“Daughter of Jove! whose arms in thunder wield
The avenging bolt, and shake the dreadful shield;
Forsook by thee, in vain I sought thy aid
When booming billows closed above my bead;
Attend, unconquer’d maid! accord my vows,
Bid the Great hear, and pitying, heal my woes.”

This heard Minerva, but forbore to fly
(By Neptune awed) apparent from the sky;
Stern god! who raged with vengeance, unrestrain’d. 
Till great Ulysses hail’d his native land.

BOOK VII.

Argument.

The court of Alcinous.

The princess Nausicaa returns to the city and Ulysses soon after follows thither.  He is met by Pallas in the form of a young virgin, who guides him to the palace, and directs him in what manner to address the queen Arete.  She then involves him in a mist which causes him to pass invisible.  The palace and gardens of Alcinous described.  Ulysses falling at the feet of the queen, the mist disperses, the Phaecians admire, and receive him with respect.  The queen inquiring by what means he had the garments he then wore, be relates to her and Alcinous his departure from Calypso, and his arrival in their dominions.

The same day continues, and the book ends with the night.

The patient heavenly man thus suppliant pray’d;
While the slow mules draws on the imperial maid;
Through the proud street she moves, the public gaze;
The turning wheel before the palace stays. 
With ready love her brothers, gathering round,
Received the vestures, and the mules unbound. 
She seeks the bridal bower:  a matron there
The rising fire supplies with busy care,
Whose charms in youth her father’s heart inflamed,
Now worn with age, Eurymedusa named;
The captive dame Phaeacian rovers bore,
Snatch’d from Epirus, her sweet native shore
(A grateful prize), and in her bloom bestow’d
On good Alcinous, honor’d as a god;
Nurse of Nausicaa from her infant years,
And tender second to a mother’s cares.

Now from the sacred thicket where he lay,
To town Ulysses took the winding way. 
Propitious Pallas, to secure her care,
Around him spread a veil of thicken’d air;
To shun the encounter of the vulgar crowd,
Insulting still, inquisitive and loud. 
When near the famed Phaeacian walls he drew,
The beauteous city opening to his view,
His step a virgin met, and stood before: 
A polish’d urn the seeming virgin bore,
And youthful smiled; but in the low disguise
Lay hid the goddess with the azure eyes.

“Show me, fair daughter (thus the chief demands),
The house of him who rules these happy lands
Through many woes and wanderings, do I come
To good Alcinous’ hospitable dome. 
Far from my native coast, I rove alone,
A wretched stranger, and of all unknown!”