Father and Son Reunited

20“O stranger, you are other than you were;
Your garb is not the same, nor are your looks;
You surely are some deity of those
Whose habitation is the ample heaven.
Be gracious to us, let us bring to you
Such sacrifices as you will accept
And gifts of graven gold; be merciful.”

21Odysseus, the great sufferer, thus replied:
“I am no god; how am I like the gods?
I am your father, he for whom your sighs
Are breathed, and sorrows borne, and wrongs endured.”

22He spoke and kissed his son, and from his lids
Tears fell to earth, that long had been restrained.
And then Telemachus, who could not think
The stranger was his father, answered thus: —

23“Nay, you are not my father, you are not
Odysseus; rather has some deity
Sought to deceive me, that my grief may be
The sharper; for no mortal man would do
What has been done, unless some god should come
To aid him, and to make him young or old
At pleasure; for you were a moment since
An aged man, and sordidly arrayed,
And now are like the gods of the wide heaven.”

24Odysseus, the sagacious, answered thus:
“It is not well, Telemachus, to greet
With boundless wonder and astonishment
Your father in this lodge. Be sure of this,
That no Odysseus other than myself
Will ever enter here. I, who am he,
Have suffered greatly and have wandered far,
And in the twentieth year am come again
To mine own land. You have beheld today
A wonder wrought by Athena, huntress-queen,
Who makes me what she will, such power is hers —
Sometimes to seem a beggar, and in turn
A young man in a comely garb. The gods
Whose home is in the heavens can easily
Exalt a mortal man, or bring him low.”

25He spoke and sat him down. Telemachus
Around his glorious father threw his arms,
And shed a shower of tears. Both felt at heart
A passionate desire to weep; they wept
Aloud —and louder were their cries than those
Of eagles, or the sharp-clawed vulture tribe,
Whose young the hinds have stolen, yet unfledged.
Still flowed their tears abundantly; the sun
Would have gone down and left them weeping still
Had not Telemachus at length inquired: —