Epic poetry, Greek -- Translations into English; Homer -- Translations into English; Odysseus, King of Ithaca (Mythological character)
So she spake and made trial of her lord, but Odysseus in sore
displeasure spake to his true wife, saying: “Verily a bitter word is
this, lady, that thou hast spoken. Who has set my bed otherwhere? Hard
it would be for one, how skilled so ever, unless a god were to come
that might easily set it in another place, if so he would. But of men
there is none living, howsoever strong in his youth, that could lightly
upheave it, for a great token is wrought in the fashioning of the bed,
and it was I that made it and none other. There was growing a bush of
olive, long of leaf, and most goodly of growth, within the inner court,
and the stem as large as a pillar. Round about this I built the
chamber, till I had finished it, with stones close set, and I roofed it
over well and added thereto compacted doors fitting well. Next I
sheared off all the light wood of the long-leaved olive, and
rough-hewed the trunk upwards from the root, and smoothed it around
with the adze, well and skilfully, and made straight the line thereto
and so fashioned it into the bedpost, and I bored it all with the
auger. Beginning from this bedpost, I wrought at the bedstead till I
had finished it, and made it fair with inlaid work of gold and of
silver and of ivory. Then I made fast therein a bright purple band of
oxhide. Even so I declare to thee this token, and I know not, lady, if
the bedstead be yet fast in his place, or if some man has cut away the
stem of the olive tree, and set the bedstead otherwhere.”
So he spake, and at once her knees were loosened, and her heart melted
within her, as she knew the sure tokens that Odysseus showed her. Then
she fell a weeping, and ran straight toward him and cast her hands
about his neck, and kissed his head and spake, saying:
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