The Odyssey - Homer (good e books to read txt) 📗

him in her arms,
And kissed his brow and both his beautiful eyes.
Then to his noble sons Autolycus
Called to prepare a feast, and they obeyed.
They brought and slew a steer of five years old,
And flayed and dressed it, hewed the joints apart,
And sliced the flesh, and fixed it upon spits,
Roasted it carefully, and gave to each
His part. So all the day till set of sun
They feasted, to the full content of all.
And when the sun had set, and earth grew dark,
They laid them down, and took the gift of sleep.
But when the rosy-fingered Morn appeared,
Born of the Dawn, forth issued the young men,
The children of Autolycus, with hounds,
To hunt, attended by their noble guest,
Ulysses. Up the steeps of that high mount
Parnassus, clothed with woods, they climbed, and soon
Were on its airy heights. The sun, new risen
From the deep ocean’s gently flowing stream,
Now smote the fields. The hunters reached a dell;
The hounds before them tracked the game; behind
Followed the children of Autolycus.
The generous youth Ulysses, brandishing
A spear of mighty length, came pressing on
Close to the hounds. There lay a huge wild boar
Within a thicket, where moist-blowing winds
Came not, nor in his brightness could the sun
Pierce with his beams the covert, nor the rain
Pelt through, so closely grew the shrubs. The ground
Was heaped with sheddings of the withered leaves.
Around him came the noise of dogs and men
Approaching swiftly. From his lair he sprang
And faced them, with the bristles on his neck
Upright, and flashing eyes. Ulysses rushed
Before the others, with the ponderous spear
Raised high in his strong hand intent to smite.
The boar was first to strike; he dealt a blow
Sidelong, and gashed his foe above the knee,
And tore the flesh, but left untouched the bone.
Ulysses, striking with his burnished spear
The boar’s right shoulder, drove the weapon through.
He fell with piercing cries amid the dust,
And the life left him. Then around their guest
The kindly children of Autolycus
Came and bound up with care the wound, and stanched
With spells the dark blood of the blameless youth,
And hastened with him to their father’s home.
And when Autolycus and they his sons
Had seen him wholly healed, they loaded him
With presents, and, rejoicing for his sake,
Sent him rejoicing back to Ithaca.
His father and his gracious mother there
Rejoiced in turn, and asked him of the scar,
And how it came, and he related all⁠—
How by the white tusk of a savage boar
The wound was given on the Parnassian heights,
As he was hunting with her father’s sons.

The aged woman, as she took the foot
Into her hands, perceived by touch the scar,
And, letting fall the limb, it struck the vase.
Loud rang the brass, the vase was overturned,
And poured the water forth. At once a rush
Of gladness and of grief came o’er her heart.
Tears filled her eyes, and her clear voice was choked.
She touched Ulysses on the chin, and said:⁠—

“Dear child! thou art Ulysses, of a truth.
I knew thee not till I had touched the scar.”

So speaking, toward Penelope she turned
Her eyes, about to tell her that her lord
Was in the palace; but the queen saw not,
And all that passed was unperceived by her,
For Pallas turned her thoughts another way.
Meantime, Ulysses on the nurse’s throat
Laid his right hand, and with the other drew
The aged woman nearer him, and said:⁠—

“Nurse, wouldst thou ruin me, who drew long since
Milk from thy bosom, and who now return,
After much suffering borne for twenty years,
To mine own land? Now then, since thou hast learned
The truth⁠—by prompting of some god, no doubt⁠—
Keep silence, lest some others in the house
Should learn it also. Else⁠—I tell thee this,
And will perform my word⁠—if God permit
That I o’ercome the arrogant suitor-crew,
Nurse as thou art, I spare not even thee,
When in these halls the other maidens die.”

Then thus the prudent Eurycleia said:
“What words, my son, have passed thy lips? for well
Thou knowest my firm mind; it never yields.
Like solid rock or steel I keep my trust.
This let me tell thee, and, I pray thee, keep
My words in mind. If, by the aid of God,
Thou overcome the arrogant suitor-crew,
Then will I name the handmaids that disgrace
Thy household, and point out the innocent.”

Ulysses, the sagacious, thus rejoined:
“Why name them, nurse? It needs not. I myself
Shall watch them, and shall know them all. Hold thou
Thy peace, and leave the issue with the gods.”

He spake; the aged woman left the place
To bring a second bath, for on the floor
The first was spilled. When she had bathed his feet
And made them smooth with oil, Ulysses drew Close to the hearth his seat again, to take 6x5 The warmth, and with his tatters hid the scar. And thus the sage Penelope began:⁠—

“Stranger, but little longer will I yet
Inquire; the hour of grateful rest is near
For those who, though unhappy, can receive
The balm of slumber. Yet for me some god
Appoints immeasurable grief. All day
In sorrows and in sighs, my solace is
To oversee my maidens at their tasks
Here in the palace; but when evening comes,
And all betake themselves to rest, I lie
Upon my couch, and sorrows thick and sharp
Awake new misery in my heart. As when,
In the fresh spring, the swarthy Nightingale,
Daughter of Pandarus, among thick leaves
Sings sweetly to the woods, and, changing oft
The strain, pours forth her voice of many notes,
Lamenting the beloved Itylus,
Her son by royal Zethos, whom she smote
Unwittingly, and slew; with such quick change
My mind is tossed from thought to thought. I muse
Whether to keep my place beside my son,
And hold what here is mine, my dower, my maids
And high-roofed halls, as one who still reveres
Her husband’s bed, and heeds the public voice,
Or follow one of the Achaian chiefs,
The noblest of the wooers, and the one
Who offers marriage presents without stint.
My son’s green years, while he was yet a boy,
Unripe in mind, allowed me not to wed,
And leave his father’s home; but he is grown,
And on the verge of manhood. He desires
That I should leave the palace, for his wrath
Is great against the men who waste his wealth.
Hear, and interpret now a dream of mine:
Within these courts are twenty geese that eat
Corn from the water, and I look on them
Pleased and