The Odysseys of Homer, together with the shorter poems. Homer
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[4] Helen counterfeited the wives’ voices of those kings of Greece that were in the wooden horse, and calls their husbands.
[5] Δἐμας, membrorum structura.
[6] Παρἁ κληîδος ἱμἀντα. Ιμἀς, affectus curculionis significat quod longior et gracilior evaserit.
THE FIFTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS
THE ARGUMENT
A second Court on Jove attends;
Who Hermes to Calypso sends,
Commanding her to clear the ways
Ulysses sought; and she obeys.
When Neptune saw Ulysses free,
And so in safety plough the sea,
Enrag’d, he ruffles up the waves,
And splits his ship. Leucothea saves
His person yet, as being a Dame
Whose Godhead govern’d in the frame
Of those seas’ tempers. But the mean,
By which she curbs dread Neptune’s spleen,
Is made a jewel, which she takes
From off her head, and that she makes
Ulysses on his bosom wear,
About his neck, she ties it there,
And, when he is with waves beset,
Bids wear it as an amulet,
Commanding him, that not before
He touch’d upon Phæacia’s shore,
He should not part with it, but then
Return it to the sea again,
And cast it from him. He performs;
Yet, after this, bides bitter storms,
And in the rocks sees death engrav’d,
But on Phæacia’s shore is sav’d.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT
E.
Ulysses builds
A ship; and gains
The glassy fields;
Pays Neptune pains.
Aurora rose from high-born Tithon’s bed,
That men and Gods might be illustrated,
And then the Deities sat. Imperial Jove,
That makes the horrid murmur beat above,
Took place past all, whose height for ever springs,
And from whom flowers th’ eternal pow’r of things.
Then Pallas, mindful of Ulysses, told
The many cares that in Calypso’s hold
He still sustain’d, when he had felt before
So much affliction, and such dangers more.
“O Father,” said she, “and ye Ever-blest,
Give never king hereafter interest
In any aid of yours, by serving you,
By being gentle, human, just, but grow
Rude, and for ever scornful of your rights,
All justice ord’ring by their appetites,
Since he, that rul’d as it in right behov’d,
That all his subjects as his children lov’d,
Finds you so thoughtless of him and his birth.
Thus men begin to say, ye rule in earth,
And grudge at what ye let him undergo,
Who yet the least part of his suff’rance know:
Thrall’d in an island, shipwrack’d in his tears,
And, in the fancies that Calypso bears,
Bound from his birthright, all his shipping gone,
And of his soldiers not retaining one.
And now his most-lov’d son’s life doth inflame
Their slaught’rous envies; since his father’s fame
He puts in pursuit, and is gone as far
As sacred Pylos, and the singular
Dame-breeding Sparta.” This, with this reply,
The Cloud-assembler answer’d: “What words fly
Thine own remembrance, daughter? Hast not thou
The counsel giv’n thyself, that told thee how
Ulysses shall with his return address
His Wooers wrong? And, for the safe access
His son shall make to his innative port,
Do thou direct it, in as curious sort
As thy wit serves thee; it obeys thy pow’rs;
And in their ship return the speedless Wooers.”
Then turn’d he to his issue Mercury,
And said: “Thou hast made good our ambassy
To th’ other Statists, to the Nymph then now,
On whose fair head a tuft of gold doth grow,