as one who still reveres Her husband’s bed, and heeds the public voice, Or follow one of the Achaian chiefs, The noblest of the wooers, and the one Who offers marriage presents without stint. My son’s green years, while he was yet a boy, Unripe in mind, allowed me not to wed, And leave his father’s home; but he is grown, And on the verge of manhood. He desires That I should leave the palace, for his wrath Is great against the men who waste his wealth. Hear, and interpret now a dream of mine: Within these courts are twenty geese that eat Corn from the water, and I look on them Pleased and amused. From off a mountain came A hook-beaked eagle, broke their necks, and left Their bodies strewn about the palace dead, And soared again into the air of heaven. I wept and moaned, although it was a dream; And round me came the fair-haired Grecian maids, Lamenting wildly that the bird of prey Had slain my geese. Then came the eagle back, And took his perch upon the jutting roof, And thus bespake me in a human voice:—
“ ‘O daughter of Icarius, the renowned! Let not thy heart be troubled; this is not A dream, but a true vision, and will be Fulfilled. The geese denote the suitor-train, And I, who was an eagle once, am come, Thy husband, now to end them utterly.’
“He spake; my slumbers left me, and I looked, And saw the geese that in the palace still Were at their trough, and feeding as before.”
And thus Ulysses, the sagacious, said: “Lady, the dream that visited thy sleep Cannot be wrested to another sense. Ulysses has himself revealed to thee The way of its fulfillment. Death is near The suitors, and not one escapes his doom.”
Then spake the sage Penelope again: “Of dreams, O stranger, some are meaningless And idle, and can never be fulfilled. Two portals are there for their shadowy shapes, Of ivory one, and one of horn. The dreams That come through the carved ivory deceive With promises that never are