Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ODYSSEY: BOOK 11. PHAECIAN NIGHTS: OF HIS MOTHER'S SHADE, by HOMER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ODYSSEY: BOOK 11. PHAECIAN NIGHTS: OF HIS MOTHER'S SHADE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: So saying back to the dark house the ghost
Last Line: And grief waxed ever keener at my heart.
Subject(s): Mythology - Classical


SO saying back to the Dark House the ghost

Of prince Tiresias retreating sank,
His soothsay uttered: but upon the bank
Abode I still, until my mother next
Came night the pit and of the dark blood drank.

Straightway she knew me then, and grieving sore
A winged word she spake: 'O child I bore,
How came you here beneath the misty West
Alive? for living men this dusky shore

'Hardly may see, which mighty floods enclose
And awful rivers, and before it flows
The Ocean-stream, that none afoot may cross,
Except in a well-builded ship he goes.

'Is it but now that while long time you roam
Hither from Troy with ship and crew you come?
And have you won not yet to Ithaca
Nor seen your wife who waits for you at home?'

So spake she, but I answering said: 'Alas,
My mother, strong constraint has made me pass
Down into darkness, to the ghost to seek
That was the Theban seer Tiresias.

'Not yet have I come nigh Achaean land,
Nor set my foot upon my native strand,
But ever have been wandering wearily
Since with bright Agamemnon in one band

'To Ilion nurse of steeds I took my way,
Against the Trojans battle to array;
Now tell me this thing plainly: by what fate
Did Death the Leveller bring you to decay?

'Did a long sickness waste from you the bliss
Of life or arrow-showering Artemis
With shafts that hurt not strike you down and slay?
And of my father likewise tell me this;

'And of the son I left behind me then:
Do they yet keep my honour among men?
Or has it fallen into strangers' hands
Who say that I return not home again?

'And of my wedded wife declare to me
The mind and counsel: with our child stays she
Still steadfast, or has some Achaean prince
Already taken her his wife to be?'

So said I: and the Queen returned reply,
My mother: 'Sure within your palace high
Abides she steadfast-hearted, and the days
And nights wear through with many a tear and sigh.

'Nor does a stranger hold your honour fair;
But still Telemachus untroubled there
Keeps the domain that is his heritage,
And in the banquets has an equal share

'That for the lawgiver are duly spread;
For all men bid him. But in lonelihead
Your father keeps his farm, nor to the town
Goes in at all, nor covered is his bed

'With rugs and broidered blankets; by the fire
Where they that in the household serve for hire
Among the ashes lie, in wintertide
He sleeps, his body clad in mean attire;

'But when the summer comes and fruits abound
In autumn, then his lowly bed is found
Where all about his terraced vineyard-plot
The fallen leaves lie thick upon the ground.

'There lies he mourning, and his heart is sore,
Day after day, that you return no more,
While grievous eld comes over him: for thus
I likewise perished and my life outwore.

'For neither me where in my halls I lay
Did the keen-sighted Arrow-showerer slay
With shafts that pain not, nor was I assailed
By any sickness, such as takes away

'The life out of the limbs with wasting sad;
But died of longing that for you I had,
And for your wisdom and kind-heartedness,
Noble Odysseus, that my life made glad.'

So said she: but I inly for a space
Mused and was full of longing to embrace
The ghost of my dead mother. Thrice I sprang
Toward her, fain to clasp her face to face;

And thrice from out my hands to clasp her spread
Like to a shadow or a dream she fled.
And grief waxed ever keener at my heart.





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