Book XIX · The Queen’s Dream and the Contest · Scene 2 of 4

The Eagle Dream

Penelope dreams an eagle kills her geese

Twenty geese feed content in her courtyard
Hook-beaked eagle swoops from the mountains
The eagle speaks with a human voice
The geese are suitors, the eagle her husband
She wakes to find the geese unharmed still

Who is here

Penelope Faithful, delaying queen
Icarius Penelope's father, urged to remarry her

The text

48“ ‘O daughter of Icarius, the renowned!
Let not your heart be troubled; this is not
A dream, but a true vision, and will be
Fulfilled. The geese denote the suitor-train,
And I, who was an eagle once, am come,
Your husband, now to end them utterly.’

49“He spoke; my slumbers left me, and I looked,
And saw the geese that in the palace still
Were at their trough, and feeding as before.”

Homer, The Odyssey, translated by William Cullen Bryant, 1871. Public domain.