Then, happier thoughts return the nodding scale,
Light mounts despair, alternate hopes prevail :
In opening prospects of ideal joy,
My king returns; the proud usurpers die."
To whom the chief: "In thy capacious mind
Since daring zeal with cool debate is join'd,
Attend a deed already ripe in fate:
Attest, O Jove! the truth I now relate!
This sacred truth attest, each genial power,
Who bless the board, and guard this friendly bower!
Before thou quit the dome (nor long delay)
Thy wish produced in act, with pleased survey,
Thy wondering eyes shall view: his rightful reign
By arms avow'd Ulysses shall regain,
And to the shades devote the suitor-train.”
"O Jove supreme! the raptured swain replies,
With deeds consummate soon the promised joys!
These aged nerves, with new-born vigour strung,
In that blest cause should emulate the young-
Assents Eumæus to the prayer address'd;
And equal ardours fire his loyal breast.”
Meantime the suitors urge the prince's fate,
And deathful arts employ the dire debate:
When in his airy tour, the bird of Jove
Truss'd with his sinewy pounce a trembling dove;
Sinister to their hope! This omen eyed
Amphinomus, who thus presaging cried:
"The gods from force and fraud the prince defend;
O peers the sanguinary scheme suspend:
Your future thought let sable fate employ;
And give the present hour to genial joy."
From council straight th' assenting peerage ceased,
And in the dome prepared the genial feast.
Disrobed, their vests apart in order lay,
Then all with speed succinct the victims slay;
With sheep and shaggy goats the porkers bled,
And the proud steer was on the marble spread.
With fire prepared, they deal the morsels round,
Wine, rosy-bright, the brimming goblets crown'd,
By sage Eumæus borne; the purple tide
Melanthius from an ample jar supplied:
High canisters of bread Philætius placed;
And eager all devour the rich repast.
Disposed apart, Ulysses shares the treat;
A trivet table, and ignobler seat,
The prince appoints; but to his sire assigns
The tasteful inwards, and nectareous wines.
"Partake, my guest (he cried), without control
The social feast, and drain the cheering bowl:
Dread not the railer's laugh, nor ruffian's rage;
No vulgar roof protects thy honour'd age;
This dome a refuge to thy wrongs shall be,
From my great sire too soon devolved to me!
Your violence and scorn, ye suitors, cease,
Lest arms avenge the violated peace."
Awed by the prince, so haughty, brave, and young,
Rage gnaw'd the lip, amazement chain'd the tongue.
"Be patient, peers! (at length Antinous cries,)
The threats of vain imperious youth despise :
Would Jove permit the meditated blow,
That stream of eloquence should cease to flow."
Without reply vouchsafed, Antinous ceased:
Meanwhile the pomp of festival increased:
By heralds rank'd, in marshall'd order move
The city tribes, to pleased Apollo's grove:
Beneath the verdure of which awful shade,
The lunar hecatomb they grateful laid;
Partook the sacred feast, and ritual honours paid.
But the rich banquet, in the dome prepared
(An humble sideboard set) Ulysses shared.
Observant of the prince's high behest,
His menial train attend the stranger-guest:
Whom Pallas with unpardoning fury fired,
By lordly pride and keen reproach inspired.
A Samian peer, more studious than the rest
Of vice, who teem'd with many a dead-born jest ;
And urged, for title to a consort queen,
Unnumber'd acres arable and green
(Ctesippus named); this lord Ulysses eyed,
And thus burst out th' imposthumate with pride :
"The sentence I propose, ye peers, attend:
Since due regard must wait the prince's friend,
Let each a token of esteem bestow :
This gift acquits the dear respect I owe;
With which he nobly may discharge his seat,
And pay the menials for a master's treat."
He said and of the steer before him placed,
That sinewy fragment at Ulysses cast,
Where to the pastern-bone, by nerves combined,
The well-horn'd foot indissolubly join'd;
Which whizzing high, the wall unseemly sign'd.
The chief indignant grins a ghastly smile;
Revenge and scorn within his bosom boil :
When thus the prince with pious rage inflamed:
"Had not th' inglorious wound thy malice aim'd
Fall'n guiltless of the mark, my certain spear
Had made thee buy the brutal triumph dear :
Nor should thy sire a queen his daughter boast;
The suitor, now, had vanish'd in a ghost:
No more, ye lewd compeers, with lawless power
Invade my dome, my herds and flocks devour :
For genuine worth, of age mature to know,
My grape shall redden, and my harvest grow.
Or, if each other's wrongs ye still support,
With rapes and riot to profane my court;
What single arm with numbers can contend?
On me let all your lifted swords descend,
And with my life such vile dishonours end."
A long cessation of discourse ensued,
By gentler Agelaüs thus renew’d:
"A just reproof, ye peers! your rage restrain
From the protected guest, and menial train:
And, prince! to stop the source of future ill,
Assent yourself, and gain the royal will.
Whilst hope prevail'd to see your sire restored,
Of right the queen refused a second lord:
But who so vain of faith, so blind to fate,
To think he still survives to claim the state?
Now press the sovereign dame with warm desire
To wed, as wealth or worth her choice inspire:
The lord selected to the nuptial joys
Far hence will lead the long-contested prize:
Whilst in paternal pomp with plenty bless'd,
You reign, of this imperial dome possess'd."
Sage and serene Telemachus replies:
"By him at whose behest the thunder flies,
And by the name on earth I most revere,
By great Ulysses and his woes I swear!
(Who never must review his dear domain;
Enroll'd, perhaps, in Pluto's dreary train),
Whene'er her choice the royal dame avows,
My bridal gifts shall load the future spouse:
But from this dome my parent queen to chase!
From me, ye gods! avert such dire disgrace.”
But Pallas clouds with intellectual gloom
The suitors' souls, insensate of their doom!
A mirthful frenzy seized the fated crowd;
The roofs resound with causeless laughter loud:
Floating in gore, portentous to survey!
In each discolour'd vase the viands lay:
Then down each cheek the tears spontaneous flow,
And sudden sighs precede approaching woe.
In vision wrapp'd, the Hyperesian seer
Uprose, and thus divined the vengeance near:
"O race to death devote! with Stygian shade 2
Each destin'd peer impending fates invade:
With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drown'd;
With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round:
Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts,
To people Orcus, and the burning coasts!
20 race to death devote. The gloomy fatalism, so splendidly brought forward in this book, has been well described by Colonel Mure:
"In the Greek religious calendar, the first days of the month were sacred to Apollo from the remotest period; and the Neomenia, or Feast of the New Moon, celebrated in honour of that deity, continued to be one of the most popular festivals in every age of classical antiquity. On the morning of the day destined for the destruction of the suitors, the fourth after the arrival of Ulysses, they appear earlier than usual in the palace hall. The reason assigned is, that it is a great public festival,' the feast of Apollo, in fact, as stated a few lines afterwards, where the heralds are described as leading the victims in procession through the city, and the people assembled in the grove of Phoebus. Now, it will be remembered that Apollo was, in the primitive mythology, and in that of Homer in particular, the god of sudden death; and the bow, his favourite weapon, was the emblem of his destructive attributes. The bow was also the weapon with which Ulysses was to consummate his vengeance on the suitors. Hence the competition of archery with the hero's bow, appointed by Penelope the day before as a test of their prowess, is selected with ominous propriety as the gymnastic entertainment of the feast of the god. Mark, then, how impressive the combination! The light-hearted suitors, like moths playing round the flame of a candle, were destined, while in the act of honouring the god of the bow and of sudden destruction, on his own feast day, and with his own weapon, to be suddenly destroyed by the bow of their injured sovereign. How fearful the self-irony of their unconscious appeals to the patronage of the very deity at whose altar they were about to be sacrificed!"-Mure, vol. i.
Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll,
But universal night usurps the pole!"
Yet warn'd in vain, with laughter loud elate
The peers reproach the sure divine of Fate;
And thus Eurymachus: "The dotard's mind
To every sense is lost, to reason blind:
Swift from the dome conduct the slave away;
Let him in open air behold the day."
"Tax not (the heaven-illumined seer rejoin'd)
Of rage, or folly, my prophetic mind.
No clouds of error dim th' ethereal rays,
Her equal power each faithful sense obeys.
Unguided hence my trembling steps I bend,
Far hence, before yon hovering deaths descend;
Lest the ripe harvest of revenge begun,
I share the doom ye suitors cannot shun.”
This said, to sage Piræus sped the seer,
His honour'd host, a welcome inmate there.
O'er the protracted feast the suitors sit,
And aim to wound the prince with pointless wit:
Cries one, with scornful leer and mimic voice,
Thy charity we praise, but not thy choice;
Why such profusion of indulgence shown
To this poor, timorous, toil-detesting drone,
That others feeds on planetary schemes,
And pays his host with hideous noon-day dreams?
But, prince! for once at least believe a friend;
To some Sicilian mart these courtiers send,
Where, if they yield their freight across the main,
Dear sell the slaves! demand no greater gain."
Thus jovial they; but nought the prince replies;
Full on his sire he roll'd his ardent eyes;
Impatient straight to flesh his virgin-sword;
From the wise chief he waits the deathful word.
Nigh in her bright alcove, the pensive queen
To see the circle sate, of all unseen.
Sated at length they rise, and bid prepare
An eve-repast, with equal cost and care:
But vengeful Pallas, with preventing speed,
A feast proportion'd to their crimes decreed;
A feast of death, the feasters doom'd to bleed!
|