What friendly premonitions have been spent On your forbearance, and their vain event.
Yet, with my other friends, let love prevail
To fit me with a vessel free of sail,
And twenty men, that may divide to me
My ready passage through the yielding sea
For Sparta, and Amathoan Pylos’ shore,
I now am bound, in purpose to explore
My long-lack’d father, and to try if fame
Or Jove, most author of man’s honour’d name,
With his return and life may glad mine ear,
Though toil’d in that proof I sustain a year.
If dead I hear him, nor of more state, here
Retir’d to my lov’d country, I will rear
A sepulchre to him, and celebrate
Such royal parent-rites, as fits his state;
And then my mother to a spouse dispose.”
This said, he sat; and to the rest arose
Mentor, that was Ulysses’ chosen friend,
To whom, when he set forth, he did commend
His cómplete family, and whom he will’d
To see the mind of his old sire fulfill’d,
All things conserving safe, till his retreat.
Who, tender of his charge, and seeing so set
In slight care of their king his subjects there,
Suff’ring his son so much contempt to bear,
Thus gravely, and with zeal, to him began:
“No more let any sceptre-bearing man,
Benevolent, or mild, or human be,
Nor in his mind form acts of piety,
But ever feed on blood, and facts unjust
Commit, ev’n to the full swing of his lust,
Since of divine Ulysses no man now,
Of all his subjects, any thought doth show.
All whom he govern’d, and became to them,
Rather than one that wore a diadem,
A most indulgent father. But, for all
That can touch me, within no envy fall
These insolent Wooers, that in violent kind
Commit things foul by th’ ill wit of the mind,
And with the hazard of their heads devour
Ulysses’ house, since his returning hour
They hold past hope. But it affects me much,
Ye dull plebeians, that all this doth touch
Your free states nothing; who, struck dumb, afford
These Wooers not so much wreak as a word,
Though few, and you with only number might
Extinguish to them the profaned light.”
Evenor’s son, Leocritus, replied:
“Mentor! the railer, made a fool with pride,
What language giv’st thou that would quiet us
With putting us in storm, exciting thus
The rout against us? Who, though more than we,
Should find it is no easy victory
To drive men, habited in feast, from feasts,
No not if Ithacus himself such guests
Should come and find so furnishing his Court,
And hope to force them from so sweet a fort.
His wife should little joy in his arrive,
Though much she wants him; for, where she alive
Would her’s enjoy, there death should claim his rights.
He must be conquer’d that with many fights. Thou speak’st unfit things. To their labours then Disperse these people; and let these two men, Mentor and Halitherses, that so boast From the beginning to have govern’d most In friendship of the father, to the son Confirm the course he now affects to run. But my mind says, that, if he would but use A little patience, he should here hear news Of all things that his wish would understand, But no good hope for of the course in hand.” This said, the Council rose; when ev’ry peer And all the people in dispersion were To houses of their own; the Wooers yet Made to Ulysses’ house their old retreat. Telemachus, apart from all the prease, Prepar’d to shore, and, in the aged seas His fair hands wash’d, did thus to Pallas pray: “Hear me, O Goddess, that but yesterday Didst deign access to me at home, and lay Grave charge on me to take ship, and inquire Along the dark seas for mine absent sire! Which all the Greeks oppose; amongst whom most Those that are proud still at another’s cost, Past measure, and the civil rights of men, My mother’s Wooers, my repulse maintain.” Thus spake he praying; when close to him came Pallas, resembling Mentor both in frame Of voice and person, and advis’d him thus: “Those Wooers well might know, Telemachus, Thou wilt not ever weak and childish be, If to thee be instill’d the faculty Of mind and body that thy father grac’d; And if, like him, there be in thee enchac’d Virtue to give words works, and works their end. This voyage, that to them thou didst commend, Shall not so quickly, as they idly ween, Be vain, or giv’n up, for their opposite spleen. But, if Ulysses nor Penelope Were thy true parents, I then hope in thee Of no more urging thy attempt in hand; For few, that rightly bred on both sides stand, Are like their parents, many that are worse, And most few better. Those then that the nurse Or mother call true-born yet are not so, Like worthy sires much less are like to grow. But thou show’st now that in thee fades not quite Thy father’s wisdom; and that future light Shall therefore show thee far from being unwise, Or touch’d with stain of bastard cowardice. Hope therefore says, that thou wilt to the end Pursue the brave act thou didst erst intend. But for the foolish Wooers, they bewray They neither counsel have nor soul, since they Are neither wise nor just, and
