Which Translation: The Odyssey

Charles Lloyd

1810 · Heroic couplets

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
6
Holdings
0
Reviews

Biography

Charles Lloyd (1748-1828) was an English banker, Quaker preacher, philanthropist, and abolitionist based in Birmingham. His eldest son was the poet Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), and his eldest daughter Priscilla married Christopher Wordsworth, brother of the poet.

Lloyd translated the first seven books of the Odyssey and Book 24 of the Iliad into rhyming couplets with little or no embellishment, aiming to preserve the ‘noble simplicity of the original’. Both translations were printed anonymously for private circulation rather than public sale.

Due to its limited print run, Lloyd’s Odyssey is extremely rare, though it can be read online or through print-on-demand copies today.

Charles Lloyd on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1810 — Knott and Lloyd, A Translation of the First Seven Books of the Odyssey of Homer ★

The proem

1.1–11
The man of wisdom versatile, relate
To me, O Muse! who toss’d by adverse fate,
After his arms and stratagems profound,
Had levell’d sacred Ilion to the ground,
Saw many cities, diligent to trace
The varied manners of the human race,
Suffering dire conflicts on the stormy wave,
His own and comrades’ lives intent to save:
A vain attempt—his men by folly led,
On oxen sacred to Apollo fed.
The god enraged, for ever took away
Of their return the long-protracted day.
These deeds, in part at least, to memory bring,
Daughter of Jove! and aid me as I sing.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
Suitors, my wedding-day must be delay’d:
Urge me no more, for great Ulysses dead,
It would be wrong another man to wed,
Till I have finish’d for Laertes brave,
A shroud to wrap around him in the grave,
When by the stroke of fate he yields his breath,
A prey to cruel, unrelenting death;
For what would all the Grecian women say,
If he so rich without a covering lay?
She spoke, and gain’d our honest hearts’ consent;
So she contrived until each day was spent,
To weave this robe; but in the dead of night,
The work unravell’d by the torches’ light.
Thus for three years she practised hidden fraud,
But in the fourth her trick was noised abroad
By her own maidens, and to prove the fact,
We watch’d and caught her in the fraudulent act;
So we compell’d her to complete the vest:
This is the cause then, why thou art distress’d;

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
Envious immortals! must no goddess prove
The pure delights of chaste connubial love!
Aurora rosy-finger’d gain’d thy heart
Orion, when, alas! a vengeful dart
From chaste Diana’s bow unerring flew,
And the young hunter in Ortygia slew:
Jason with fair-tress’d Ceres fondly roves
Thro’ the rich harvests and the shady groves;
Jove watch’d their motions—quick the lightning flies,
And by its vivid flash the hero dies:
And now ye envy me my happy lot,
Because a mortal lives within my grot,
Whom from the fury of the whelming wave,
Toss’d on a wreck, I deign’d alone to save;

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
On the sea-shore she found the mournful chief,
Whose cheeks were moisten’d with the tears of grief;
He pined for home—in vain Calypso strove
To fan within his breast the flame of love:
Throughout the day he sat upon the shore,
Accustom’d there his miseries to deplore;
On the vast sea he cast his longing eyes
Tow’rds Ithaca, and mix’d his tears with sighs.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Determined thus, Ulysses gently crept
From the thick covert where he lately slept,
And from a tree a branch full-leaved he tore,
Which as a covering in his hand he bore,
Then forward moved. As when a lion bold,
On mountains bred, inured to wet and cold,
Pinch’d with keen hunger, rolls his fiery eyes,
Intent the sheep and oxen to surprize;
And these not finding, or the forest deer,
Attacks the guarded fold devoid of fear:
Ulysses thus was forced by want to dare,
Tho’ naked, to approach the maidens fair;
But as besmear’d with sea-brine near he drew,
This way and that the trembling virgins flew;
Nausicaa alone no fear possest,
For Pallas fill’d with confidence her breast;