Collected Works

Lest you should wish to be free from the need to return.
My father Icarius Penelope’s father, who in some traditions urged her to remarry compels me to depart from my widowed bed
And continually rebukes me for my endless delays.
Let him rebuke me as he likes: I must be yours; I must be called yours.
I, Penelope, shall always be the wife of Ulysses.
Yet he is softened by my devotion and my modest prayers,
And he himself moderates his own authority.
A luxurious crowd of suitors—from Dulichium, Samos, and high Zacynthos Islands near Ithaca from which the suitors hailed—
Rush upon me.
They rule in your palace with no one to forbid them;
Your wealth, our very lifeblood, is being torn apart.
Why should I tell you of Pisander, Polybus, and the dreaded Medon?
Or the greedy hands of Eurymachus and Antinous?
And should I mention the others? All of whom you, in your shameful absence,
Feed with the riches won by your own blood.
The beggar Irus and Melanthius, the driver of the flock to be eaten,
Are added as a final disgrace to your losses.
We are but three in number, powerless and unfit for war: a wife,
The aged Laertes, and the boy Telemachus.
The boy was recently almost taken from me by treachery,
While he prepared to go to Pylos against the will of all.
I pray the gods grant that, as the fates go in order,
He may be the one to close my eyes, and yours.
The herdsman Eumaeus and the aged nurse Eurycleia do the same,
As does the third, the faithful guardian of the unclean sty.
But Laertes, being useless due to his years,
Cannot hold the kingdom in the midst of enemies.
A stronger age will come to Telemachus (if only he lives);
Now, his youth ought to have been protected by his father’s help.
Nor do I have the strength to drive the enemies from our home.
May you come quickly, a harbor and a breeze for your people.
You have a son—and I pray he remains yours—who in his tender years
Ought to have been trained in his father’s skills.
Look back upon Laertes: so that you may finally close his eyes,
He is enduring his final day of fate.
Certainly I, who was a young girl when you departed,
Even if you return immediately, shall seem to have become an old woman.

Phyllis to Demophoon.

I, your hostess Phyllis of Rhodope A mountain range in Thrace, complain, Demophoon,
That you are absent beyond the promised time.
When the horns of the moon had once met in a full orb,
Your anchor was pledged to be at our shores.
Four times the moon has hidden; four times she has grown again with a full disk: