LITMIR.BIZ

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my lost sire continual sorrows spring,

      The great, the good; your father and your king.

      Yet more; our house from its foundation bows,

      Our foes are powerful, and your sons the foes;

      Hither, unwelcome to the queen, they come;

      Why seek they not the rich Icarian dome?

      If she must wed, from other hands require

      The dowry: is Telemachus her sire?

      Yet through my court the noise of revel rings,

      And waste the wise frugality of kings.

      Scarce all my herds their luxury suffice;

      Scarce all my wine their midnight hours supplies.

      Safe in my youth, in riot still they grow,

      Nor in the helpless orphan dread a foe.

      But come it will, the time when manhood grants

      More powerful advocates than vain complaints.

      Approach that hour! insufferable wrong

      Cries to the gods, and vengeance sleeps too long.

      Rise then, ye peers! with virtuous anger rise;

      Your fame revere, but most the avenging skies.

      By all the deathless powers that reign above,

      By righteous Themis and by thundering Jove

      (Themis, who gives to councils, or denies

      Success; and humbles, or confirms the wise),

      Rise in my aid! suffice the tears that flow

      For my lost sire, nor add new woe to woe.

      If e’er he bore the sword to strengthen ill,

      Or, having power to wrong, betray’d the will,

      On me, on me your kindled wrath assuage,

      And bid the voice of lawless riot rage.

      If ruin to your royal race ye doom,

      Be you the spoilers, and our wealth consume.

      Then might we hope redress from juster laws,

      And raise all Ithaca to aid our cause:

      But while your sons commit the unpunish’d wrong,

      You make the arm of violence too strong.”

      While thus he spoke, with rage and grief he frown’d,

      And dash’d the imperial sceptre to the ground.

      The big round tear hung trembling in his eye:

      The synod grieved, and gave a pitying sigh,

      Then silent sate — at length Antinous burns

      With haughty rage, and sternly thus returns:

      “O insolence of youth! whose tongue affords

      Such railing eloquence, and war of words.

      Studious thy country’s worthies to defame,

      Thy erring voice displays thy mother’s shame.

      Elusive of the bridal day, she gives

      Fond hopes to all, and all with hopes deceives.

      Did not the sun, through heaven’s wide azure roll’d,

      For three long years the royal fraud behold?

      While she, laborious in delusion, spread

      The spacious loom, and mix’d the various thread:

      Where as to life the wondrous figures rise,

      Thus spoke the inventive queen, with artful sighs:

      “Though cold in death Ulysses breathes no more,

      Cease yet awhile to urge the bridal hour:

      Cease, till to great Laertes I bequeath

      A task of grief, his ornaments of death.

      Lest when the Fates his royal ashes claim,

      The Grecian matrons taint my spotless fame;

      When he, whom living mighty realms obey’d,

      Shall want in death a shroud to grace his shade.’

      “Thus she: at once the generous train complies,

      Nor fraud mistrusts in virtue’s fair disguise.

      The work she plied; but, studious of delay,

      By night reversed the labours of the day.

      While thrice the sun his annual journey made,

      The conscious lamp the midnight fraud survey’d;

      Unheard, unseen, three years her arts prevail;

      The fourth her maid unfolds the amazing tale.

      We saw, as unperceived we took our stand,

      The backward labours of her faithless hand.

      Then urged, she perfects her illustrious toils;

      A wondrous monument of female wiles!

      “But you, O peers! and thou, O prince! give ear

      (I speak aloud, that every Greek may hear):

      Dismiss the queen; and if her sire approves

      Let him espouse her to the peer she loves:

      Bid instant to prepare the bridal train,

      Nor let a race of princes wait in vain.

      Though with a grace divine her soul is blest,

      And all Minerva breathes within her breast,

      In wondrous arts than woman more renown’d,

      And more than woman with deep wisdom crown’d;

      Though Tyro nor Mycene match her name,

      Not great Alemena (the proud boasts of fame);

      Yet thus by heaven adorn’d, by heaven’s decree

      She shines with fatal excellence, to thee:

      With thee, the bowl we drain, indulge the feast,

      Till righteous heaven reclaim her stubborn breast.

      What though from pole to pole resounds her name!

      The son’s destruction waits the mother’s fame:

      For, till she leaves thy court, it is decreed,

      Thy bowl to empty and thy flock to bleed.”

      While yet he speaks, Telemachus replies:

      “Ev’n nature starts, and what ye ask denies.

      Thus, shall I thus repay a mother’s cares,

      Who gave me life, and nursed my infant years!

      While sad on foreign shores Ulysses treads.

      Or glides a ghost with unapparent shades;

      How to Icarius in the bridal hour

      Shall I, by waste undone, refund the dower?

      How from my father should I vengeance dread!

      How would my mother curse my hated head!

      And while In wrath to vengeful fiends she cries,

      How from their hell would vengeful fiends arise!

      Abhorr’d by all, accursed my name would grow,

      The earth’s disgrace, and human-kind my foe.

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