No More Learning

"

But Pallas clouds with intellectual gloom
The suitors' souls, insensate of their doom!
A mirthful frenzy seized the fated crowd;
The roofs resound with causeless laughter loud;
Floating in gore, portentous to survey!
In each discolour'd vase the viands lay;
Then down each cheek the tears spontaneous flow
And sudden sighs precede approaching woe.
In vision wrapp'd, the Hyperesian seer
Uprose, and thus divined the vengeance near:

"O race to death devote! with Stygian shade
Each destin'd peer impending fates invade;
With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drown'd;
With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round:
Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts,
To people Orcus, and the burning coasts!
Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll,
But universal night usurps the pole! "

Yet warn'd in vain, with laughter loud elate
The peers reproach the sure divine of Fate;
And thus Eurymachus: "The dotard's mind
To every sense is lost, to reason blind;
Swift from the dome conduct the slave away;
Let him in open air behold the day. "

"Tax not (the heaven-illumined seer rejoin'd)
Of rage, or folly, my prophetic mind,
No clouds of error dim the ethereal rays,
Her equal power each faithful sense obeys.
Unguided hence my trembling steps I bend,
Far hence, before yon hovering deaths descend;
Lest the ripe harvest of revenge begun,
I share the doom ye suitors cannot shun. "

This said, to sage Piraeus sped the seer,
His honour'd host, a welcome inmate there.
O'er the protracted feast the suitors sit,
And aim to wound the prince with pointless wit:
Cries one, with scornful leer and mimic voice,
"Thy charity we praise, but not thy choice;
Why such profusion of indulgence shown
To this poor, timorous, toil-detesting drone?
That others feeds on planetary schemes,
And pays his host with hideous noon-day dreams.
But, prince! for once at least believe a friend;
To some Sicilian mart these courtiers send,
Where, if they yield their freight across the main,
Dear sell the slaves! demand no greater gain.
"

Thus jovial they; but nought the prince replies;
Full on his sire he roll'd his ardent eyes:
Impatient straight to flesh his virgin-sword;
From the wise chief he waits the deathful word.
Nigh in her bright alcove, the pensive queen
To see the circle sate, of all unseen.
Sated at length they rise, and bid prepare
An eve-repast, with equal cost and care:
But vengeful Pallas, with preventing speed,
A feast proportion'd to their crimes decreed;
A feast of death, the feasters doom'd to bleed!



BOOK XXI.

ARGUMENT.

THE BENDING OF ULYSSES' BOW.

Penelope, to put an end to the solicitation of the suitors,
proposes to marry the person who shall first bend the bow of
Ulysses, and shoot through the ringlets. After their attempts have
proved ineffectual, Ulysses, taking Eumaeus and Philaetius apart,
discovers himself to them; then returning, desires leave to try
his strength at the bow, which, though refused with indignation by
the suitors, Penelope and Telemachus cause it to be delivered to
his hands. He bends it immediately, and shoots through all the
rings. Jupiter at the same instant thunders from heaven; Ulysses
accepts the omen, and gives a sign to Telemachus, who stands ready
armed at his side.



And Pallas now, to raise the rivals' fires,
With her own art Penelope inspires
Who now can bend Ulysses' bow, and wing
The well-aim'd arrow through the distant ring,
Shall end the strife, and win the imperial dame:
But discord and black death await the game!

The prudent queen the lofty stair ascends:
At distance due a virgin-train attends;
A brazen key she held, the handle turn'd,
With steel and polish'd elephant adorn'd:
Swift to the inmost room she bent her way,
Where, safe reposed, the royal treasures lay:
There shone high heap'd the labour'd brass and ore,
And there the bow which great Ulysses bore;
And there the quiver, where now guiltless slept
Those winged deaths that many a matron wept.

This gift, long since when Sparta's shore he trod,
On young Ulysses Iphitus bestowed:
Beneath Orsilochus' roof they met;
One loss was private, one a public debt;
Messena's state from Ithaca detains
Three hundred sheep, and all the shepherd swains;
And to the youthful prince to urge the laws,
The king and elders trust their common cause.
But Iphitus, employed on other cares,
Search'd the wide country for his wandering mares,
And mules, the strongest of the labouring kind;
Hapless to search; more hapless still to find!
For journeying on to Hercules, at length
That lawless wretch, that man of brutal strength,
Deaf to Heaven's voice, the social rites transgress'd;
And for the beauteous mares destroy'd his guest.
He gave the bow; and on Ulysses' part
Received a pointed sword, and missile dart:
Of luckless friendship on a foreign shore
Their first, last pledges!