University of Virginia Library

From the first shimmer of the summer-morn
Upon the breeze's wings had there been borne
Such echoes as are heard about a quay
When a great ship is putting out to sea;
And all day long down to the port had rolled
A stream of men bearing great store of gold,
And broidered raiment, swords with studded hafts,
And brazen vessels, fair as that which wafts
The incense-smoke from Delphi, and bright arms
Such as make manly men in war's alarms.
And King Alcinoüs stood upon the deck
Watching the lading, lest the crates should check
The crew in reaching forward with their oars
To waft Odysseus to the longed-for shores.
And then he turned home, meaning with high feast
To celebrate the parting of his guest,
And slew an ox to the cloud-gatherer Zeus.
Then those who in the palace had their use,
Roasted the thighs, and therewith made much mirth,
And, when they were well feasted, summoned forth
The gifted bard who pleased the multitude,
And by them was much honoured; who renewed
A lay half sung upon an earlier day
That had pleased well. And when that it was gay
Loud shouts of laughter through the courtyard rang:
But when the deaths of island chiefs he sang,
And island queens with thongs bound round their hands,
Driven with blows and shame to hostile lands,
The laughter died away and eyes grew dim.
Such mastery of song was there in him.

But one there sate, unchanging with the song,
And little noting aught, but all day long
Gazing with levelled glances at the west
To see the sun's tired horses sink to rest
Behind the hill of ocean. For his cause
The sacrifice and song and feasting was;
And yet he heeded to them least of all
Who were within Alcinoüs' palace-wall.
For he was thinking how that he should come
With no long-waiting to his island-home,
And queen and son, and flocks and herds and stead,
And whether he should find Laertes dead;
Or that the Theban's shade had told him truth;
And in his mind viewed pictures of his youth,
And the old life in Ithaca, before
He followed the Atridae to the war.
No ploughman wearied by his clodded shoon.
Towards the close of winter afternoon,
Could look unto the setting of the sun
With more of hope and welcome than this one.
And lastly the sun set: and then he spake
Unto the King, craving that he might take
His escort and his treasures, and all things
That the great gods, whose lot is above kings',
Had vouchsafed to him, to the hollow ship.
And then he spake, and this with trembling lip,
Of her against whose pure and wifely name
Envy itself had never whispered blame,
While she spun on through twenty widowed years,
And nightly washed her spinning out in tears.
And then he spake the word which those who rove
On pathless seas and sands, and exiles love—
“Home:” and then prayed that fair days should befall
His kindly host—good cheer within his hall,
Chaste wives and goodly children; and then prayed
The God, who ever makes it his to aid
The suppliant and stranger, to rain down
All manner of good gifts upon this town,
And that no ill should come unto its folk
And take abode with them.

And while he spoke
There was a hum of praise, and when he made
An end of speaking, all with one mind bade
That he should have his ship; nor did the King
Dissent from what they willed, but, summoning
Pontonöus, the herald, bade him pour
Into the mystic graven bowl great store
Of sacred wine, and all the heroes call
Into the lofty roofed, bronze-paven hall,
That they might pray Zeus with a shielding hand
To bring the stranger to his fatherland.
And so it was—Pontonöus filled the bowl
With wine that soothed the sorrows of the soul,
And gave to each in order as they sate.
Who to the gods, that hold their solemn state
On the broad hill of heaven, duly poured
The first drops in libation, and implored
Safe conduct for the guest. But he stood up
And set in the Queen's hand a drinking cup
With double bowls set base to base, one full
And crowned with wreathing flow'rs and snowy wool,
And spake therewith such wingèd words to her—
“O Queen, I pray the gods to give thee cheer,
Until the fair day when old age and death
Come, as they come to all who draw our breath.
Nor do I think that age will come alone;
For unto me thou seemest such an one
As are the blessed gods who wax not old.
And, but that I by Pallas had been told,
I had thought thee immortal, as they be.
Now I am going home. Zeus prosper thee,
And leave thee long to have thy full delight
In King Alcinöus' heroic might,
And all thy children and the men, who love,
With oars too great for other folk, to rove
Over the open sea (whose waters shine
As darkly and as clearly as the wine
Crushed in the islands from the purple grape),
Delighting all these with thy queenly shape
And godlike wisdom.”

And therewith he passed
Over the threshold of the doorway vast,
Led by the royal Herald to the quay,
Whereby the ship rode chafing for the sea,
And went aboard. And the Queen's womenfolk
Brought him from her fair linen and a cloke
Fresh-washed but now, and the strong coffer faced
With plated bronze whereon Odysseus placed
A magic lock, which sunborn Circe wrought,
And with self-working understanding fraught;
Wherein were stored the princes' goodly gifts,
The talents of pure gold, the thirteen shifts
Of royal vesture, and the noble sword
Which Sir Euryalus brought forth from his hoard
Partly to do the bidding of the King,
And partly as his own free offering,
To soothe away the bitter words he spake;
Goodly the weapon, and of wondrous make,
With biting blade and sheath of ivory,
Carven with curious myths of days gone by,
And silver studded hilt. And there, too, lay
The wine bowl that Pontonöus yesterday,
And many a year before, had daily filled
With the sweet grape juice, when Alcinöus willed
To pour libations. This the King had given
That whensoe'er Odysseus looked to heaven,
Sitting at sacred feast, he might recall
The lofty-roofed, bronze-paved, Phaeacian hall
And him who sate within it on his throne.
Made all of gold it was, with handles on,
And with a wreath of leaves of beaten gold,
And mingled golden roses round it rolled.
And others bare him ruddy wine and wheat;
And when all things were brought, there sate at meat
Odysseus and the escort that he had;
And, when all were with banqueting full glad,
Down in the hollow of the ship they made
Well in the stern a bed, and thereon laid
Soft cloths of wool and linen, that he might
Rest easy mid the rockings of the night.
And then with sound of flutes and many a shout
They from the capstan paid the cables out
Which moored the ship alongside of the quay,
And cast her out into the stream; and she,
Unlike man's ship slow forging at the start,
Leapt straightway into swiftness like a hart,
Or like a four-horse chariot in the ring,
Or hawk that cleaves the wind on lightning wing.

And then with more of music and glad noise
(The while the seamen did the mainsail hoise)
The heralds took their way back to the house,
And mingled with the heroes in carouse.
But on the seashore, all alone, stood one
Who, with strained eyeballs, through the twilight dun
Scanned the dim form of the departing ship
Not without lashes moist and quivering lip;
A maiden with her girlhood scarce outgrown,
Tall and still slender, with her brown hair done
Into a plaited coil, and with grey eyes
That had the clearness of the summer skies,
And something of their colour; her soft cheeks
Were tinted with the duskiness that speaks
Of sunny playhours and warm southern blood,
And yet when shame or dancing brought the flood
Of crimson to her face, the glow shone through
As fairly as through skins of fairer hue.
Robed was she in soft white, with but a braid
Of golden thread upon its border laid,
And with gold bosses on her sandal thongs,
And golden brooches with sharp pointed prongs
Buckling her peplus.

She gazed on the ship
With moistened eyelashes and quivering lip,
Not that it bore away her hopes; they had
Been stricken over night, when all were glad
With the saved stranger's story, as he told
Of all his wars and perils manifold.
For therein had he spoken of his quest
To win to rocky Ithaca, and rest
In the chaste arms of his enduring wife.
And at that word there fell on her young life
A shadow such as falls upon the eve,
When the last glimmers of the sunset leave.
And yet the best of the Phaeacian land,
Great seamen, mighty chiefs, had sought her hand,
And wooed her pleasure many a day in vain,
And moved her not e'en so much as to pain
In the refusal, but were ever met
With a smooth, heedless smile and a “not yet.”
Her wont and her delight had been to sport
Among the maidens of her mother's court,
At ball and dance, and music, and to play
With her own brothers, passionless and gay,
And light of heart, giving no thought at all
Unto the lot that uses to befall
King's daughters and fair women, as of fate,
When they have come to womanly estate.

And why should this man win so much on her?
He looked not like a lady's courtier
With his great shoulders, stoop, and weight of head
That his low stature nowise warranted.
Nor did he heed his person overmuch,
But let the sun and sea and weather smutch
His arms and face with brown, and let his hair
And beard curl and run riot everywhere.
Nor was he in the first prime of his age,
Nor were the nice tricks of a palace page
Observed in his grave manner and address;
Though there could not but be some courtliness
In one who had so much with outland men
Mingled as suppliant or alien,
Envoy or treaty-maker: nor had he,
At least as from his speech might gathered be,
Much heed for woman's beauty or fair ways,
But, speaking no great matter in their praise,
Dwelt much upon the palling of the love
With which Calypso, in her island-grove
Of poplar and sweet-scented cypress, strove
To move him to forgetfulness of home;
Love of a kind that surely would not come
To all men thus unwelcomely, but most
Would look upon it as the crown and boast
Of all their lives, and not, as this strange man,
Seek how he might by wile Dædalian
And prayer, and by entreaty face to face,
Win his way out from each delightful place
To sail back to his rocky heritage
And to a wife now well advanced in age—
If she indeed yet lived, and had not gone
To join the shades that flit about the throne
Of gloomy Dis, and thirst for draughts of blood.
Sated he seemed of all fair womanhood,
As though the spring of worship and desire
Had dried up in his veins, and all youth's fire
Had burnt away. And he spake wearily
Of pageants, revels, and court ceremony
And even the nymphs' gardens of delight—
Full of strange sweetnesses to charm the sight,
And scent, and hearing of all mortal men
Whom fate or some god brought within their ken.
But when he spake of battles or of ships
The whole man changed, and then from out his lips
Poured such a stream of burning, speechful words
That he who heard half saw the play of swords,
The whirl of javelins, the dinted shields,
The blood-drenched herbage of the battle-fields
Rutted by wheels, and spattered up by hoofs,
And strewn with garments slashed of divers woofs,
And mangled limbs, and corpses, and dead steeds.
Or if he did recount his mighty deeds
On shipboard and his wondrous voyages
To haunted isles and undiscovered seas,
One seemed to hear the stormwind piping loud
About the rigging, and each stay and shroud
Groaning with ev'ry straining of the mast
As the great sail bent it before the blast,
And hear the ebb-wave rippling round the prow
When the shipmen had anchored from the bow;
To see strange shapes of trees with naked stems
And cloud-high tops crested with diadems
Of giant flow'rs, and fruits, and spiky leaves;
And see vast serpents and wild, humpbacked beeves
With manes like lions, and huge, fire-bright birds
With monstrous bills that shrieked out sounds like words
Or mocked with human laughter. And he told
Of that which, neither beast nor fish, is rolled
In armour of such proof as neither spear
Nor sword can pierce and armed with triple tier
Of jagged teeth, as great in length and mouth
As are the dread sea monsters of the South.
And then, perchance, of the dwarf, hairy men
That lived in trees and spake not back again
When they were hailed, but fled with savage screams
Deeper into the forest, bridging streams
With their own bodies linked by sorcery
And cunningly swung over from a tree.
These had he told and much more: and the maid
Hung on his lips while he his tale displayed,
Nor ought of the man saw she but did grow
Into proportion. In his form did glow
The ravager of Troy, the voyager,
The nymphs' beloved, the Cyclops' vanquisher.
And then her thoughts fell back and she built up
The magic golden palaces of hope,
Laid lately in the dust, of words of praise
Breathed through a rain of kisses, and fair days
Beside him in the lofty bronze-paved house,
And great sons many wise and valorous
Reflecting back their father's praise on her
As he did on his mother. Then some cheer
Came to her, calling back the gracious words
He spake to her when the Phaeacian lords
Had left them, giving her the thanks and love
For his saved life. And then again she strove
To unbuild the fabric gently, course by course,
But fell to weeping tribute to remorse,
And listening to the sad throb of the tide
Until she wept to sleep by the seaside.