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Opening of the Odyssey
Sing to me, Muse, of the man many-counselled who far through the world’s ways Wandering was tossed after Troya he sacked, the divine stronghold, Many cities of men he beheld, learned the minds of their dwellers, Many the woes in his soul he suffered driven on the waters, Fending from fate his life and the homeward course of his comrades. Them even so he saved not for all his desire and his striving; Who by their own infatuate madness piteously perished, Fools in their hearts! for they slew the herds the deity pastured, Helios high-climbing; but he from them reft their return and the daylight. Sing to us also of these things, goddess, daughter of heaven. Now all the rest who had fled from death and sudden destruction Safe dwelt at home, from the war escaped and the swallowing ocean: He alone far was kept from his fatherland, far from his consort, Long by the nymph divine, the sea-born goddess, Calypso, Stayed in her hollow caves; for she yearned to keep him her husband. Yet when the year came at last in the rolling gyre of the seasons When in the web of their wills the gods spun out his returning Homeward to Ithaca, — there too he found not release from his labour, In his own land with his loved ones, — all the immortals had pity Save Poseidon alone; but he with implacable anger Moved against godlike Odysseus before his return to his country. Now was he gone to the land of the Aethiopes, nations far-distant, — They who to either hand divided, remotest of mortals, Dwell where the high-climbing Helios sets and where he arises; There of bulls and of rams the slaughtered hecatomb tasting He by the banquet seated rejoiced; but the other immortals Sat in the halls of Zeus Olympian; the throng of them seated, First led the word the father divine of men and immortals; For in his heart had the memory risen of noble Aegisthus
Page – 604 Whom in his halls Orestes, the famed Agamemnonid, slaughtered; Him in his heart recalling he spoke mid the assembled immortals: “Out on it! how are the gods ever vainly accused by earth’s creatures! Still they say that from us they have miseries; they rather always By their own folly and madness draw on them woes we have willed not. Even as now Aegisthus, violating Fate, from Atrides Took his wedded wife and slew her husband returning, Knowing the violent end; for we warned him before, we sent him Hermes charged with our message, the far-scanning slayer of Argus, Neither the hero to smite nor wed the wife of Atrides, Since from Orestes a vengeance shall be, the Atreid offspring, When to his youth he shall come and desire the soil of his country. Yet not for all his words would the infatuate heart of Aegisthus Heed that friendly voice; now all in a mass has been paid for.” Answered then to Zeus the goddess grey-eyed Athene. “Father of ours, thou son of Cronus, highest of the regnant, He indeed and utterly fell by a fitting destruction: So too perish all who dare like deeds among mortals. But for a far better man my heart burns, clear-eyed Odysseus Who, ill-fated, far from his loved ones suffers and sorrows Hemmed in the island girt by the waves, in the navel of ocean, Where in her dwelling mid woods and caves a goddess inhabits, Daughter of Atlas whose baleful heart knows all the abysses Fathomless, vast of the sea and the pillars high on his shoulders In his huge strength he upbears that part the earth and the heavens; Atlas’ daughter keeps in that island the unhappy Odysseus. Always soft are her words and crafty and thus she beguiles him. So perhaps he shall cease from thought of his land; but Odysseus Yearns to see even the distant smoke of his country upleaping. Death he desires. And even in thee, O Olympian, my father, Never thy heart turns one moment to pity, nor dost thou remember How by the ships of the Argives he wrought the sacrifice pleasing Oft in wide-wayed Troya. What wrath gainst the wronged keeps thy bosom?
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