BOOK XIII.

1

HE ceasing, all sat charmed in the great halls,
Mute, till the lord Alcinous answer gave:
“Odysseus, who hast come within my walls,
No more, I think, wild storm and wandering wave
Shall drive thee homeless, as they erewhile drave;
After long woes, return at last is thine.
Therefore this charge I give you, chieftains brave,
Who here still quaff the senatorial wine,
And in my fair halls list the minstrel’s voice divine—

“For now, behold, in the well-burnished chest
Lies store of gold in quaint devices wrought,
Changes of raiment for our godlike guest,
And all the choice gifts that our chiefs have brought ;
Yet have I still this counsel in my thought —
Let each one here a tripod, large of weight,
And caldron offer, that he want for nought.
These will we pay for by a public rate;
Else, singly, it were hard to bear a charge so great.”

So spake the king, and all assenting heard,
And each passed homeward to his couch of rest.
But when the rosy-fingered Dawn appeared,
They to the ship their eager course addressed,
And brought the brazen tribute, all their best ;
Which the divine strength of Alcinous there
Stowed with his own hands ’neath the benches, lest
Aught should the seamen hinder, whensoe’er
They to the great oars lean, and through the billows fare.

Thence for the feast they sought the kingly hall,
And the divine strength of Alcinous then
To cloud-wrapt Zeus Kronion, lord of all,
Offered an ox in sacrifice. So when
Burned were the thighs, they feasted, and agen
Demodocus the minstrel made them song.
But oft Odysseus turned his wistful ken,
While in his breast the home-desire beat strong,
On the sun’s orb, which seemed to linger all too long.

REVIEW COMMENT

Worsley is, it seems, the second English translator to use the Spenserian stanza as the basis for Homer (Barter’s Iliad, 1854, is the first). He makes no attempt to justify the choice other than the eminently commonsensical notion that it is the style he finds most congenial to his imagination: “personally, I could embody my own feeling of Homer with greater success in Spenser’s metre than in any other.” The same sturdy common sense informs much of what Worsley says in the preface to Volume II (unlike many other similar essays): “All through this version it has been my wish to appeal to the popular heart rather than to the scholastic intellect. It would indeed have been hopeless for any one, whose learning and opportunities are so limited as mine, to write with the special view of conciliating scholars. But neither does such an end seem to me, on consideration, in itself worthy and adequate. . . . Whatever helps to contract our aspirations within a narrower limit, stifles in a measure our sympathy with the poet himself, and introduces a new tendency to failure. . . . There is a shade of danger that translators who think of learned critics will be led to forget this, and devote their energies too exclusively to those minor points which the scholar alone can appreciate.”

As for the translation itself, the very strict form tends to overwhelm the content (one quickly gets to anticipate the strong and simple rhymes, for example) and the rhythm is insufficiently nuanced. The diction is deliberately aged in a manner that adds very little imaginative quality to the translation. Even if we concede that Worsley’s readers were much more intimately familiar with Spenser than we are, his use of the verse form does not deliver what he hopes to achieve, at least not to the modern reader.

Readers who wish to access Worsley’s translation should use the following link: Worsley Odyssey.

For a contemporary review of Worsley’s translation, please use the following link: Saturday Review (1863).

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