Tiresias’s Final Task

28“Not yet, O wife, have we attained the close
Of all our labors. One remains which yet
I must achieve, toilsome, and measureless
In difficulty; for so prophesied
The spirit of Tiresias, on the day
When to the abode of Hades I went down
To ask the seer concerning the return
Of my companions, and my own. But now
Seek we our couch, dear wife, that, softly laid,
We may refresh ourselves with welcome sleep.”

29Then spoke in turn the sage Penelope:
“Whenever you desire it your couch
Shall be made ready, since the gods vouchsafe
To bring you back into your pleasant home
And to your native land. But now that you
Have spoken of it, and some deity
Is prompting you, declare what this new task
May be. Hereafter I shall hear of it,
No doubt, nor were it worse to know it now.”

30Odysseus, the sagacious, answered thus:
“Dear wife, why will you ask? why press me thus?
Yet will I tell you truly, nor will keep
Aught from you, though you will not gladly hear,
Nor I relate. Tiresias bade me pass
Through city after city, till I found
A people who know not the sea, nor eat
Their food with salt, who never yet beheld
The red-prowed galley, nor the shapely oars,
Which are the wings of ships. And this plain sign
He gave, nor will I keep it back from you,
That when another traveller whom I meet
Shall say it is a winnowing-fan I bear
On my stout shoulder, there he bade me plant
The oar upright in earth, and offer up
To monarch Poseidon there a ram, a bull,
And sturdy boar, and then, returning home,
Burn hallowed hecatombs to all the gods
Who dwell in the broad heaven, each one in turn.
At last will death come over me, afar
From ocean, such a death as peacefully
Shall take me off in a serene old age,
Amid a people prosperous and content.
All this, the prophet said, will come to pass.”

31And then the sage Penelope rejoined:
“If thus the immortals make your later age
The happier, there is hope that you will find
Escape from evil in the years to come.”