Homer

The Odyssey of Homer
Rendered into English blank verse
Mordaunt Barnard
Edinburgh, 1876

[Sample Passage from the Opening of the Poem]

Book I

Muse! tell me of the man with much resource,
Who wandered far, when sacred Troy he sacked;
Saw towns of many men, learned all they knew,
Winning his own life and his friends’ return.                     5
Yet them he saved not, earnest though he was,
For by their own temerity they died.
Fools! who devoured the oxen of the sun,
Who from them took the day of their return.
[Muse, child of Jove! from some source tell us this.]        10
    The others, all who sudden death escaped,
Flying from war and sea, were now at home.
Him only, yearning for his home and wife,
Calypso, nymph adorable, detained
In hollow caves, and woo’d him for her spouse.      15
When with revolving years the year was come
In which the gods had fated his return
To Ithaca (nor there he toils escaped
Even among his friends), then all the gods,
Neptune except, compassion on him took.                 20
He ’gainst Ulysses raged unceasingly,
Before that to his native land he came.
To the far Æthiopians he had gone,
The Æthiopians most remote of men;
Some near the setting, some the rising sun,
To take a hecatomb of bulls and lambs.                              25
There sitting he enjoyed the feast.  The rest
Were in the house of the Olympian Jove.
The sire of gods and men began a speech,
Calling the famed Ægisthus to his mind,
Whom Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, slew.           30
Rememb’ring him, th’ immortals he addressed:
‘O strange it is how mortals blame the gods!
‘They say their evils are from us, while they
‘By their own folly have unfated woes.
‘Thus, contrary to fate, Ægisthus took     35
‘Atrides’ wife, and slew him when returned;
‘Though knowing his own fate, as him we warned
‘(And Hermes, watchful Argeiphontes, sent),
‘Neither to kill him nor to woo his wife;
‘For that revenge would from Orestes come,       40
‘When he grew up and claimed his own domains.
‘This Hermes told him, but did not persuade,
‘Though well he counselled him, Ægisthus’ mind.
Now for all this the penalty he pays.’

REVIEW COMMENT

“The object of the translator is two-fold:” Barnard announces in his Preface, “to assist backward students in mastering the original, and to give English readers a simple and unambitious version, often differing little from mere prose.  He has therefore made it as literal as the requirements of metre would allow, except, for obvious reasons, in two passages.”  To the last point he adds a coy excuse, “Virginibus puerisque canto” [I sing for virgins and boys].

Barnard adopts most of the standard conventions of Victorian translators, but I find his poetic line has more clarity and energy than most, perhaps because his style is not so weighed down by deliberate archaisms and Miltonic imports. When I retrieved this book from the Bodleian stacks, the pages were uncut.  I was evidently the first person to read that copy past the first page.

Readers who would like to review Barnard’s complete translation should use the following link: Barnard Odyssey.

[List of Published English Translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey]