The Odyssey

To him the king: “Reciting thus thy cares, My secret soul in all thy sorrow shares; But one choice blessing (such is Jove’s high will) Has sweeten’d all thy bitter draught of ill: Torn from thy country to no hapless end, The gods have, in a master, given a friend. Whatever frugal nature needs is thine (For she needs little), daily bread and wine. While I, so many wanderings past, and woes, Live but on what thy poverty bestows.”

So passed in pleasing dialogue away The night; then down to short repose they lay; Till radiant rose the messenger of day. While in the port of Ithaca, the band Of young Telemachus approach’d the land; Their sails they loosed, they lash’d the mast aside, And cast their anchors, and the cables tied: Then on the breezy shore, descending, join In grateful banquet o’er the rosy wine. When thus the prince: “Now each his course pursue; I to the fields, and to the city you. Long absent hence, I dedicate this day My swains to visit, and the works survey. Expect me with the morn, to pay the skies Our debt of safe return in feast and sacrifice.”

The prince return’d: “Renown’d in days of yore Has stood our father’s hospitable door; No other roof a stranger should receive, No other hands than ours the welcome give. But in my absence riot fills the place, Nor bears the modest queen a stranger’s face; From noiseful revel far remote she flies, But rarely seen, or seen with weeping eyes. No—let Eurymachus receive my guest, Of nature courteous, and by far the best; He woos the queen with more respectful flame, And emulates her former husband’s fame, With what success, ’tis Jove’s alone to know, And the hoped nuptials turn to joy or woe.”

Thus speaking, on the right up-soar’d in air The hawk, Apollo’s swift-wing’d messenger: His dreadful pounces tore a trembling dove; The clotted feathers, scatter’d from above, Between the hero and the vessel pour Thick plumage mingled with a sanguine shower.

The observing augur took the prince aside, Seized by the hand, and thus prophetic cried: “Yon bird, that dexter cuts the aërial road, Rose ominous, nor flies without a god: No race but thine shall Ithaca obey, To thine, for ages, Heaven decrees the sway.”

“Succeed the omens, gods! (the youth rejoin’d:) Soon shall my bounties speak a grateful mind, And soon each envied happiness attend The man who calls Telemachus his friend.” Then to Peiraeus: “Thou whom time has proved A faithful servant, by thy prince beloved! Till we returning shall our guest demand, Accept this charge with honour, at our hand.”

With that, their anchors he commands to weigh, Mount the tall bark, and launch into the sea. All with obedient haste forsake the shores, And, placed in order, spread their equal oars. Then from the deck the prince his sandals takes; Poised in his hand the pointed javelin shakes. They part; while, lessening from the hero’s view Swift to the town the well-row’d galley flew: The hero trod the margin of the main, And reach’d the mansion of his faithful swain.