Penelope Embraces Him

25He spoke, and her knees faltered and her heart
Was melted as she heard her lord recount
The tokens all so truly; and she wept,
And rose, and ran to him, and flung her arms
About his neck, and kissed his brow, and said: —

26“Odysseus, look not on me angrily,
You who in other things are wise above
All other men. The gods have made our lot
A hard one, jealous lest we should have passed
Our youth together happily, and thus
Have reached old age. I pray, be not incensed,
Nor take it ill that I embraced you not
As soon as I beheld you, for my heart
Has ever trembled lest someone who comes
Into this isle should cozen me with words;
And they who practise fraud are numberless.
The Argive Helen, child of Zeus,
Would never have listened to a stranger’s suit
And loved him, had she known that in the years
To come the warlike Greeks would bring her back
To her own land. It was a deity
Who prompted her to that foul wrong. Her thought
Was never of the great calamity
Which followed, and which brought such woe on us.
But now, since you, by tokens clear and true,
Have spoken of our bed, which human eye
Has never seen save mine and yours, and those
Of one handmaiden only, Actoris —
Her whom my father gave me when I came
To this your palace, and who kept the door
Of our close chamber —you have won my mind
To full belief, though hard it was to win.”

27She spoke, and he was moved to tears; he wept
As in his arms he held his dearly loved
And faithful wife. As welcome as the land
To those who swim the deep, of whose stout barque
Poseidon has made a wreck amidst the waves,
Tossed by the billow and the blast, and few
Are those who from the hoary ocean reach
The shore, their limbs all crested with the brine,
These gladly climb the sea-beach, and are safe —
So welcome was her husband to her eyes.
Nor would her fair white arms release his neck,
And there would rosy-fingered Eos have found
Both weeping, but the blue-eyed Athena planned
That thus it should not be; she stayed the night
When near its close, and held the golden Eos
Long in the ocean deeps, nor suffered her
To yoke her steeds that bring the light to men —
Lampas and Phaethon, swift steeds that bear
Eos on her way. Odysseus then,
The man of forecast, thus bespoke his queen: —