Into the palace; for the light we have Of torches seems to issue from the crown Of his bald pate, a head without a hair.”
So said Eurymachus, and then bespake Ulysses, the destroyer of walled towns:—
“Stranger, if I accept thee, wilt thou serve Upon the distant parts of my estate? There shalt thou have fair wages, and shalt bring The stones in heaps together, and shalt plant Tall trees, and I will feed thee through the year, And give thee clothes, and sandals for thy feet. But thou art used, no doubt, to idle ways, And never dost thou work with willing hands, But dost prefer to roam the town and beg, Purveying for thy gluttonous appetite.”
Ulysses, the sagacious, answered thus:— “Eurymachus, if we were matched in work Against each other in the time of spring When days are long, and both were mowing grass, And I had a curved scythe in hand and thou Another, that we might keep up the strife Till nightfall, fasting, mid the abundant grass; Or if there were a yoke of steers to drive, The sturdiest of their kind, sleek, large, well fed, Of equal age, and equal strength to bear The labor, and both strong, and if the field Were of four acres, with a soil through which The plough could cleave its way—then shouldst thou see How evenly my furrow would be turned. Or should the son of Saturn send today War from abroad, and I had but a shield, Two spears, and, fitted to my brows, a helm Of brass, thou wouldst behold me pressing on Among the foremost warriors, and would see No cause to rail at my keen appetite. But arrogantly thou dost bear thyself, And pitilessly; thou in thine own eyes Art great and mighty, since thou dost consort With few, and those are not the best of men. Yet should Ulysses come to his own land, These gates that seem so wide would suddenly Become too narrow for thee in thy flight.”
He spake. Eurymachus grew yet more wroth, And frowned on him, and said in winged words:—