color like the violet. Helen there Sat down, a footstool at her feet, and straight Questioned with earnest words her husband thus:—
“Say, Menelaus, foster-child of Jove, Is it yet known what lineage these men claim— These visitants? And what I now shall say, Will it be false or true? Yet must I speak. Woman or man I think I never saw So like another as this youth, on whom I look with deep astonishment, is like Telemachus, the son whom our great chief Ulysses left at home a tender babe When ye Achaians for my guilty sake Went forth to wage the bloody war with Troy.”
And fair-haired Menelaus answered her:—
“Yea, wife, so deem I as it seems to thee. Such are his feet, his hands, the cast of the eye, His head, the hair upon his brow. Just now, In speaking of Ulysses, as I told How he had toiled and suffered for my sake, The stranger held the purple cloak before His eyes, and from the lids dropped bitter tears.”