Which Translation: The Odyssey

G. A. Schomberg

1879 · Blank verse

Features

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10
Holdings
6
Reviews

Biography

General Sir George Augustus Schomberg KCB (1821-1907) was a British Royal Marines officer and son of Admiral Alexander Wilmot Schomberg. He served in the Crimean War and Second Opium War, and rose to become Deputy Adjutant-General Royal Marines.

Schomberg rendered the Odyssey into blank verse, except for some passages by Demodocus and the Sirens’ song, which he translated into rhyming stanzas. His translation aimed first for faithfulness to the original, then for readability.

Contemporary reviewers accorded Schomberg’s Odyssey ‘a not undistinguished place’ among Homer translations, praising it as ‘an able, scholarly, and conscientious work,’ though it never achieved the status of a standard translation.

Publication History

  • 1879 — John Murray, The Odyssey of Homer; rendered into English verse ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Sing Muse the hero versatile, who roved
So far, so long, after he overthrew
Troy’s holy citadel; of many men
He saw the cities, and their manners learned;
And woes he suffered on the deep; he strove
To win his comrades’ lives, and safe return,
But all his strivings failed to rescue them:
They perished for their witless sacrilege,
Who ate the oxen of Hyperion Sun;
Hence never more saw they their native land.
Daughter of Jove, help us to tell the tale.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Young princes, suitors mine, I you implore
Though dead my husband be, that ye refrain
From urging on my nuptials, till this robe
I shall complete (lest all the threads be wasted);
Intended for Laertes’ winding sheet;
When death, with its long sleep, shall overtake
The aged hero: for the Grecian women
Would cast reproach on me, should he, so rich,
Lie, like a pauper, shroudless in his grave!’
Thus spake she, and we frankly acquiesced:
And day by day she laboured at her loom;
But every night by torch-light she unwove
The work by day accomplished: three years long
She thus deceived us; when the fourth was come,
And glided on the hours; one of her maids
Who knew, told us the tale: and her we found
The beauteous web unweaving: then her task
Compelled she finished, much against her will.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“How cruel are ye gods! how envious!
Who grudge that goddesses should e’er enjoy
The love of mortal men; that one should choose
Without disguise a mortal for her spouse.
Thus rosy-fingered Dawn Orion chose;
The gods who live in bliss straight envied her;
And chaste Diana of the golden throne
Drew near and slew him in Ortygia,
With painless arrows, and a gentle death.
Thus also did the fair-haired Ceres yield
To passion; and to Jason gave her love;
And in a fallow field her favors gave:
Not long was Jove left uninformed of this
Who slew him with his flashing thunderbolt.
And thus ye gods grudge me my mortal love!
I saved him, clinging to his vessel’s keel

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting on the beach; his eyes
Were never dry from tears; his gladsome life
Was wasted by his yearning for his home;
And now the nymph herself had ceased to charm:
With her so loving he with little love
His nights perforce must spend in her arched grot;
All day he sat upon the sands and rocks,
His heart with grief and sighs and groans was torn,
As shedding tears he gazed o’er the sad sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Thus spake Ulysses, from the thicket’s shade
He issued forth, and with his stalwart hand
From a luxuriant tree he wrenched a branch
With foliage dense adorned; and round his loins
He wound it, to conceal his nakedness.
Thus issues forth the lion in his strength
Through storm and rain from out his mountain lair;
His eyeballs gleam like flame as he pursues
The sheep or oxen or the flying deer;
If hunger drive him he will e’en assail
The sheepfold, and the homestead so secure:
Thus did Ulysses naked as he was
Prepare the fair-haired maidens to approach,
For urgent need compelled him so to do.
Uncouth he seemed to them—befouled with brine;
And far in terror o’er the beach they fled:
The daughter of Alcinous alone
Stood fast; with courage Pallas her inspired,
Nor suffered fear to seize upon her limbs:

War-widow simile

8.521–532
Thus sang the famous minstrel, but the chief
Wept bitterly; the tears ran down his cheeks:
Thus lies the woman at her husband’s feet.
Weeping for him the loved one, who has fallen
For her his city, and his country’s cause;
Striving from home, and from his children dear
To turn aside the fate, and fated day.
She sees him dying, gasping out his life,
And shrieks embracing him; they with their spears
Behind her, urge her on with cruel blows
On back and shoulders into slavery;
To suffer misery and toil; her cheeks
Are wasted with her miserable woe.
Thus from Ulysses’ eyebrows fell the tears,

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“I spoke; he pitiless no answer gave,
But pounced upon my comrades; two of them
He seized as if they helpless puppies were,
And dashed them to the floor; with blood and brains
The earth was spattered; tore them limb from limb
And thus prepared them for his dread repast;
And as a lion on the mountains bred
He them devoured, nor left a scrap behind;
Flesh, entrails, bones, and marrow, all he ate:
We raised our hands to heaven, and wept to see
The fiendish deed; in utter helplessness:
And when the cannibal had filled his crop
With human flesh, he washed it down with milk,
Then stretched his mighty bulk and laid him down
Along the cavern floor, among his sheep:

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, thou askest me to tell my name,
And as thou askest I will tell it thee;
But thou must give me hospitality
As thou hast promised; No-one is my name,
And by the name of No-one I am known
By father, mother, and my comrades all.’
“I spoke; and thus his brutal thoughts found words:
‘No-one, I promise I will eat thee last,
This is my promised hospitality.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘What man art thou? and of what land and kin?
Amazement holds me chained that thou canst quaff
This potion, and not be bewitched by it:
For sure I am no other mortal man
Who let it pass the threshold of his lips
Could bear unscathed the working of its spell;
Thy soul is proof against its witcheries.
Thou needs must be that hero versatile
Ulysses, who the god, the Argus slayer,
He of the golden wand, aye said would come
From Troy returning in his black-hulled ship.
But sheathe thy sword, and turn we to my couch,
And let us both in mutual truth and trust
Together joy in love and love’s delights.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“She spoke; I pining, longed with all my soul
To clasp my mother’s shade in my embrace;
Thrice I attempted urged by wild desire
To throw my arms about her; from my arms
Thrice like a shadow or a dream she fled,
And bitter sorrow cut me to the heart.
And I addressed her with these wingëd words:
‘O mother, dost thou shun my fond embrace?
Locked in each other’s loving arms we might
In Hades even find a joy in woe!
Or is this but a shadow which I see,
Which the august Persephoné has raised,
That yet a deeper grief may swell my tears?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Ulysses, talk not thus of death to me;
I would prefer to be the veriest thrall,
Who for a needy, landless master sweats,
Than to be lord of all the skill-less dead!
But let me talk now of my noble boy;
Tell me, is he the foremost in the fight?
And of the honored Peleus, hast thou heard
If o’er the Myrmidons he still holds sway?
Or have they bated aught in their respect
In Greece and Phthia to his kingly rule,
Because from age his hands are feeble now?
Oh! would that I still in the light of day
Could his defender be; such as I was
When I erstwhile the champion of the Greeks,
Struck down the bravest of the brave at Troy;

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“‘Ulysses, famous Chief, thy galley stay,
Thou glory of the Greeks, and turn aside,
That thou may’st listen to our tuneful lay:
For ne’er in black-hulled ship did mortal glide
Close to our haunt across the heaving tide,
But fain must yield to the delicious spell
Of our sweet melody, and list to all we tell:
“‘Gleaning wise lore from lips melodious;
For all ye suffered by the gods’ decree,
Ye Greeks and Trojans, is well known to us;
The woes ye suffered, and the misery,
On Troy’s wide plain we know as well as ye;
All things we know, and all things we can tell
That hap on fruitful earth; so yield ye to our spell.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
To wretched mortals, death in all its shapes
Must miserable be; but worst of all
Is death by hunger’s lengthened agony;
Therefore the choicest heifers let us seize
Of all the Sun-god’s herds; and slay and eat,
And sacrifice them to the gods above:
And if we reach our own dear Ithaca,
Our native land, on our arrival there
A splendid temple we will consecrate
To the Hyperion Sun-god; beautified
With many sacred offerings rich and rare.
If for his oxen with high branching horns
He be so vexed that he destroy our ship,
And all the gods allow his wrath full sway;
So let it be; and let me die at once,
And rather perish choking in the wave,
Than die by inches in this desert isle.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
He spake, and sought the palace gay with life,
And went among the suitors in the hall:
And the dark doom of death on Argus fell,
When he again upon Ulysses gazed,
As in the twentieth year he home returned.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As one who longs to cook with all dispatch
A sausage full of flavour and of juice,
Upon the glowing coals of the bright fire,—
He tosses it about, now here, now there,—
So is he tossed about in anxious thought,
Now here, now there. Shall he lift up his hands
Against that shameless crew; and he alone
Against such odds? Pallas herself drew near,
From heaven descending; at his head she stood,
And in a woman’s form thus spoke to him:
“Thou most unhappy! wherefore watchest thou?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
Thus spake the suitors; but the wily chief,
When he the mighty bow on every side
Had scanned, and to his mind had handled it,—
As one well-skilled in harp and minstrelsy,
When he the twisted sheep-gut at both ends
Has fastened with a knot, and straight with ease
On a new pin strings up the tightened cord,—
Thus, with no more ado, the mighty bow
Ulysses strung; and then he held it fast,
And with right hand and finger proved the string;
And clear it rang beneath his touch, as sounds
The swallow’s twittering note.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
And then the chief Ulysses threw aside
His rags and his disguise; aloft he sprang
Upon the spacious threshold; in his hands
The bow, and quiver with its arrows filled.
He poured the feathered shafts upon the ground
There at his feet, and to the suitors spoke:
“This mighty task is ended: let us see
If I another mark may chance to hit,
Which never archer heretofore has struck;
And if Apollo fame will grant to me.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He spake; the cable of a dark-prowed ship
He took, which to a pillar he made fast,
And passed the end around the outhouse dome,
And stretched it out aloft, that with their feet,
When hanging from it, none could touch the ground:
As thrushes, with their fluttering wings, or doves,
When eager for the roost and for repose,
A dismal sleep awaits them,—when they fall
Into the springe laid for them in the copse,—
So in a row, with halters round their necks,
The wretched women all were hung together;
And thus they died, a miserable death.
For some short moments with their feet they writhed
Convulsively, not long; then all was still.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
This speech she made to put him to the proof,
If he her husband were. In anger then
Ulysses thus addressed his constant wife:
“Lady, thou sayest this to vex my soul:
Who has the couch removed? ’Twere hard indeed
For man to do, however skilled he were,—
Except a god should come; he easily,
If so he willed, might move the couch away:
No living mortal, be he man or youth,
Could heave it lightly from its resting-place;
For in that quaint-wrought bed a secret lies.
I wrought the couch myself, and no one else.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And as the land is welcome to the eyes
Of those who swimming struggle for their lives,
Whose gallant ship the sea-god in the deep
Has wrecked,—swept by the storm and billowy waves,
A few strong swimmers through the foaming sea
Escape and reach the shore, befouled with brine;
Gladsome are they to tread once more dry land,
Escaped from doom,—even so gladsome she,
Who on her husband now casts wistful eyes:
And from his neck she could not yet unlock
Her white, fond arms.