ELL me, O Muse, of that sagacious man, Who, having overthrown the sacred town
Of Ilium, wandered far and visited
The capitals of many nations, learned
The customs of their dwellers, and endured Great suffering on the deep; his life was oft In peril, as he labored to bring back
His comrades to their homes. He saved them not, Though earnestly he strove; they perished all, Through their own folly; for they banqueted, Madmen! upon the oxen of the Sun, The all-o'erlooking Sun, who cut them off From their return. O goddess, virgin-child Of Jove, relate some part of this to me.
Now all the rest, as many as escaped
The cruel doom of death, were at their homes Safe from the perils of the war and sea, While him alone, who pined to see his home And wife again, Calypso, queenly nymph,
Great among goddesses, detained within
Her spacious grot, in hope that he might yet Become her husband. Even when the years Brought round the time in which the gods decreed That he should reach again his dwelling-place In Ithaca, though he was with his friends, His toils were not yet ended. Of the gods All pitied him save Neptune, who pursued With wrath implacable the godlike chief, Ulysses, even to his native land.
Among the Ethiopians was the god
the Ethiopians most remote
Two tribes there are; one dwells beneath
The rising, one beneath the setting sun. He went to grace a hecatomb of beeves And lambs, and sat delighted at the feast; While in the palace of Olympian Jove
The other gods assembled, and to them The father of immortals and of men
Was speaking. To his mind arose the thought Of that Ægisthus whom the famous son
Of Agamemnon, Prince Orestes, slew.
Of him he thought and thus bespake the gods :
"How strange it is that mortals blame the gods And say that we inflict the ills they bear, When they, by their own folly and against The will of fate, bring sorrow on themselves! As late Ægisthus, unconstrained by fate, Married the queen of Atreus' son and slew
The husband just returned from war. Yet well He knew the bitter penalty, for we Warned him. We sent the herald Argicide, Bidding him neither slay the chief nor woo His queen, for that Orestes, when he came To manhood and might claim his heritage, Would take due vengeance for Atrides slain. So Hermes said; his prudent words moved not The purpose of Ægisthus, who now pays The forfeit of his many crimes at once."
Pallas, the blue-eyed goddess, thus replied :— "O father, son of Saturn, king of kings! Well he deserved his death. So perish all Guilty of deeds like his! But I am grieved For sage Ulysses, that most wretched man, So long detained, repining, and afar
From those he loves, upon a distant isle
Girt by the waters of the central deep,- A forest isle, where dwells a deity
The daughter of wise Atlas, him who knows The ocean to its utmost depths, and holds
Upright the lofty columns which divide
The earth from heaven. The daughter there detains The unhappy chieftain, and with flattering words Would win him to forget his Ithaca.
Meanwhile, impatient to behold the smokes
That rise from hearths in his own land, he pines 75 And willingly would die. Is not thy heart,
Olympius, touched by this? And did he not
Pay grateful sacrifice to thee beside
The Argive fleet in the broad realm of Troy? Why then, O Jove, art thou so wroth with him?” Then answered cloud-compelling Jove: "My child,
What words have passed thy lips? Can I forget Godlike Ulysses, who in gifts of mind
Excels all other men, and who has brought
Large offerings to the gods that dwell in heaven? as Yet he who holds the earth in his embrace, Neptune, pursues him with perpetual hate Because of Polypheme, the Cyclops, strong Beyond all others of his giant race,
Whose eye Ulysses had put out. The nymph Thoosa brought him forth, a daughter she Of Phorcys, ruling in the barren deep,- And in the covert of o'erhanging rocks
She met with Neptune. For this cause the god Who shakes the shores, although he slay him not, 95 Sends forth Ulysses wandering far away
From his own country. Let us now consult Together and provide for his return, And Neptune will lay by his wrath, for vain It were for one like him to strive alone Against the might of all the immortal gods." And then the blue-eyed Pallas spake again :- "O father! son of Saturn, king of kings! If such the pleasure of the blessed gods That now the wise Ulysses shall return
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