Homer
The Odyssey
London 1887
[Selection from the Opening
of the Poem]
THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER, DONE
INTO ENGLISH
VERSE BY WILLIAM MORRIS
BOOK I. THE GODS ORDAIN THE RETURN OF ODYSSEUS:
PALLAS GOES TO ITHACA AND IN THE LIKENESS
OF MENTES HEARTENS UP TELEMACHUS, &
BIDS HIM CALL A MEETING OF MEN TO LAY HIS
GRIEVANCE AGAINST THE WOOERS, AND THEN TO
TAKE SHIP TO PYLOS AND SPARTA SEEKING TIDINGS
OF HIS FATHER.
Tell me, O Muse, of the Shifty, the man who wandered afar,
After the Holy Burg, Troy-town, he had wasted with war;
He saw the towns of menfolk, and the mind of men did
he learn;
As he warded his life in the world, and
his fellow-farers’ return,
Many a grief of heart on the deep-sea flood he bore,
Nor yet might he save his fellows, for all that
he longed for it sore.
They died of their own souls’ folly, for witless as they were
They ate up the beasts of the Sun, the Rider of the Air,
And he took away from them all their dear returning day;
O Goddess, O daughter of Zeus, from whencesoever
ye may,
Gather the tale, and tell it, yea, even to us at the last!
Now all the other heroes, who forth from the warfare passed
And fled from sheer destruction and ’scaped
each man his bane,
Saved from the sea and the battle, at home they sat full fain;
But him alone, Odysseus, sore yearning after the strife
To get him back to his homestead, sore yearing
for his wife,
Did the noble nymph Calypso, the Godhead’s glory, hoard
In the hollow rocky places; for she longed for him for lord,
Yea, and e’en when the circling season had brought
the year to hand
Wherein the Gods had doomed it that he should reach his land,
E’en Ithaca his homestead, not
even then was he,
Though amidst his kin and his people, of heavy trouble free.
Know now, that of all the God-folk there was none but pitied him,
Save that Poseidon only was with ceaseless wrath abrim
Against the godlike hero from his house and his home shut out.
But he to the Aethiopians e’en now was gone about,
The far-dwellers outmost of menfolk; and
these are sundered atwain,
Some dwell where the High-rider setteth,
and some where he riseth again.
There then of bulls and of rams would he gather an hundred-fold,
And he sat him adown rejoicing and noble
feast did hold.
But the rest in the hall were gathered of Zeus the Olympian lord.
So the Father of Gods and of men amidst them took up the word,
For mindful in heart was he of Aegisthus the noble one,
He that was slain of Orestes
far-famed, Agamemnon’s son.
Thus then to the deathless he spake,
these things remembering still:
‘Out on it! how
do the menfolk to the Gods lay all their ill,
And say that of us it cometh; when they themselves indeed
Gain griefs from their own souls’ folly
beyond the fateful meed.
E’en as of late Aegisthus must
wed Atrides’ wife
In Doom’s despite, and must slay him returning home from the
strife.
Though his end therefrom he wotted, and thereof we warned him plain,
Sending him Hermes withal, the keen-eyed Argus-bane,
Bidding him slay not the man, nor woo the wife to his bed.
‘For vengeance shall come from Orestes for the son of Atreus dead
When the child is waxen a man and longeth
his land to win:’
So spake Hermes, but nought prevailed
with Aegisthus herein,
Despite his goodly counsel. But now for all hath
he paid.’
Perhaps the most idiosyncratic translation of the Odyssey,
Morris’ version is a very handsome publication. But
the extremely odd metre and diction make it something of a curiosity
(especially given the fame of its author) rather than a text one wishes to keep
reading.
To view the full text of Morris' translations, please use the
following link: Morris Odyssey.
Reviews of Morris’ Odyssey: The
Westminster Review, Vol. 128 (1887); The
Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and the Arts, Vol. 64
(1887); Pall Mall Gazette
(review by Oscar Wilde) (1887).
[List of
Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey]