The Endless Web

19“First will I ask you who you are, and whence,
Where is your birthplace, and your parents who?”

20Odysseus, the sagacious, answered thus:
“O lady, none in all the boundless earth
Can speak of you with blame. Your fame has reached
To the great heavens. It is like the renown
Of some most excellent king, of godlike sway
Over many men and mighty, who upholds
Justice in all his realm. The dark-soiled earth
Brings wheat and barley forth; the trees are bowed
With fruit; the meadows swarm with noble herds,
The sea with fish, and under his wise reign
The people prosper. Therefore ask, I pray,
Of other things, while I am underneath
Your palace-roof, but of my race and home
Inquire not, lest you waken in my mind
Unhappy memories. I am a man
Of sorrow, and it would become me ill
To sit lamenting in another’s house
And shedding tears. Besides, a grief indulged
Does grow in violence. Your maids would blame,
And you perhaps, and you would call my tears
The maudlin tears of one overcome with wine.”

21Then spoke the sage Penelope again:
“Stranger, such grace of feature and of form
As once I had the immortals took away,
What time the Argive warriors sailed for Troy,
And my Odysseus with them. Could he now
Return to rule my household as of yore,
The wider and the brighter were my fame.
But now I lead a wretched life, so great
And many are the evils which some god
Heaps on me. For the chieftains who bear sway
Over the isles —Dulichium, and the fields
Of Samos, and Zacynthus dark with woods,
And those who rule in sunny Ithaca —
Woo me against my will, and waste away
My substance. Therefore have I small regard
For strangers and for suppliants, and the tribe
Of heralds, servants of the public weal,
But, pining for Odysseus, wear away
My life. The suitors urge the marriage rite,
And I with art delay it. Once some god
Prompted me to begin an ample web,
Wide and of subtle texture, in my rooms.
And then I said: ‘Youths, who are pressing me
To marriage, since Odysseus is no more,
Urge me no further till I shall complete —
That so the threads may not be spun in vain —
This shroud for old Laertes, when grim fate
And death’s long sleep at last shall overtake
The hero; else among the multitude
Of Grecian women I shall bear the blame,
If one whose ample wealth so well was known
Should lie in death without a funeral robe.’
I spoke, and easily their minds were swayed
By what I said, and I began to weave
The ample web, but ravelled it again
By torchlight every evening. For three years
I foiled them thus; but when the fourth year came,
And brought its train of hours and changing moons,
And many days had passed, they came on me,
And through my maidens’ fault, a careless crew,
They caught me at my fraud, and chid me sore.
So, though unwilling, I was forced to end
My task, and cannot longer now escape
The marriage, nor is any refuge left.
My parents both exhort me earnestly
To choose a husband, and my son with grief
Beholds the suitors wasting his estate,
And he already is a man and well
Can rule his household; Zeus bestows so.
Such honor on him. Now, I pray, declare
Your lineage, for you surely are not sprung
From the old fabulous oak, nor from a rock.”