Library / Literature & Fiction
The Odyssey
by Homer
- Pages
- about 403
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 7.4 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
The poem opens within forty eight days of the arrival of Ulysses in his
dominions. He had now remained seven years in the Island of Calypso,
when the gods assembled in council, proposed the method of his
departure from thence and his return to his native country. For this
purpose it is concluded to send Mercury to Calypso, and Pallas
immediately descends to Ithaca. She holds a conference with Telemachus,
in the shape of Mantes, king of Taphians; in which she advises him to
take a journey in quest of his father Ulysses, to Pylos and Sparta,
where Nestor and Menelaus yet reigned; then, after having visibly
displayed her divinity, disappears. The suitors of Penelope make great
entertainments, and riot in her palace till night. Phemius sings to
them the return of the Grecians, till Penelope puts a stop to the song.
Some words arise between the suitors and Telemachus, who summons the
council to meet the day following.
The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;
Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall
Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall,
Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d,
Their manners noted, and their states survey’d,
On stormy seas unnumber’d toils he bore,
Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore:
Vain toils! their impious folly dared to prey
On herds devoted to the god of day;
The god vindictive doom’d them never more
(Ah, men unbless’d!) to touch that natal shore.
Oh, snatch some portion of these acts from fate,
Celestial Muse! and to our world relate.
Now at their native realms the Greeks arrived;
All who the wars of ten long years survived;
And ’scaped the perils of the gulfy main.
Ulysses, sole of all the victor train,
An exile from his dear paternal coast,
Deplored his absent queen and empire lost.
Calypso in her caves constrain’d his stay,
With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay;
In vain-for now the circling years disclose
The day predestined to reward his woes.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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