest ends;
From his tall ship the king of men descends;
There fondly thinks the gods conclude his toil: 
Far from his own domain salutes the soil;
With rapture oft the urge of Greece reviews,
And the dear turf with tears of joy bedews. 
Him, thus exulting on the distant stand,
A spy distinguish’d from his airy stand;
To bribe whose vigilance, Aegysthus told
A mighty sum of ill-persuading gold: 
There watch’d this guardian of his guilty fear,
Till the twelfth moon had wheel’d her pale career;
And now, admonish’d by his eye, to court
With terror wing’d conveys the dread report. 
Of deathful arts expert, his lord employs
The ministers of blood in dark surprise;
And twenty youths, in radiant mail incased,
Close ambush’d nigh the spacious hall he placed. 
Then bids prepare the hospitable treat: