“After famed Ilium was by Argives won, + 

And flames had finish’d what the sword begun; + 

Pallas, incensed, pursued us to the main, + 

In vengeance of her violated fane. + 

Alone Oileus forced the Trojan maid, + 

Yet all were punish’d for the brutal deed. + 

A storm begins, the raging waves run high, + 

The clouds look heavy, and benight the sky; + 

Red sheets of lightning o’er the seas are spread, + 

Our tackling yields, and wrecks at last succeed. + 

’Tis tedious our disastrous state to tell; + 

Ev’n Priam would have pitied what befell. + 

Yet Pallas saved me from the swallowing main; + 

At home new wrongs to meet, as fates ordain. + 

Chased from my country, I once more repeat + 

All sufferings seas could give, or war complete. + 

For Venus, mindful of her wound, decreed + 

Still new calamities should past succeed. + 

Agmon, impatient through successive ills, + 

With fury, love’s bright goddess thus reviles: + 

‘These plagues in spite of Diomed are sent; + 

The crime is his, but ours the punishment. + 

Let each my friends her puny spleen despise, + 

And dare that proud dictator of the skies.’ + 

“The rest of Agmons insolence complain, + 

And of irreverence the wretch arraign. + 

About to answer, his blaspheming throat + 

Contracts, and shrieks in some disdainful note. + 

To his new skin a fleece of feathers clings, + 

Hides his late arms and lengthens into wings. + 

The lower features of his face extend, + 

Warp into horn, and in a beak descend. + 

Some more experience Agmon’s destiny, + 

And wheeling in the air, like swans they fly: + 

These thin remains to Daunus’ realms I bring, + 

And here I reign, a poor precarious king.” + 