But to us a new wayfaring hath Circe showed, and we

  Must wend to the House of Hades and dread Persephone,

  To seek us aid of the Theban Tiresias the Seer.’

  “So I spake, but all down-broken were their hearts the lieve and dear. And they sat and moaned in their places and their very hair they tore: Albeit all their mourning it helped them none the more.

  “But while we went in our sorrow to the swift ship and the sea,

  And tear on tear as we wended dripped down unceasingly,

  That while had Circe got her adown to the black ship’s side,

  And a ram of the sheep and a ewe all black thereby had she tied,

  And lightly unseen went by us; for what man’s eyes may see

  A God that is loth to be looked on, whether here or there he be?”

  BOOK XI.

  ARGUMENT.

  ODYSSEUS FARETH BEYOND THE OCEAN-STREAM AND COMETH TO THE

  REALM AND HOUSE OF HADES, AND THERE HATH COUNSEL OF TIRESIAS

  THE THEBAN: THERE ALSO HE SEETH THE GHOST OF EI.PENOR, BUT

  LATE DEAD, AND THE GHOST OF HIS MOTHER, AND OF MANY MEN

  AND WOMEN OF RENOWN.

  SO when adown we were gotten to the ship’s side and the shore,

  Then into the holy salt-sea we thrust her down once more,

  And in the black ship hoisted the sail upon the mast.

  And the sheep we gat aboard her, and aboard we also passed

  Sore sorrowing, pouring the tear-drops swift-following each on each.

  But the fair-haired Circe beworshipped, the Goddess of the speech,

  For us had thought behind us and our black-prowed ship to send

  The following breeze sail-filling, a goodly faring-friend.

  “So we, when all the tackling about the ship we had dight,

  Sat still, while wind and rudder bore on the keel aright,

  And the sails of our seafarer were filled with the wind all day:

  But now the sun sank under and dusk on all roads lay,

  And at last unto the utmost of deep Ocean-stream we came,

  Where is the folk Cimmerian and the city of their name,

  By the mist and the cloud-rack covered, and never on a day

  On them doth the sun bright-shining look down with his many a ray;

  Nay, not when the starry heaven he climbeth aloft, nor when

  From the heavens again he turneth to the Earth and the lands of men,

  But over those men unhappy hangs night for ever dead.

  “There then our ship did we beach, and the sheep therefrom we led,

  And along the shores of Ocean ourselves the way did we hold,

  Till we came to the land and the country whereof had Circe told,

  Then the beasts Perimedes held and Eurylochus thereto;

  But for me the sword sharp-grinded from beside my thigh I drew,

  And thereby a pit I dug me, a cubit endlong and o’er,

  And drink-offerings round about it to all the dead did I pour:

  The first of mingled honey, of sweet wine the second one,

  And the third of very water, and white meal I sprinkled thereon;

  And many things was I praying to the heads of the mightless dead.

  And I vowed that to Ithaca coming I would slay in the halls of my stead

  A barren heifer most goodly, and heaped wealth on the fire would lay;

  But unto the seer Tiresias alone and apart would I slay

  A sheep all black, of my sheep-flocks the flower and fairest head.

  But when with vows and beseeching I had worshipped the folks of the dead

  We took the sheep thereafter, and cut their throats o’er the pit,

  And the black blood flowed thereinto: then they gathered unto it;

  All the ghosts of the dead departed from the Nether Dusk ‘gan fare.

  And brides there were and younglings, and burdened elders there,

  And there were tender maidens still bearing newborn woe,

  And many a man death-smitten by the brazen spear did go,

  The very prey of Ares, yet clad in blood-stained gear;

  And all the throng kept flitting round the pit from here and there

  With strange and awful crying, till pale fear fell on me.

  So therewith I bade my fellows, and urged them eagerly

  That the sheep that lay there slaughtered by the pitiless brass they should flay.

  And make them a burnt-offering, and so to the Gods to pray;

  Unto Hades the almighty and the dread Persephone.

  But for me the whetted sword I drew from the thigh of me,

  And sat to refrain the heads of the dead men lacking might

  From drawing anigh to the blood-pit ere Tiresias came in sight.

  “But the first that drew anigh me was our friend Elpenor’s shade,

  For as yet he was not buried beneath the Earth wide-wayed;

  We had left his body unburied, unwept, in Circe’s hall,

  Since other need and labour on our fellowship did fall.

  So I wept when I beheld him and was sorry for his sake,

  And I sent my voice unto him and a winged word I spake:

  “‘ How earnest thou, Elpenor, beneath the dusk and the dark?’

  And swifter afoot hast thou wended than I in my coal-black bark.’

  “I spake; but he midst groaning thus answered me the word:

  ‘ O Zeus-bred son of Laertes, Odysseus wise-heart lord,

  God’s doom and wine unstinted on me the bane hath brought.

  I lay on the house of Circe, and waking had no thought

  To get me aback and adown by the way of the ladders tall:

  But downright from the roof I tumbled, and brake my neck withal

  From the backbone, and unto Hades and his house my soul must fare.

  But I pray thee, by those whom we left and are no longer here,

  By thy wife, by thy father who bred thee when thou wert but a little one,

  Yea, by Telemachus also, whom thou left’st in thine house alone,

  Whereas I know that, going from Hades’ House in a while,

  Thou wilt stay thy ship the well-wrought at that ^Eaean isle;

  There then, O King, I pray thee, have me, e’en me, in mind,

  Nor go home, and all unburied, unwept, leave me behind,

  Lest the anger of the Godfolk for thee I come to breed

  But I pray thee there to burn me in all my battle-weed,

  And on the sea-side hoary to heap the howe for me,

  A token of me the hapless to those who yet shall be.

  All this for me accomplish, and set up mine oar on the howe,

  Wherewith when I lived with my fellows I once was wont to row.’

  “So he said, and thereto I answered and unto him I spake:

  ‘ Yea, all these things, O luckless, will I compass for thy sake.’

  “But yet while there we were sitting and holding woeful speech,

  Still all the while o’er the blood-pit my sword-point must I reach,

  While the image of my fellow spake on from the other side.

  “Then came the soul of my mother that awhile agone had died,

  Anticleia, erst the daughter of Autolycus high of heart,

  Whom I left behind yet living when to Troy I did depart.

  And now I beheld her weeping in the pity of my mood,

  And yet roust I refrain her from drawing near the blood,

  For all my thronging sorrow, till Tiresias I should see.

  But at last came the soul of the Theban Tiresias, and he

  Held the golden staff; and he knew me, and thus his speech did speed:

  “‘ O Zeus-bred son of Laertes, Odysseus of many a rede,

  Why comest thou, unlucky, from the light of the very sun,

  To look on the joyless country and the dead men all undone?

  Now draw away from the blood-pit and hold off thy whetted sword

  That I of the blood having drunken may tell thee a soothfast word.’

  “So he spake, and the silver-adorned sharp sword I drew aback

  And thrust it into the scabbard, and he drank of the blood-pit black;

  And when he had drunken, forthright to me spake the blameless seer:

  “O famed Odysseus, thou askest of thine home-fare sweet and dear;

  Yet the Gods shall make it troublous: for I deem that it shall not be

  That thou may’st shun Earth-shaker, who hath stored up wrath for thee,

  Because his son beloved thou didst blind a while ago.

  Yet home shalt thou come in the ending, though worn with the weight of

  If thou wilt refrain the desire of thee and thy company [thy woe,

  When down in thy ship well-fashioned at last thou drawest anigh

  Unto the Three-horned Island, as ye flit o’er the darkling deep

  And find the neat a-feeding and flocks of the fatted sheep

  Of the Sun that beholdeth all things, and every deed doth hear.

  If then of your home ye are mindful and leave them scatheless there,

  Then, then despite of troubles, your Ithaca yet shall ye gain;

  But and if in aught ye scathe them, I foretell the utter bane

  Of thy ship and all thy fellows, and if thou the death dost shun,

  Late and evil shall be thy homefare, thy fellowship all gone,

  On the keel of an outland people; and in thine house nought good

  Shalt thou find, but men o’erweening eating up thy livelihood,

  Wooing thy wife the godlike and proffering the gifts of the bride, [pride.

  Well, there shalt thou come and shalt wreak thee of their mastery and their

  And when the bane of the Wooers in thine halls thou hast brought to pass,

  Whether by wiles, or in face of the day with the whetted brass,

  Then go thy ways, and bearing thy shapen oar with thee

  Fare forth till thou com’st to a folk that wot not of the sea,

  And blend no salt with their victuals, nor thereof ever seek;

  And nothing are they knowing of the ships of the crimson cheek,

  Or of the oars well-fashioned, the very wings of the ship.

  And hereof a manifest token, which thy heed shall never slip:

  When on thy way thou meetest another wayfaring man,

  Who saith that thy noble shoulder is bearing a winnowing fan,

  There then the oar that thou bearest set steadfast in the earth,

  And to King Poseidon hallow fair gifts and great of worth,

  A ram and a bull to wit, and a boar the mate of the sow;

  Then home do thou wend, and the gifts an hundredfold do thou

  Unto the Gods undying of the widespread heavenly home,

  And all in the utmost order. Then thy death from the sea shall come

  Exceeding mild and gentle, and thereby shalt thou fade out

  By eld smooth-creeping wasted; and the people round about

  Shall be grown all blithe and happy: lo, a soothfast word have I said.’

  “So he spake; but I spake unto him, and this answer thereto made:

  ‘ Tiresias, this is the doom that the very Gods have spun:

  But tell me now of a matter, speak clearly thereupon;

  I behold the soul of my mother, this one departed and dead,

  Who in silence sits by the blood-pit, and dares not for her dread

  To look on the face of her son, or a word to him to say:

  O King, how then may she know me for the man I am today?’

  “So I spake, but in turn he bespake me and this answer did he speed:

  ‘ Yea, lightly the word will I tell thee, and teach thy mind a rede:

  Whichever of these departed thou shalt suffer to draw anigh

  And taste of the blood, shall tell thee all things in verity;

  But back again must he get him to whom thou grudgest the thing.’

  “And therewithal the spirit of Tiresias the King

  Went into the House of Hades, having told foretelling true.

  But there I abided steadfast till anigh my mother drew

  And drank the black blood of the blood-pit; then she knew my face,

  And amidst of lamentation these winged words ‘gan say: [straightway,

  “‘ O child, how camest thou living to the shadowy land of night?

  For ’tis hard for living people of such things to have a sight;

  For amidst are mighty rivers and fearful floods are there,

  And first the stream of Ocean, o’er which afoot none fare,

  None save in a ship well-fashioned to flit him o’er the tide.

  And dost thou hie thee hither from Troy-town wandering wide,

  A long while, with thy ships and thy fellows? Or in Ithaca hast thou been?

  And in the halls of thine homestead thy wife hast thou not seen?’

  “She spake the word, and straightway this answer did I speed:

  ‘ To the House of Hades, O mother, am I driven by my need

  To seek of the ghost of the Theban Tiresias the seer;

  For that Achaean country I have not drawn anear,

  Nor set foot on the land that is mine; but have wandered wide with my woe

  Since first with Agamemnon the holy did I go

  Unto Ilios the horseland ‘gainst the men of Troy to fight.

  But give me a word of one thing, and tell me the tale aright,

  What doom of Death o’ercame thee that layeth men along?

  Was it the lingering sickness, or did Artemis shaft-strong *

  Fall on thee for thy slaying with her gentle bolts and kind?

  Yea, tell me too of my father, and the son I left behind.

  Bides my lordship yet amongst them, or hath some man taken it o’er,

  Some alien? Are they saying that I return no more?

  And I bid thee tell me the counsel and the mind of my wife bcwooed;

  Bides she still with my child, and steadfast yet guardeth all my good?

  Or her doth some Achaean, the best of the people, wed?’

  “So I spake, and thereto my mother beworshipped answered and said:

  “Yea, surely she abideth, and a hardy heart doth bear’

  Within the halls of thine homestead; but all nights doth she wear

  In grief and in lamentation, and through all days doth pine.

  Nay, no man holdeth thine honour, but on those fields of thine

  In peace Telemachus dwelleth, and meted feasts doth he share,

  Whereof it is due that a man, a dealer of dooms, should have care, M

  For thereto do all men bid him. But afield doth thy father abide

  Nor ever wendeth him townward, nor hath he any tide

  Bedstead and bedding and blankets or rugs wrought fine and sleek,

  But a-winter he sleeps in the feast-hall whereto the thrall-folk seek,

  Adown in the ash by the fire, and in sorry raiment is clad;

  But when the summer cometh with harvest rich and glad,

  Then about his vineyard’s fatness where the mother of wine doth abound,

  And down on the leaves new-fallen, are his beds spread out on the ground.

  And there in sorrow he lieth and eketh his heart-grief sore,

  In his longings for thy homefare, and eld hath him more and more.

  And in such wise I too perished, and e’en so to mine end I came.

  For neither on me in the homestead fell the Shaft-glad Eager-of-aim,

  Nor with her kindly arrows my body did she slay;

  Nor came the sickness upon me to drive the soul away

  From the limbs that erst it quickened, with woeful waste and pine;

  But the longing for thee, Odysseus, and those glorious redes of thine,

  And the longing for thy kindness reft the sweet life from me.’

  “She spake, and my mind clung round it and longed that it might be

  That I might take in my arms that soul of my mother dead;

  And thrice did I essay it, and my heart my longing sped,

  And thrice from my arms as a shadow or a very dream did she flit,

  And waxed the biting sorrow in my heart because of it;

  And therewith my voice I uttered and a winged word I spake:

  ‘“Why bidest thou not, my mother, when thee I fain would take,

  That with dear arms laid on each other, e’en here in Hades’ Hold,

  We twain might have fill of sorrow and lamentation cold?

  Doth Persephone the mighty thrust on some image here,

  That with yet heavier mourning my life-days I may wear?’

  “So spake I; but my mother thus spake and answered again:

  “‘O me, my child, my darling, most hapless man of men,

  Persephone, daughter of Zeus, beguileth thee nought hereby,

  But this is the lot of mortals when at last they come to die;

  For no longer then the sinews hold together flesh and bone,

  But they by the might of the fire bright-flaming are undone,

  When first from the white bones wendeth the soul and the living breath,

  And the soul as a dream forth flieth and flitting hovereth.

  But thou, get thee back at thy swiftest to the light; but note thou well

  All this, that thereof hereafter the tale to thy wife thou may’st tell.’

  “But as we spake and answered came a throng of women there,

  Whom Persephone the mighty had bidden forth to fare;

  E’en such as were wives and daughters of mighty men and strong,

  And about the dark-red blood-pit there gathered they their throng.

  So therewith I fell to thinking how of each I might have the tale;

  And this seemed to me the counsel that was of most avail,

  To draw my edgy long-sword from beside my sturdy thigh

  And refrain them from drinking the blood all in one company,

  But in turn should each be drinking, and in turn should each one fall

  To tell of her race and her kindred; for so should I hear of all.

  “And so first I looked on Tyro, and well-begotten was she,

  For of Salmoneus the blameless she boasted her to be;

  And withal the wife of Cretheus, who was ^Eolus’ own son.

  Now Enipeus the holy river she had set her heart upon,

  The fairest of all waters adown the Earth that flow,

  And along by his streams most lovely the maid was wont to go.

  But the Girdle of Earth, the Earth-shaker, beheld her on a day

 

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