Egyptians dwell, and Ethiopia’s sons, And the Sidonians, and the Erembian race, And to the coast of Lybia, where the lambs Are yeaned with budding horns. There do the ewes Thrice in the circle of the year bring forth Their young. There both the master of the herd And herdsman know no lack of cheese, or flesh, Or of sweet milk; for there the herds yield milk The whole year round.
While I was roaming thus, And gathering store of wealth, another slew My brother, unforewarned, and through the fraud Of his own guilty consort. Therefore small Is the content I find in bearing rule O’er these possessions. Ye have doubtless heard This from your parents, be they who they may; For much have I endured, and I have lost A palace, a most noble dwelling-place, Full of things rare and precious. Even now Would I possessed within my palace here But the third part of these; and would that they Were yet alive who perished on the plain Of Troy afar from Argos and its steeds!
Yet while I grieve and while I mourn them all, Here, sitting in my palace, I by turns Indulge my heart in weeping, and by turns I pause, for with continual sorrow comes A weariness of spirit.
Yet, in truth, For none of all those warriors, though their fate Afflicts me sorely, do I so much grieve As for one hero. When I think of him, The feast and couch are joyless, since, of all The Achaian chiefs, none brought so much to pass As did Ulysses, both in what he wrought And what he suffered. Great calamities Fell to his lot in life, and to my own Grief for his sake that cannot be consoled.
Long has he been divided from his friends, And whether he be living now or dead We know not. Old Laertes, the sage queen Penelope, and young Telemachus, Whom, when he went to war he left newborn At home, are sorrowing somewhere for his sake.”
He spake, and woke anew the young man’s grief For his lost father. From his eyelids fell Tears at the hearing of his father’s name, And with both