Book XXIII

Then the old wife, joyfully laughing, to the bower-aloft did fare,
To tell the tale to her mistress that within was her husband dear;
And her knees were brisk, and beneath her her feet went trippingly:
So she stood o'er the head of the Queen, and to her the word spake she:
"Waken, Penelope! waken, dear child! that thou may'st behold

The very thing that thou wouldest, and the hope of thy days of old;
Odysseus hath come! he hath reached his own house, though late it is,
And hath slain the masterful Wooers, who have troubled that house of his,
And have eaten his wealth, and have cowed his son so grievously."

But therewith thus bespake her heart-wise Penelope:
'Stark mad the Gods have made thee, dear nurse, for they have the might
To make a body witless, though full wise she be aright:

And the wanton fool into wisdom they may shift if they have the will;
And thee have they marred, who aforetime hadst a heart of wit and skill.
Ah, why then dost thou mock me, and my mind of many an ache

With these wild tales of thy telling, and me why wilt thou wake

From the sweet sleep that hath bound me and wrapped mine eyelids o'er?
Never yet in such sleep have I slumbered since Odysseus went of yore
To seek the Evil Ilios, that none should name at all.

Now therefore get thee downward and wend thy ways to the hall:
For if any one else of the women whom here I have and keep

Had come with such a story to waken me from sleep,
Then back unto the feast-hall had I sent her speedily
In woeful wise: but herein thine eld excuseth thee."

Then the dear nurse Euryclea in such wise answered she:
"Dear child, nowise I mock thee, but in sooth and in verity
Odysseus is here in the house according to my tale;
That guest whom all men soever in the house did bemock and berail;
And Telemachus hath known him in the house this while indeed,
But of his heedful wisdom hath hidden his father's rede,
That the better he might wreak him of the wrong of masterful men."

She spake, and glad grew the other, and leapt from the bedplace then,
And cast her arms about her, and the tears from her eyelids shed;
And therewith her voice she uttered, and winged words she said:

"Dear friend, and tellest thou truly a soothfast tale to-day?
And in very truth hath he gotten aback to his house as ye say?
How then upon the Wooers, the shameless, laid he hand,

He one alone, and they ever in their place a steadfast band?"

But the dear nurse Euryclea thus spake to her the word:
"I saw not, nor noted, but only the groans of the dying I heard:
For we, we sat bewildered in the nook of the well-built house,
And the door-leaves meetly fitted therein did hold us close,
Till thy son Telemachus called me, coming out to that end from the hall,
Because indeed his father had sent him forth to call:
There found I Odysseus standing 'mid the corpses of the slain,
While all about on the hall-floor, hard-trodden down amain,
They lay one man on the other. It had gladdened thine heart to see
How with blood and gore bedabbled as a lion there stood he,

But now all they are gathered in a heap by the door of the close,
And he the while with brimstone now hallows his lovely house,
Having litten a mighty fire, and sends me to call thee thereto.
Come follow, that both ye twain, both the dear hearts of you,
May enter into gladness; for through many a woe have ye passed,
And now the hope long lingering hath come about at last.
He hath come back alive to his hearth, and there hath he found thee still
And his son in the halls; and those Wooers who have wrought him
wrong and ill,
On all those hath he avenged him within his house and hall."
But to her Penelope answered, and the heart-wise spake withal:

"Dear friend, boast not so bigly, nor laugh aloud outright:
Forsooth, thou wottest how welcome in the house would be this sight
To all, but most unto me, and the son betwixt us begot.

But the tale that thus thou tellest is nowise true I wot;

But rather some one of the Deathless these masterful Wooers hath slain
In his wrath at their grievous outrage, and the ill they have wrought
For no one did they worship of the men that dwell on earth
Whoso might happen upon them, of worth or of unworth. amain.

So their bane hath their folly brought them: but Odysseus, passed away.
To his homefare afar from Achæa, and he is dead to-day."

But the dear nurse Euryclea she answered her, and said:
"Ah, what a word, my nursling, from the wall of thy teeth hath fled!
Whereas thou say'st that thine husband, who standeth down there on the
Shall never come home! Yea, ever of belief in thy soul is dearth.
But come now, another token most plain shall I tell thee in sooth: hearth,
That scar, which of old the wood-boar once drave with his white tooth,
Did I behold as I washed him, and longed to tell it to thee;

But he caught me, and laid his hand right over the mouth of me,

And suffered not my speaking through his manifold wisdom and wit.
But follow me; and for my part I will lay my life on it!
And if I beguile thee, slay me by the evilest death ye may."

So Penelope the heart-wise in answer fell to say:
"Dear friend, the God's own counsels, they that live for evermore,
Tis hard for thee to get at, though thou wottest diverse lore.
Yet wend we now to my son; that we may see the sight
Of these dead men, the Wooers, and him who hath slain them outright."

Therewith she went down from her bower, and sore the heart in her
Was wavering, if she should question from aloof her husband dear,
Or go up and take him, and kiss him on his hands and on his head;
But when she came and passed over the stone threshold of the stead,
Then over against Odysseus sat she down by the other wall

In the light of the fire: but he soothly sat adown by a pillar tall,
With eyes cast down, expecting till mayhap some speech should arise
From his bed-fellow the glorious, since she saw him with her eyes.
But a long while sat she silent, with her heart in all amaze,

And one while face unto face would she sit, and on him gaze,
And one while knew not his body for the wretched raiment's sake.
Then Telemachus fell to chide her, and the word therewith he spake:
"O mother, thou ill mother, that bear'st an unkind heart,
Why ever from my father dost thou hold thee so apart.
Nor wilt ask him and seek answer a-sitting by his side?

No other woman surely so hard-hearted would abide
To hold her aloof from her lord, who so burdened with bale to bear,
Hath come back to the land of his fathers at last in the twentieth year.
But ever the heart within thee is harder than the stone."

Then Penelope the heart-wise thus spake unto her son:
"My child, the heart in my bosom in all amaze is caught,
Nor a word may I speak unto him nor question him of aught,
Nor face to face behold him. But if it be verily so
That this is Odysseus come home, then the surer shall we know
True knowledge of each other: for tokens have we got
That are hidden from all others whereof we twain well wot." no

So she spake, and the goodly Odysseus, the toil-stout, smiled as he heard,
And unto Telemachus straightway he spake a winged word:
"Telemachus, suffer thy mother within these halls to try

The man I am; and full knowledge shall she have speedily.
For now whereas I am foul and my body basely clad,
She honours me not, nor deems me to be the man she had.
But now let us look unto it the better way to gain:
For if one amidst of a people one man alone hath slain
Who hath left but a few behind him revenge for him to win,

Yet shall such an one flee, leaving his fatherland and kin;
But a city's prop have we slaughtered, yea the very flower of the youth
Of the Ithacan folk: so to heed it is my bidding to thee forsooth."

But Telemachus the heedful thus answered him and spake:
"Dear father, see thou to it! for thy counsel all do take
For the best that is among menfolk, nor would any vie with thee
Whoso may be the other of all mortal men that be;
But we full fain will follow, and this I say outright,
Nought shall we fail of stoutness according to our might."

But Odysseus of many a rede spake out, and thus said he:
"Well, therefore shall I tell thee what seemeth best to me;
For first you men shall wash you, and do on your kirtles withal,

Then bid the handmaids array them throughout the house and hall,
And then let the godlike minstrel, his shrilly harp in hand,
Unto the gamesome dance-play go leading all the band,
So that any would say 'twas a wedding of those who may hear it without,
Were he one on the way a-wending, or a neighbour of hereabout;
Lest the rumour of the slaying of the Wooers should be spread
Broadcast about the city, ere we get us out from the stead,
And unto our land well-wooded, and there may we think of the thing,
What gain the Lord of Olympus unto our hand may bring."
He spake; and they hearkened and did it, the deed that he bade be done:
For first of all did they wash them, and do their kirtles on,
And the women arrayed them, and therewith did the godlike minstrel take
His hollow harp, and amidst them he smote desire awake
For the dancing-play the happy, and the music honey-sweet,

And the great house groaned around them, and around to the noise of the
Of the dancing men and the women, fair-girdled all about,
And thus would one be saying who heard it from without: feet

"Now one is a-wedding the Queen that was wooed of many a lord.
Wanton! that might not abide it, the mighty house to ward
Of her wedded man, and be steadfast till he got him aback thereto."

Thuswise would they be saying but nought of the deeds they knew.
But Odysseus the great-hearted, his very house within,
Goodwife Eurynome washed him, and with oil she sleeked his skin,
And about him cast a mantle most fair, and a kirtle meet.

But fairness shed Athene on the man from head to feet
That taller he showed, and bigger, and she wrought with his head and his hair,
And set thick locks a-curling as the harebell bloom curls fair;

And as when some cunning craftsman o'erlays the silver with gold,
Some man whom Hephæstus hath taught craft-cunning manifold,
And Pallas Athene hath taught him, and lovely work he hath sped,

So loveliness about him on his head and his shoulders she shed,

And as he went up from the bath-vat like the Deathless his body did show,
So he sat him adown on the high-seat whence he had arisen e'en now,
Right over against his helpmeet, and spake, and the word he said:

"Strange woman! surely the people who hold the Olympian stead
Have set hard heart within thee above all womankind!
No other woman surely with such enduring mind
Had held aloof from her husband, who many a grief must bear,

To come back to the land of his fathers at last in the twentieth year.
But come, nurse, strew me a bed that I may lie alone,
For surely the heart within her of iron is fashioned and done."

But Penelope the heart-wise the word unto him spake:
"Strange man! I neither exalt me nor scorn of thee do I make,
Nor amazed am I out of measure, though I know what thou wert of yore,
When ye from Ithaca wended in the ship of the long-shaft oar.
But come now, Euryclea, strew him the bed close-laid
Without the well-built bride-room which he himself erst made,
Bring there the bed close-fashioned, and the bed-gear on it dight,
The fleeces and the mantles and the blankets gleaming bright."
Thus she spake to prove her husband; but Odysseus, grieved at heart,
Spake thus unto his bed-mate well-skilled in gainful art:
"O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me!
Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead? full hard for him should it be,
For as deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come here,
Who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere.
But no mortal man is living, how strong soe'er in his youth,
Who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder forsooth
Is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought it, and I alone.
In the close grew a thicket of olive, a long-leaved tree full-grown,
That flourished and grew goodly as big as a pillar about,
So round it I built my bride-room, till I did the work right out
With ashlar stones close-fitting; and I roofed it overhead,
And thereto joined doors I made me, well-fitting in their stead.
Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree,
And, shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly,
I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto,
And shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored it through.
So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished it utterly,
And with gold enwrought it about, and with silver and ivory,
And stretched on it a thong of oxhide with the purple dye made bright.
Thus then the sign I have shown thee; nor, woman, know I aright
If my bed yet bideth steadfast, or if to another place
Some man hath moved it, and smitten the olive-bole from its base." breast,
So he spake, and her knees were loosened, and molten the heart in her
When she knew the soothfast tokens that her lord made manifest.
And weeping she ran straight to him, and cast her arms about
Odysseus' neck, and kissed him on his head, and thus spake out:

"Lour not on me, Odysseus! since in all things else beside
Thou art wisest of men; 'tis the Gods who have given us grief to abide,
For they grudged that we twain together should be dwelling each by each,
In the youth of our days rejoicing till the threshold of eld we should
But prithee be not angry, nor cast thy wrath on me,
That I held me back from caresses when first I looked on thee, reach.

For ever the soul in my breast is full of shuddering fear
Lest some mortal man come hither and with words beguile me here;
For many men are devising gains gotten evilly.
Nor yet would Argive Helen, Daughter of Zeus on high,
With an alien man have mingled in the bed and the loving deed,
Had she known that the warrior sons of Achæans her would lead
Aback again and homeward to her fatherland beloved.
Unto doing a deed unseemly the God that woman moved:
But she laid not to heart beforehand the heavy fateful woe
From whence the weight of sorrow over our lives too must go.
But since of our bed such tokens so certain and sure thou hast shown,
Which no one else of mortals hath seen but we alone,
Yea thou and I, and one handmaid that Actoris hath to name,
A thrall that my father gave me when hither home I came,
Who was door-ward for us of our bride-room built fair and solidly,
My soul thou overcomest, for as hard as it may be."
So she spake; and desire of weeping she stirred in him the more,
As he held his wife well pleasing, the learned in gainful lore;
And e'en as men a-swimming of the face of earth are fain,

Whose well-wrought ship Poseidon hath wrecked amidst the main,
Driven on by the blast of the storm-wind and the over-toppling seas;
But forth from the hoary salt-sea they have fled, and few are these

Who have swum ashore, and their bodies with the brine are crusted around,
But because they have scaped the evil full fain they tread the ground,
Een so was she fain of her husband that she looked upon at last;

Nor wholly his neck would she loosen from her white arms round it cast.
And the Rosy-fingered Day-dawn on their tears had shone indeed.
But the Goddess, the Grey-eyed Athene, of other things had heed:

For the long night she held in his quarter, and the Gold-throned Dawn
From the yoking of her horses in Ocean did she stay;
They, the swift-foot whereby daylight to the sons of men is borne, of Day,

The Gleamer and the Glitterer, the foals that bring the morn.
So at last unto his bedmate spake Odysseus of many a rede:
"Not yet to the end of our labour, O wife, are we gotten indeed;
Abideth toil unmeasured, abundant, hard to be done;
And all this it behoveth that by me it should be won;
For even so the spirit of Tiresias foretold
On the day when I got me adown to the innermost Hades' hold,
That I for myself and my fellows homefare might seek and gain.
Now bedward go we, O woman, that now at last we twain,
Beneath the sweet sleep lying in all delight may be."
But therewith spake unto him heart-wise Penelope:
"The bed for thee there shall be whenso thy soul shall need,
Since now at last it befalleth that the Gods have given thee speed
Unto thine house well-builded and the land of thy fathers of old.

But since God in thy soul had set it, and thereof to me thou hast told,
Come tell me what is the labour, for hereafter it seemeth to me
I shall learn it; and nothing worser to know it as now shall it be."

But the many-counselled Odysseus to answering thus befell:
"Strange one! and why dost thou bid me and egg me on to tell?
Thereof then will I tell thee, nor hide the tale I have had.
But thy soul shall it not make joyous, nor yet thereof am I glad;
For unto many cities of mortals, and many lands
He bade me to go, and to carry a well-shaven oar in my hands,
Until with the men unwitting of the sea at last I meet;
Men who their victuals ever with salt unsavoured eat,
And wot no whit of the ships with the purple cheeks and fair,
Or the well-poised oars which ever are the wings which the ships do bear.
And he gave me a manifest token, which from thee I will not hide,
Whenever another wayfarer I shall meet as I wander wide,
Who shall say that a winnowing fan on my noble shoulder I bear,
He bade me make stay in that land and my oar to set up there,
And there to King Poseidon to hallow fair gifts divine,
A ram and a bull, and a boar which is the mate of the swine;
Then home to wend me, and hallow the gifts an hundredfold
Unto the Gods undying the heavens the wide that hold,
Unto all in order befitting. But my death from out of the sea
Shall come on me full softly, and shall make an end of me,
Worn out by eld the gentle, midst a blithe folk all about.
Such were the things that he told me should befall with never a doubt."

But unto him thus answered heart-wise Penelope:
"If the Gods indeed accomplish a better eld for thee,
Then hope there is ere the ending of deliv'rance from the bale."

So thus to one another they gave and took the tale;
But Eurynome in meanwhile and the nurse the bed did dight
With soft and dainty bed-gear by the gleaming torches' light.
But when the good bed they had strewn them in fashion diligent,
Then back again to the chamber to rest the old-wife went;
But Eurynome the bower-maid with torch in hand she led
The twain, as there they wended their ways unto the bed,
And she brought them unto the chamber, and departed, and they twain
Came unto the ancient order of their bed, and they were fain.
But Telemachus, and the neatherd and the swineherd from the play,
Of the dance their feet were staying, and the women did they stay.
And there in the shadowy chambers they gat them unto bed.
But when of love the lovely those twain their joy had fed,
Then they gladdened them with speech-tales that each to other told.
Told the glory of all women all she bore there to behold,
The baleful throng of the menfolk who wooing came thereto;
And how for her sake a many of kine and fat sheep they slew,
And the mighty drawing of wine from the casks that befel them then;
But Odysseus, Zeus-begotten, of the woes he had laid upon men,
And of all the toil he had toiled in, thereof he told her all;
And fain she hearkened his telling, nor yet did slumber fall
On her eyelids as she hearkened, till the tale was told to an end.

First he told how he quelled the Cicons, and how he thence did wend
Unto the fertile acres of the Lotus-eating men:
And all things that the Cyclops wrought him, and how he avenged him then
For his valiant folk devoured, who no pity there could find;

And his coming to Æolus' dwelling, who took and sped him kind,
Though nowise was he fated to his fatherland to come;

For the storm-wind fell on him, and tore him a long way aloof from his
And over the fishy sea-flood, lamenting mightily:
Then his coming to Telepylus the Læstrygon told he, home,.

By whom was all his ship-host and his well-greaved folk undone,
And Odysseus' self escaped it in one black ship alone:
Then he told the tale of Circe and her manifold guileful snare;
And of how to the dark dank dwelling of Hades he must fare
In a many-benched ship, to seek aiding of the ghost of the Theban wight,
Tiresias: there of his fellows who had been had he sight,
And therewithal of the mother who bare him erst but young;
And he told of the great-voiced Sirens, how he heard the song they sung:
Of the Wandering Rocks and Charybdis the dire he told the tale,
And of Scylla, whom never have shipmen passed by and shunned her bale;
And how his fellows slaughtered the kine of the very Sun;
And how with his bolt the flame-fraught, the Lofty-thundering One,
E'en Zeus, their swift ship ruined, and how all his fair folk died,
Yea one and all together, while he 'scaped the evil tide;
And of how he came to Ogygia, and the Nymph Calypso the Fair,
Who longed for her lord to have him, and still would hold him there,
In her hollow rocky places; and cherished him, and she
Would make him undying unageing through all the days to be;
Yet nowise she persuaded the heart within his breast.
And he told how he came to Phæacia, toiling with all unrest,
Where unto their hearts they took him, and him in worship did hold
As a God, and shipped him, and sent him to his fatherland of old,
With gifts of gold and of brass, and abundant woven gear.
And this was his last word spoken, ere sweet Sleep, the Limb-looser,
Fell on him now, and his soul from cares and troubles freed.
But the Goddess, the Grey-eyed Athene, of other things had heed;
For as soon as she deemed that Odysseus was filled to his heart's content
With the very joy of the wife-bed, and his deep desire was spent,

Then straight she aroused from Ocean the Gold-throned Mother of Day,
To bring light to the sons of men; and Odysseus rose whence he lay
Amidst the soft bed, and fell speaking to his wife, and bade her thus:

"O wife, we have had our fill of labours plenteous;
For here hast thou been weeping for my homefare trouble-beset,
While Zeus and the other God-folk with woes have withheld me yet
From the land of the ancient fathers that so sore I desired to gain.
But since to the bed so longed for we are come at last, we twain,
That wealth of mine now heed thou whatso in my halls may be;
But as for the sheep which the Wooers o'erweening have slain for me
Full many a head myself will I lift, and a many more
The Achæans shall give, till our folds be full and running o'er.
Now up to my lands up-country, thick-wooded, will I fare,
To look on my noble father, who great grief for me doth bear.
Hereof, O wife, I charge thee, that thou be so wise an one:
For right soon shall arise the rumour with the coming of the sun
Of those same men of the Wooers that e'en now I slew in my halls.
So up to thy bower aloft do thou go with thy women thralls,
And sit, and look forth on no man, nor ask word for any to hear."
So he spake, and over his shoulders did on his goodly gear,

And Telemachus and the neatherd and the swineherd did he wake,
And bade them all their war-gear at once in hand to take;
And they nowise disobey him; but their breasts in the brass array,
And then open the doors and go forth; and Odysseus leadeth the way.
And by now was there light on the earth, but Athene hid them about
With night, and then from the city she speedily led them out.