THE OYDSSEY: BOOK 19. PENELOPE DREAMS by HOMER

SO said he, and the crone went down the hall
To fetch fresh water for the bath; for all
The first was spilt; and then her master she
Washed, and with oil anointed therewithal.

Again Odysseus to the hearth drew nigher
His chair, that he might warm him at the fire,
Hiding the scar beneath his rags; and wise
Penelope broke silence to enquire:

'O stranger, yet a little more will I
Make question of you; for the hour is nigh
Of rest, that pleasant is for everyone
Whose sleep is sweet in spite of misery.

'But by God's ordinance my sorrows know
No measure; daylong I pass to and fro
With tears and sighs, while to the house I see
And to my handmaids in the house that go.

'But when night comes and all to bed are gone,
Then sleepless in my bed I lie alone,
And round my full-fraught heart thick-coming cares
Sting me full sharply as I make my moan.

'Even as when the maid of Pandarus,
The greenwood nightingale melodious,
Amid the thickened leafage sits and sings
When the young spring is waxing over us:

'And she with many a note and hurrying trill
Pours forth her liquid voice, lamenting still
Her own son Itylus, King Zethus' child,
Whom long ago her folly made her kill:

'So alternating makes my mind alway
Division, whether by my child to stay,
And keep the thralls and the inheritance
And the great high-roofed house untouched to-day.

'Holding in reverence my marriage vow
And public honour, or to follow now
Among the Achaean suitors in my halls
Him who is best and will most gifts allow.

'Now for my son, while yet a child was he
And lightly-minded, it might nowise be
That I should wed and leave my husband's house;
But now that he is grown to man's degree,

'Surely he prays that I the house would quit,
Being vexed at heart to see how every whit
The Achaeans eat up his inheritance.
Hear this my dream now, and interpret it.

'A score of geese within my house are bred
That come up from the water to be fed
With grain, and I take joy in watching them:
On these an eagle from the mountain-head,

'Huge, crooked-taloned, swooping from on high
Brake all their necks and left them there to lie
Dead in a heap within the house, while he
Soared up again into the shining sky.

'But in my dream I wept and wailed, and then
Came flocking round my fair-tressed townswomen,
As piteously I sorrowed for my geese
Killed by the eagle; until he again

'Returned, and on the jutting roof-beam lit,
And thus with human voice he stayed my fit:
Take courage, far-renowned I carius' child,
This is a vision good, no dream is it.

'Hereof a sure fulfilment shall befall:
These geese the wooers are, and I withal,
Who was the eagle, am your lord returned
To deal disastrous death upon them all.

'So spake he, and the sweet sleep rose from me;
And round the palace looking narrowly
I saw the geese there, feeding on their corn
Beside the trough where they were wont to be.'

And subtle-souled Odysseus answering spake:
'Lady, one may not vary nor mistake
The dream's interpretation, that himself
Odysseus told, and good his word will make.

'And on the suitors is foreshown to be
Destruction, nor shall one among them flee
Death and the weird appointed.' Then once more
Spake and made answer wise Penelope:

'O guest, of dreams may no man living know
The true interpretation, or foreshow
Their issue, nor do all of them come true:
For bodiless dreams through double gateways go,

'Of horn and ivory, from night's realm forlorn;
And those that through the ivory gate are borne
Deceive, and what they tell is unfulfilled;
But those that issue through the polished horn

'Fulfil themselves for mortals to whose sight
They issue; but not thence, I deem, that night
Issued that dream of boding, though to me
And to my son it were a dear delight.

'And this besides I tell, for you to lay
To heart and ponder: the disastrous day
That from Odysseus' house shall sunder me
Is even now at hand upon its way.

'I now the suitors to that feat will call
Of axes, that he used to set in hall
Twelve in a row, like a ship-stays, and far back
Standing would shoot an arrow through them all.

'Now therefore to the suitors I will show
This feat; and whoso in his hands the bow
Shall bend most easily, and down the line
Of the twelve axes make the arrow go,

'Him will I follow, putting far from me
This house of my espousals, fair to see
And full of substance, that I think in dreams
I shall remember through the days to be.'

And subtle-souled Odysseus thus begun:
'O wedded lady of Laertes' son
Odysseus, now delay no more to set
This feat within the palace to be done.

'For subtle-souled Odysseus shall again
Come to this house ere one of these attain
Handling that polished bow, to stretch the cord
And send an arrow down the iron lane.'

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