The Odyssey · Homer
BOOK VIII.
So from the sluices of Ulysses’ eyes Fast fell the tears, and sighs succeeded sighs: Conceal’d he grieved: the king observed alone The silent tear, and heard the secret groan; Then to the bard aloud: “O cease to sing, Dumb be thy voice, and mute the tuneful string; To every note his tears responsive flow, And his great heart heaves with tumultuous woe; Thy lay too deeply moves: then cease the lay, And o’er the banquet every heart be gay: This social right demands: for him the sails, Floating in air, invite the impelling gales: His are the gifts of love: the wise and good Receive the stranger as a brother’s blood. “But, friend, discover faithful what I crave; Artful concealment ill becomes the brave: Say what thy birth, and what the name you bore, Imposed by parents in the natal hour? (For from the natal hour distinctive names, One common right, the great and lowly claims:) Say from what city, from what regions toss’d, And what inhabitants those regions boast? So shalt thou instant reach the realm assign’d, In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind; No helm secures their course, no pilot guides; Like man intelligent, they plough the tides, Conscious of every coast, and every bay, That lies beneath the sun’s all-seeing ray; Though clouds and darkness veil the encumber’d sky, Fearless through darkness and through clouds they fly; Though tempests rage, though rolls the swelling main, The seas may roll, the tempests rage in vain; E’en the stern god that o’er the waves presides, Safe as they pass, and safe repass the tides, With fury burns; while careless they convey Promiscuous every guest to every bay, These ears have heard my royal sire disclose A dreadful story, big with future woes; How Neptune raged, and how, by his command, Firm rooted in a surge a ship should stand A monument of wrath; how mound on mound Should bury these proud towers beneath the ground. But this the gods may frustrate or fulfil, As suits the purpose of the Eternal Will. But say through what waste regions hast thou stray’d What customs noted, and what coasts survey’d; Possess’d by wild barbarians fierce in arms, Or men whose bosom tender pity warms? Say why the fate of Troy awaked thy cares, Why heaved thy bosom, and why flowed thy tears? Just are the ways of Heaven: from Heaven proceed The woes of man; Heaven doom’d the Greeks to bleed, A theme of future song! Say, then, if slain Some dear-loved brother press’d the Phrygian plain? Or bled some friend, who bore a brother’s part, And claim’d by merit, not by blood, the heart?”
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.