Vain shows of love to veil his felon hate! 
To grace the victor’s welcome from the wars,
A train of coursers and triumphal cars
Magnificent he leads:  the royal guest,
Thoughtless of ill, accepts the fraudful feast. 
The troop forth-issuing from the dark recess,
With homicidal rage the king oppress! 
So, whilst he feeds luxurious in the stall,
The sovereign of the herd is doomed to fall,
The partners of his fame and toils at Troy,
Around their lord, a mighty ruin, lie: 
Mix’d with the brave, the base invaders bleed;
Aegysthus sole survives to boast the deed.”

He said:  chill horrors shook my shivering soul,
Rack’d wish convulsive pangs in dust I roll;
And hate, in madness of extreme despair,
To view the sun, or breathe the vital air. 
But when, superior to the rage of woe,
I stood restored and tears had ceased to flow,
Lenient of grief the pitying god began: 
’Forget the brother, and resume the man. 
To Fate’s supreme dispose the dead resign,
That care be Fate’s, a speedy passage thine
Still lives the wretch who wrought the death deplored,
But lives a victim for thy vengeful sword;
Unless with filial rage Orestes glow,
And swift prevent the meditated blow: 
You timely will return a welcome guest,
With him to share the sad funereal feast.”

“He said:  new thoughts my beating heart employ,
My gloomy soul receives a gleam of joy. 
Fair hope revives; and eager I address’d
The prescient godhead to reveal the rest: 
’The doom decreed of those disastrous two
I’ve heard with pain, but oh! the tale pursue;
What third brave son of Mars the Fates constrain
To roam the howling desert of the main;
Or, in eternal shade of cold he lies,
Provoke new sorrows from these grateful eyes.’

“’That chief (rejoin’d the god) his race derives
From Ithaca, and wondrous woes survives;
Laertes’ son:  girt with circumfluous tides,
He still calamitous constraint abides. 
Him in Calypso’s cave of late! view’d,
When streaming grief his faded cheek bedow’d. 
But vain his prayer, his arts are vain, to move
The enamour’d goddess, or elude her love: 
His vessel sunk, and dear companions lost,
He lives reluctant on a foreign coast. 
But oh, beloved by Heaven! reserved to thee
A happier lot the smiling Fates decree: 
Free from that law, beneath whose mortal sway
Matter is changed, and varying forms decay,
Elysium shall be thine:  the blissful plains
Of utmost earth, where Rhadamanthus reigns. 
Joys ever young, unmix’d with pain or fear,
Fill the wide circle of the eternal year: 
Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime: 
The fields are florid with unfading prime;
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow,
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow;
But from the breezy deep the blest inhale
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale. 
This grace peculiar will the gods afford
To thee, the son of Jove, and beauteous Helen’s lord.’