Ulysses, the great sufferer, thus replied:
“I am no god; how am I like the gods? I am thy father, he for whom thy sighs Are breathed, and sorrows borne, and wrongs endured.”
He spake and kissed his son, and from his lids Tears fell to earth, that long had been restrained. And then Telemachus, who could not think The stranger was his father, answered thus:—
“Nay, thou art not my father, thou art not Ulysses; rather hath some deity Sought to deceive me, that my grief may be The sharper; for no mortal man would do What has been done, unless some god should come To aid him, and to make him young or old At pleasure; for thou wert a moment since An aged man, and sordidly arrayed, And now art like the gods of the wide heaven.”
Ulysses, the sagacious, answered thus:
“It is not well, Telemachus, to greet With boundless wonder and astonishment Thy father in this lodge. Be sure of this, That no Ulysses other than myself Will ever enter here. I, who am he, Have suffered greatly and have wandered far, And in the twentieth year am come again To mine own land. Thou hast beheld today A wonder wrought by Pallas, huntress-queen, Who makes me what she will, such power is hers— Sometimes to seem a beggar, and in turn A young man in a comely garb. The gods Whose home is in the heavens can easily Exalt a mortal man, or bring him low.”