No More Learning

Magnificent, and blithe, the suitors come.
Some wield the sounding axe; the dodder'd oaks
Divide, obedient to the forceful strokes.
Soon from the fount, with each a brimming urn
(Eumaeus in their train), the maids return.
Three porkers for the feast, all brawny-chined,
He brought; the choicest of the tusky-kind;
In lodgments first secure his care he viewed,
Then to the king this friendly speech renew'd:
"Now say sincere, my guest! the suitor-train
Still treat thy worth with lordly dull disdain;
Or speaks their deed a bounteous mind humane? "

"Some pitying god (Ulysses sad replied)
With vollied vengeance blast their towering pride!
No conscious blush, no sense of right, restrains
The tides of lust that swell the boiling veins;
From vice to vice their appetites are toss'd,
All cheaply sated at another's cost! "

While thus the chief his woes indignant told,
Melanthius, master of the bearded fold,
The goodliest goats of all the royal herd
Spontaneous to the suitors' feast preferr'd;
Two grooms assistant bore the victims bound;
With quavering cries the vaulted roofs resound;
And to the chief austere aloud began
The wretch unfriendly to the race of man:

"Here vagrant, still? offensive to my lords!
Blows have more energy than airy words;
These arguments I'll use: nor conscious shame,
Nor threats, thy bold intrusion will reclaim.
On this high feast the meanest vulgar boast
A plenteous board! Hence! seek another host! "

Rejoinder to the churl the king disdain'd,
But shook his head, and rising wrath restrain'd.

From Cephanelia 'cross the surgy main
Philaetius late arrived, a faithful swain.
A steer ungrateful to the bull's embrace.
And goats he brought, the pride of all their race;
Imported in a shallop not his own;
The dome re-echoed to the mingl'd moan.
Straight to the guardian of the bristly kind
He thus began, benevolent of mind:

"What guest is he, of such majestic air?
His lineage and paternal clime declare:
Dim through the eclipse of fate, the rays divine
Of sovereign state with faded splendour shine.
If monarchs by the gods are plunged in woe,
To what abyss are we foredoom'd to go! "
Then affable he thus the chief address'd,
Whilst with pathetic warmth his hand he press'd:

"Stranger, may fate a milder aspect show,
And spin thy future with a whiter clue!
O Jove! for ever death to human cries;
The tyrant, not the father of the skies!
Unpiteous of the race thy will began!
The fool of fate, thy manufacture, man,
With penury, contempt, repulse, and care,
The galling load of life is doom'd to bear.
Ulysses from his state a wanderer still,
Upbraids thy power, thy wisdom, or thy will!
O monarch ever dear! -O man of woe!
Fresh flow my tears, and shall for ever flow!
Like thee, poor stranger guest, denied his home,
Like thee: in rags obscene decreed to roam!
Or, haply perish'd on some distant coast,
In stygian gloom he glides, a pensive ghost!