Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/307

do thou lay it up in thy mind; if God shall subdue the proud suitors under thee, then will I enumerate to thee the women in the palace, who dishonour thee, and who are innocent."

But her much-planning Ulysses addressed in answer: "Nurse, why shouldst thou point them out? it is not at all requisite that thou shouldst: I myself can tell them well, and shall know each one. But hold thy peace in silence, and commit it to the gods."

Thus he spoke: and the old woman went through out of the palace, to bring a foot-bath; for all the first was poured out. But when she had washed, and anointed him with the smooth oil, Ulysses again drew his seat nearer the fire to warm himself, but he covered the scar with rags. And prudent Penelope began speaking to them:

"O stranger, I myself will ask this of thee for a little longer; for soon it will be time for delightful sleep, [for] whomsoever sweet sleep lays hold of, although in trouble. But to me the deity has given immeasurable grief; for I am delighted during the days mourning, grieving, looking to my works and those of my handmaidens in the house: but when night comes, and bed receives all, I lie down on my couch, and constant, sharp cares about my heart irritate me, lamenting continually. As when the daughter of Pandarus, the swarthy nightingale, sings beautifully when the spring newly begins, sitting in the thick branches of trees, and she frequently changing, pours forth her much-sounding voice, lamenting her dear Itylus, (whom once she slew with the brass through ignorance,^[1]) the offspring of the king Zethus: so also two ways is my mind excited on one side and the other, whether I should remain with my son, and guard all things firmly, my property, and my servants, and my large lofty-roofed house, reverencing the bed of my spouse, and the voice of the people; or whether I should follow him that is the best of the Grecians, who woos me, in the palace, and gives me infinite bridal gifts. But my son, as long as he was still a child, and weak-minded, did not suffer me to marry, leaving him in the house of my husband; but now when he is full grown, and arrived at the age of manhood, he

1. She intended to slay the son of her husband's brother Amphion, incited to it by the envy of his wife, who had six children, while herself had only two, but through mistake she slew her son Itylus, and for her punishment was transformed by Jupiter into a nightingale. Cowper.