Who speaks? Ah! who comes forth
To thy side, goddess, from within?
How shall I name him,—
This spare, dark-featured,
Quick-eyed stranger?
Ah! and I see too
His sailor’s bonnet,
His short coat, travel-tarnished,
With one arm bare!—
Art thou not he, whom fame
This long time rumors
The favored guest of Circe, brought by the waves?
Art thou he, stranger,—
The wise Ulysses,
Laertes’ son?
ULYSSES.
I am Ulysses.
And thou too, sleeper?
Thy voice is sweet.
It may be thou hast followed
Through the islands some divine bard,
By age taught many things,—
Age, and the Muses;
And heard him delighting
The chiefs and people
In the banquet, and learned his songs,
Of gods and heroes,
Of war and arts,
And peopled cities,
Inland, or built
By the gray sea. If so, then hail!
I honor and welcome thee.
THE YOUTH.
The gods are happy.
They turn on all sides
Their shining eyes,
And see below them
The earth and men.
They see Tiresias
Sitting, staff in hand,
On the warm, grassy
Asopus bank,
His robe drawn over
His old sightless head,
Revolving inly
The doom of Thebes.
They see the centaurs
In the upper glens
Of Pelion, in the streams
Where red-berried ashes fringe
The clear-brown shallow pools,
With streaming flanks, and heads
Reared proudly, snuffing
The mountain wind.
They see the Indian
Drifting, knife in hand,
His frail boat moored to
A floating isle thick-matted
With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants,
And the dark cucumber.
He reaps and stows them,
Drifting—drifting; round him,
Round his green harvest-plot,
Flow the cool lake-waves,
The mountains ring them.
They see the Scythian
On the wide steppe, unharnessing
His wheeled house at noon.
He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal,—
Mares’ milk, and bread
Baked on the embers. All around,
The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starred
With saffron and the yellow hollyhock
And flag-leaved iris-flowers.
Sitting in his cart
He makes his meal; before him, for long miles,
Alive with bright green lizards,
And the springing bustard-fowl,
The track, a straight black line,
Furrows the rich soil; here and there
Clusters of lonely mounds
Topped with rough-hewn,
Gray, rain-bleared statues, overpeer
The sunny waste.
They see the ferry
On the broad, clay-laden
Lone Chorasmian stream; thereon,
With snort and strain,
Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
To either bow
Firm-harnessed by the mane; a chief,
With shout and shaken spear,
Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern
The cowering merchants in long robes
Sit pale beside their wealth
Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops,
Of gold and ivory,
Of turquoise-earth, and amethyst,
Jasper and chalcedony,
And milk-barred onyx-stones.
The loaded boat swings groaning
In the yellow eddies;
The gods behold them.