in all his realm. The dark-soiled earth Brings wheat and barley forth; the trees are bowed With fruit; the meadows swarm with noble herds, The sea with fish, and under his wise reign The people prosper. Therefore ask, I pray, Of other things, while I am underneath Thy palace-roof, but of my race and home Inquire not, lest thou waken in my mind Unhappy memories. I am a man Of sorrow, and it would become me ill To sit lamenting in another’s house And shedding tears. Besides, a grief indulged Doth grow in violence. Thy maids would blame, And thou perhaps, and ye would call my tears The maudlin tears of one o’ercome with
Then spake the sage Penelope again: “Stranger, such grace of feature and of form As once I had the immortals took away, What time the Argive warriors sailed for Troy, And my Ulysses with them. Could he now Return to rule my household as of yore, The wider and the brighter were my fame. But now I lead a wretched life, so great And many are the evils which some god Heaps on me. For the chieftains who bear sway Over the isles—Dulichium, and the fields Of Samos, and Zacynthus dark with woods, And those who rule in sunny Ithaca— Woo me against my will, and waste away My substance. Therefore have I small regard For strangers and for suppliants, and the tribe Of heralds, servants of the public weal, But, pining for Ulysses, wear away My life.
The suitors urge the marriage rite, And I with art delay it. Once some god Prompted me to begin an ample web, Wide and of subtle texture, in my rooms. And then I said: > ‘Youths, who are pressing me To marriage, since Ulysses is no more, Urge me no further till I shall complete— That so the threads may not be spun in vain— This shroud