Chi’s Reviews > The Odyssey > Status Update

Her knees failed,
and her heart failed as she listened to the words,
and all her power of speech went out of her.
Tears came; but the rich voice could not come.

How gladly I should live one third as rich
to have my friends back safe at home!—my friends
who died on Troy’s wide seaboard, far
from the grazing lands of Argos.
But as things are, nothing but grief is left me
for those companions. While I sit at home
sometimes hot tears come, and I revel in them,
or stop before the surfeit makes me shiver.

And even as far away as Ithaka
you’ve heard of Agamémnon—how he came
home, how Aigísthos waited to destroy him
but paid a bitter price for it in the end.
That is a good thing, now, for a man to leave
a son behind him, like the son who punished Aigísthos for the murder of his great father.

Dear child, whatever put this in your head?
Why do you want to go so far in the world—
and you our only darling?

But he is lost; he came to grief and perished,
and there’s no help for us in someone’s hoping
he still may come; that sun has long gone down.