Then as they spake, upraised his head,
Pricked up his listening ear,
The dog, whom erst Odysseus bred,
Old Argus lying near.

He bred him, but his fostering skill
To himself had naught availed;
For Argus joined not the chase, until
The King had to Ilion sailed.

To hunt the wild-goat, hart, and hare,
Him once young huntsmen sped;
But now he lay an outcast there,
Absent his lord, to none a care,
Upon a dunghill bed.

Where store of dung, profusely flung
By mules and oxen, lay;

Mastiffs, as austere
As savage beasts, lay ever, their fierce strain
Bred by the herdsman, a mere prince of men,
Their number four. ...
The fate-born-dogs-to-bark took sudden view
Of Odysseus, and upon him flew
With open mouth. He, cunning to appal
A fierce dog's fury, from his hand let fall
His staff to earth, and sat him careless down.
And yet to him had one foul wrong been shown
Where most his right lay, had not instantly
The herdsman let his hide fall, and his cry
(With frequent stones flung at the dogs) repelled

When to the powers beneath,
The sacred nation that survives with Death,
My prayers and vows had done devotions fit,
I took the offerings, and upon the pit
Bereft their lives. Out gushed the sable blood,
And round about me fled out of the flood
The souls of the deceased. There clustered then
Youths, and their wives, much suffering aged men,
Soft tender virgins that but new came there
By timeless death, and green their sorrows were.
There men at arms, with armours all imbrued,
Wounded with lances and with falchions hewed,

She kindled fits of frantic mirth,
Maddening their hearts the while,
But suddenly their laughter sunk
To a convulsive smile:
The flesh they eat grew foul with gore,
Strange tears began to flow,
And something in the secret soul
Prompted their hearts to woe:
Then outspake Theoclymenus,
(These were the words he said,)
" What evil doom, O wretched men,
Vexes you now? Each head,
Each face, down to the knees below,
Is swathed in darkness dread.
Low wailing murmurs spread like fire,
Tears down your cheeks have flowed,

He said; and straight the herald Argicide
Beneath his feet the feathery sandals tied,
Immortal, golden, that his flight could bear
O'er seas and lands, like waftage of the air;
His rod too, that can close the eyes of men
In balmy sleep, and open them again,
He took, and holding it in hand, went flying;
Till from Pieria's top the sea descrying,
Down to it sheer he dropped, and scoured away
Like the wild gull, that fishing o'er the bay
Flaps on, with pinions dipping in the brine;
So went on the far sea the shape divine.

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities

When he found Laertes alone on the tidy terrace, hoeing
Around a vine, disreputable in his gardening duds,
Patched and grubby, leather gaiters protecting his shins
Against brambles, gloves as well, and, to cap it all,
Sure sign of his deep depression, a goatskin duncher,
Odysseus sobbed in the shade of a pear-tree for his father
So old and pathetic that all he wanted then and there
Was to kiss him and hug him and blurt out the whole story,
But the whole story is one catalogue and then another,
So he waited for images from that formal garden,

When he had made sure there were no survivors in his house
And that all the suitors were dead, heaped in blood and dust
Like fish that fishermen with fine-meshed nets have hauled
Up gasping for salt water, evaporating in the sunshine,
Odysseus, spattered with muck and like a lion dripping blood
From his chest and cheeks after devouring a farmer's bullock,
Ordered the disloyal housemaids to sponge down the armchairs
And tables, while Telemachos, the oxherd and the swineherd
Scraped the floor with shovels, and then between the portico

Thus, many tales Ulysses told his wife,
At most but painting; yet most like the life:
Of which, her heart such sense took through hir eares,
It made her weepe, as she would turne to teares.
And as from off the Mountaines melts the snow,
Which Zephyres breath congeald; but was made flow
By hollow Eurus , which so fast poures downe,
That with their Torrent, flouds have over-flowne:
So downe her faire cheekes, her kinde tears did glide;
Her mist Lord mourning, set so neere her side.

The Goddess swore: then seiz'd my hand, and led
To the sweet transports of the genial bed.
Ministrant to their Queen, with busy care
Four faithful handmaids the soft rites prepare;
Nymphs sprung from fountains, or from shady woods,
Or the fair offspring of the sacred floods.
One o'er the couches painted carpets threw,
Whose purple lustre glow'd against the view:
White linnen lay beneath. Another plac'd
The silver stands with golden flaskets grac'd:
With dulcet bev'rage this the beaker crown'd,