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THE ODYSSEY.

TE

BOOK I.

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

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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,

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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

Far off,

Of men.

the Ethiopians most remote

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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