The most successful treatment of the Ulysses episode in French was Jean-Baptiste Rousseau's poem "Circé" (1703), that was specifically written to be a cantata. The different verse forms employed allow the piece to be divided by the musicians that set it in order to express a variety of emotions. The poem opens with the abandoned Circe sitting on a high mountain and mourning the departure of Ulysses. The sorceress then calls on the infernal gods and makes a terrible sacrifice: "A myriad vapours obscure the light, / The stars of the night interrupt their course, / Astonished rivers retreat to their source / And even Death's god trembles in the dark". But though the earth is shaken to its core, Love is not to be commanded in this way and the wintery fields come back to life.