by Homer
When, for their lights within, they set up there
Three lamps, whose wicks were wood exceeding sere,
And passing porous; which they caus’d to burn,
Their matter ever minister’d by turn
Of several handmaids. Whom Ulysses seeing
Too conversant with wooers, ill agreeing
With guise of maids, advis’d in this fair sort:
‘Maids of your long-lack’d king, keep you the port
Your queen’s chaste presence bears. Go up to her,
Employ your looms or rocks, and keep ye there;
I’ll serve to feed these lamps, should these lords’ dances
Last till Aurora cheer’d us with her glances.
They cannot weary me, for I am one
Born to endure when all men else have done.’
They wantonly brake out in laughters all,
Look’d on each other, and to terms did fall
Cheek-proud Melantho, who was Dolius’ seed,
Kept by the queen, that gave her dainty bread
Fit for her daughter; and yet won not so
Her heart to her to share in any woe
She suffer’d for her lord, but she was great
With great Eurymachus, and her love’s heat
In his bed quench’d. And this choleric thing
Bestow’d this railing language on the king:
‘Base stranger, you are taken in your brain,
You talk so wildly. Never you again
Can get where you were born, and seek your bed
In some smith’s hovel, or the marketstead,
But here you must take confidence to prate
Before all these; for fear can get no state
In your wine-hardy stomach. Or ’tis like
To prove your native garb, your tongue will strike
On this side of your mouth still, being at best.
Is the man idle-brain’d for want of rest?
Or proud because he beat the roguish beggar?
Take heed, sir, lest some better man beleager
Your ears with his fists, and set headlong hence
Your bold abode here, with your blood’s expence.’
He, looking sternly on her, answer’d her:
‘Dog! What broad language giv’st thou? I’ll prefer
Your usage to the prince, that he may fall
Foul on your fair limbs till he tell them all.’
This fray’d the wenches, and all straight got gone
In fear about their business, every one
Confessing he said well. But he stood now
Close by the cressets, and did looks bestow
On all men there, his brain employ’d about
Some sharper business than to dance it out,
Which had not long to go. Nor therefore would
Minerva let the wooers’ spleens grow cold
With too good usage of him, that his heart
Might fret enough, and make his choler smart.
Eurymachus provok’d him first, and made
His fellow laugh, with a conceit he had
Fetch’d far from what was spoken long before,
That his poor form perhaps some deity bore.
‘It well may chance,’ said he, ‘some god doth bear
This man’s resemblance; for, thus standing near
The glistering torches, his slick’d head doth throw
Beams round about it as those cressets do,
For not a hair he hath to give it shade.
Say, will thy heart serve t’ undertake a trade
For fitting wages? Should I take thee hence
To walk my grounds, and look to every fence,
Or plant high trees, thy hire should raise thy forces,
Food store, and clothes. But these same idle courses
Thou art so prompt in that thou wilt not work,
But forage up and down, and beg, and lurk
In every house whose roofs hold any will
To feed such fellows. That thy gut may fill,
Gives end to all thy being.’ He replied:
‘I wish at any work we two were tried,
In height of spring-time, when heav’n’s lights are long;
I a good crook’d scythe that were sharp and strong,
You such another, where the grass grew deep,
Up by day-break, and both our labours keep
Up till slow darkness eas’d the labouring light,
Fasting all day, and not a crumb till night;
We then should prove our either workmanship.
Or if, again, beeves that the goad or whip
Were apt t’ obey before a tearing plow,
Big lusty beasts, alike in bulk and brow,
Alike in labour, and alike in strength,
Our task four acres, to be till’d in length
Of one sole day; again then you should try
If the dull glebe before the plow should fly,
Or I a long stitch could bear clean and ev’n.
Or lastly, if the guide of earth and heav’n
Should stir stern war up, either here or there,
And that at this day I had double spear
And shield, and steel casque fitting for my brows
At this work likewise, ’midst the foremost blows,
Your eyes should note me, and get little cause
To twit me with my belly’s sole applause.
But you affect t’ affect with injury,
Your mind ungentle, seem in valour high,
Because ’gainst few, and those not of the best,
Your conversation hath been still profess’d.
But if Ulysses, landed on his earth,
And enter’d on the true right of his birth,
Should come and front ye, straight his ample gates
Your feet would hold too narrow for your fates.’
He frowned, raged, call’d him wretch, and vow’d
To be his death, since he durst prove so proud
Amongst so many, to tell him so home
What he affected; ask’d, if overcome
With wine he were, or, as his minion said,
Talk’d still so idly, and were palsied
In his mind’s instruments, or was proud because
He gat from Irus off with such applause?
With all which, snatching up a stool, he threw;
When old Ulysses to the knees withdrew
Of the Dulichian lord, Amphinomus,
As if he fear’d him – his dart missing thus
His aged object – and his page’s hand
(A boy that waited on his cup’s command,
Now holding of an ew’r to him) he smit.
Down fell the sounding ew’r, and after it
The guiltless page lay sprawling in the dust,
And crying out. When all the wooers thrust
A tumult up amongst them, wishing all
The rogue had perish’d in some hospital,
Before his life there stirr’d such uproars up,
And with rude speeches spice their pleasures’ cup.
And all this for a beggar to fulfil
A filthy proverb: ‘Good still yields to ill.’
The prince cried out on them, to let the bad
Obscure the good so; told them they were mad,
Abus’d their banquet, and affirm’d some god
Tried mast’ries with them; bade them take their load
Of food and wine, sit up, or fall to bed
At their free pleasures; and since he gave head
To all their freedoms, why should they mistake
Their own rich humours for a beggar’s sake?
All bit their lips to be so taken down,
And taught the course that should have been their own,
Admir’d the prince, and said he bravely spoke.
But Nisus’ son then struck the equal stroke,
And said: ‘O friends, let no man here disdain
To put up equal speeches, nor maintain
With serious words an humour, nor with stroke
A stranger in another’s house provoke,
Nor touch the meanest servant, but confine
All these dissensions in a bowl of wine;
Which fill us, cup-bearer, that having done
Our nightly sacrifice, we may atone
Our pow’rs with sleep, resigning first the guest
Up to the prince, that holds all interest
In his disposure here, the house being his
In just descent, and all the faculties.’
This all approv’d; when noble Mulius,
Herald in chief to lord Amphinomus,
The wine distributed with reverend grace
To every wooer; when the gods giv’n place
With service fit, they serv’d themselves, and took
Their parting cups, till, when they all had shook
The angry humour off, they bent to rest,
And every wooer to several roofs address’d.
The end of the eighteenth book
Book 19
The Argument
Ulysses and his son eschew
Offending of the wooers’ view
With any armour. His birth’s seat,
Ulysses tells his queen, is Crete.
Euryclea the truth yet found,
Discover’d by a scar-healed wound,
Which in Parnassus’ tops a boar,
Struck by him in his chase, did gore.
Another Argument
Tau
The king, still hid
By what he said,
By what he did
Informs his maid.
Book 19
Yet did divine Ulysses keep his roof,
And with Minerva plotted still the proof
Of all the wooers’ deaths; when thus his son
He taught with these fore-counsels: ‘We must run
A close course with these arms, and lay them by,
And to the wooers make so fair a sky
As it would never thunder. Let me then,
That you may well retain, repeat again
What in Eumaeus’ cottage I advis’d:
If when they see no leisure exercis’d
In fetching down your arms, and ask what use
Your mind will give them, say, ’tis their abuse
With smoke and rust that makes you take them down,
This not being like the armory well known
To be the leavings of Laertes’ son
Consorting the design for Ilion;
Your eyes may see how much they are infected,
As all fires’ vapours ever since reflected
On those sole arms. Besides, a graver thought
Jove graves within you, lest, their spirits wrought
Above their pitch with wine, they might contend
At some high banquet, and to wounds transcend,
Their feast inverting; which, perhaps, may be
Their nuptial feast with wise Penelope.
The ready weapon, when the blood is up,
Doubles the uproar heighten’d by the cup.
Wrath’s means for act curb all the ways ye can.
As loadstones draw the steel, so steel draws man.
Retain these words; nor what is good think, thus
Receiv’d at second hand, superfluous.’
The son, obeying, did Euryclea call,
And bade her shut in th’ outer porches all
The other women, till himself brought down
His father’s arms, which all were overgrown
By his neglect with rust, his father gone,
And he too childish to spend thoughts upon
Those manly implements; but he would now
Reform those young neglects, and th’ arms bestow
Past reach of smoke. The loving nurse replied:
‘I wish, O son, your pow’rs would once provide
For wisdom’s habit, see your household were
In thrifty manage, and tend all things there.
But if these arms must down, and every maid
Be shut in outer rooms, who else should aid
Your work with light?’ He answer’d: ‘This my guest.
There shall no one in my house taste my feast,
Or join in my nave, that shall idly live,
However far hence he his home derive.’
He said, and his words stood. The doors she shut
Of that so well-fill’d house. And th’ other put
Their thoughts in act; best shields, helms, sharpen’d lances,
Brought down; and Pallas before both advances
A golden cresset, that did cast a light
As if the day sat in the throne of night.
When, half amaz’d, the prince said: ‘O my father,
Mine eyes my soul’s pow’rs all in wonder gather,
For though the walls and goodly wind-beams here,
And all these pillars that their heads so rear,
And all of fir, they seem yet all of fire.
Some god is surely with us.’ His wise sire
Bade peace, and keep the counsels of the gods,
Nor ask a word: ‘These pow’rs, that use abodes
Above the stars, have pow’r from thence to shine
Through night and all shades to earth’s inmost mine.
Go thou for sleep, and leave me here to wake
The women and the queen, whose heart doth ache
To make inquiry for myself of me.’
He went to sleep where lights did endlessly
Burn in his night-rooms; where he feasted rest,
Till day’s fair weed did all the world invest.
Thus was divine Ulysses left alone
With Pallas, plotting foul confusion
To all the wooers. Forth then came the queen;
Phoebe, with golden Cytherea seen,
Her port presented. Whom they set a chair
Aside the fire, the fashion circular,
The substance silver and rich elephant;
Whose fabric did the cunning finger vaunt
Of great Icmalius, who besides had done
A footstool for her that did suit her throne,
On which they cast an ample skin, to be
The cushion for her other royalty.
And there she sat; about whom came her maids,
Who brought upon a table store of breads,
And bowls that with the wooers’ wine were crown’d.
The embers then they cast upon the ground
From out the lamps, and other fuel added,
That still with cheerful flame the sad house gladded.
Melantho seeing still Ulysses there,
Thus she held out her spleen: ‘Still, stranger, here?
Thus late in night? To see what ladies do?
Avaunt you, wretch; hence, go without doors, go;
And quickly, too, lest ye be singed away
With
burning firebrands.’ He, thus seeing their fray
Continu’d by her with such spleen, replied:
‘Minion! What makes your angry blood thus chide
My presence still? Is it because you see
I shine not in your wanton bravery,
But wear these rags? It fits the needy fate
That makes me beg thus of the common state.
Such poor souls, and such beggars, yet are men;
And ev’n my mean means means had to maintain
A wealthy house, and kept a manly press,
Was counted blessed, and the poor access
Of any beggar did not scorn, but feed
With often hand, and any man of need
Reliev’d as fitted; kept my servants, too,
Not few, but did with those additions go
That call choice men “The Honest”, who are styl’d
The rich, the great. But what such great ones build
Jove oft pulls down, as thus he ruin’d me;
His will was such, which is his equity.
And therefore, woman, bear you fitting hand
On your behaviour, lest your spirit thus mann’d,
And cherish’d with your beauties, when they wane,
Comes down, your pride now being then your bane;
And in the mean space shun the present danger,
Lest your bold fashion breed your sovereign’s anger,
Or lest Ulysses come, of whom ev’n yet
Hope finds some life in fate. Or, be his seat
Amongst the merely ruin’d, yet his son,
Whose life’s heat Phoebus saves, is such a one
As can discover who doth well deserve
Of any woman here his years now serve.’
The queen gave ear, and thus suppress’d the flame:
‘Thou quite without a brow, past female shame,
I hear thy monstrous boldness, which thy head
Shall pay me pains for. Thou hast heard it said,
And from myself too, and at every part
Thy knowledge serves thee, that to ease my heart
So punish’d in thy witness, my desire
Dwelt on this stranger, that I might inquire
My lost friend’s being. But ’tis ever tried,
Both man and god are still forgot with pride.
Eurynome, bring here this guest a seat
And cushion on it, that we two may treat
Of the affair in question. Set it near,
That I may softly speak, yet he well hear.’
She did this little freely; and he sat
Close by the queen, who ask’d him, whence, and what