The Odyssey
J. W. Mackail
London 1903

 

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]

 

THE ODYSSEY

BOOK FIRST

THE ASSEMBLY OF THE GODS: ATHENA’S 
EXHORTATION TO TELEMACHUS

 

O MUSE, instruct me of the man who drew
His changeful course through wanderings not a few
After he sacked the holy town of Troy,
And saw the cities and the counsel knew

 

Of many men, and many a time at sea
Within his heart he bore calamity,
While his own life he laboured to redeem
And bring his fellows back from jeopardy.

 

Yet not his fellows thus from death he won,
Fain as he was to save them: who undone
by their own hearts’ infatuation died,
Fools, that devoured the oxen of the Sun,

 

Hyperion: and therefore he the day
Of their returning homeward reft away.
Goddess, God’s daughter, grant that now thereof
We too may hear, such portion as we may.

 

NOW all the rest that from the yawning grave
Escape had won, lay safe from war and wave
Each in his home; but him alone held fast
The queenly nymph within her vaulted cave,

 

Calypso, bright of Goddesses, who fain
Had kept him there her husband to remain;
Though for his wife and his return he pined.
But when the seasons in their circling train

 

Fulfilled the year wherein the Gods had planned
That he to Ithaca his native land
Should win his passage, not even yet was he
Quit of his labours nor had friends at hand.

 

Yet all the Gods on him compassion bore
Except Poseidon; who for evermore
Against divine Odysseus furiously
Was wroth, until he reached his native shore.

 

Now to the Aethiopians on a day
He took his journey, dwellers far away:
The Aethiopians, who in twofold lands
Dwell, and the uttermost of men are they:

 

Some where Hyperion begins to spring
At morn, and some beyond his downgoing:
Who made him sacrifice of bulls and rams,
And he sat by them at their banqueting,

 

Taking his pleasure there: but meanwhile all
The other Gods in Zeus the Olympian’s hall
Were met together: and among them there
The sire of Gods and men these words let fall:

 

Because into his mind the prince he drew,
Aegisthus, whom renowned Orestes slew,
The son of Agamemnon; wherefore now
Among the deathless Gods he spake anew:

 

“Alas, how idly do these mortals blame
The Gods, as though by our devising came
The evil that in spite of ordinance
By their own folly for themselves they frame!

 

“As now, by no decree predestinate,
Aegisthus took to wife the wedded mate
Of Atreus’ son, and him returning home
Slew, knowing sheer destruction for his fate;

 

“As we fortold him ere the deed was done
By Hermes’ mouth, the keen-eyed Shining One;
Bidding him neither kill nor take to wife:
Since from Orestes’ hand for Atreus’ son

 

“Vengeance shall come when grown to man once more
His realm he claims: that message Hermes bore,
But his good counsel on Aegisthus fell
Fruitless: and now he has paid out the score.”

 

 

REVIEW COMMENT

 

Here is another translation which defeats itself by the peculiarity of the form the translator has used.  Mackail chooses an odd metre for his translation, that of “Omar Kayyam” of Edward FitzGerald, and the effect is to subordinate almost all effects of the poem to the very strong and frequent rhyme, so that Homer’s text is, as it were, overwhelmed, as a contemporary reviewer noted: “it is hardly possible to read any considerable number of [these Omarian quatrains] without feeling that the style and speed and sound of Homer is gently vanishing away, and that, in these late days, Salamis is being at last revenged and the Persian is triumphing over the Greek.”  To access the review referred to above, please use the following link: Mackail review.

 

Reader who would like to inspect Mackail’s translation (Books IX to XVI) should use the following link: Mackail Odyssey.

 

 

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