“Hear, noble suitors! ye who throng these halls, And eat and drink from day to day, while long My husband has been gone; your sole excuse For all this lawlessness the claim ye make That I become a bride. Come then, for now A contest is proposed. I bring to you The mighty bow that great Ulysses bore. Whoe’er among you he may be whose hand Shall bend this bow, and send through these twelve rings An arrow, him I follow hence, and leave This beautiful abode of my young years, With all its plenty—though its memory, I think, will haunt me even in my dreams.”
She spake, and bade the master of the swine, The good Eumaeus, place the bow and rings Of hoary steel before the suitor-train. In tears he bore the bow and laid it down. The herdsman also wept to see again His master’s bow. Antinoüs called to both With a loud voice, and chid them angrily:—
“Ye silly rustics, who can never see Beyond the hour, why trouble with your tears The lady who had grief enough besides For her lost husband? Sit and share the feast In silence, or go forth and leave the bow; A difficult contest it will be for us, Nor, as I think, will this fair bow be bent With ease, since surely there is no man here Such as Ulysses was. I saw him once, While but a child, and still remember him.”
He spake, yet in his secret heart believed That he should bend the bow, and send a shaft Through all the rings. And yet he was the first To taste the steel—an arrow from the hand Of the great chief Ulysses—whom he wronged In his own palace, and to equal wrong Encouraged others. Then Telemachus Rose in his sacred might, and thus began:—
“Alas! it must be that Saturnian Jove Has made me lose my wits. Wise as she is, My mother promises to leave her home And follow someone else, and yet I laugh, And am delighted in my foolish heart. Come then, since such a contest is proposed, Ye suitors! and for such a woman too. The like is not in all the lands of Greece, Argos, Mycenae, or the hallowed