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Pass'd to Laertes' cultivated land.
The ground himself had purchased with his pain,
And labour made the rugged soil a plain,
There stood his mansion of the rural sort,
With useful buildings round the lowly court;
Where the few servants that divide his care
Took their laborious rest, and homely fare;
And one Sicilian matron, old and sage,
With constant duty tends his drooping age.
Here now arriving, to his rustic band
And martial son, Ulysses gave command:
"
Enter the house, and of the bristly swine
Select the largest to the powers divine.
Alone, and unattended, let me try
If yet I share the old man's memory:
If those dim eyes can yet Ulysses know
(
Their light and dearest object long ago),
Now changed with time, with absence and with woe."
Then to his train he gives his spear and shield;
The house they enter; and he seeks the field,
Through rows of shade, with various fruitage crown'd,
And labour'd scenes of richest verdure round.
Nor aged Dolius; nor his sons, were there,
Nor servants, absent on another care;
To search the woods for sets of flowery thorn,
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