Which Translation: The Odyssey

Philip Stanhope Worsley

1861 · Spenserian stanzas

Features

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133
Holdings
8
Reviews

Biography

Philip Stanhope Worsley (1835-1866) was an English poet educated at Oxford who died of tuberculosis at age thirty. Today he is known for his portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron, and for the verses he inscribed in a book he gifted to Robert E. Lee, which were later used in monuments to the Confederacy.

Worsley translated the Odyssey (1861) into Spenserian stanzas, striving to ‘see vividly what Homer sees’ and to treat the epic as ‘a phase of human life to be realized’ rather than merely providing a literal rendering. He employed a refined, high-register English influenced by Edmund Spenser.

Matthew Arnold called Worsley’s Odyssey in Spenserian stanzas ‘much the most pleasing of those hitherto produced,’ while simultaneously arguing that the Spenserian stanza was structurally unsuitable for Homer. The Dictionary of National Biography states that his translation ‘leaves no room for improvement’ in ‘grace, skill, command of diction, and native music.’

Philip Stanhope Worsley on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1861 — William Blackwood and Sons, The Odyssey of Homer translated into English verse in the Spenserian stanza ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Sing me, O Muse, that hero wandering,
Who of men’s minds did much experience reap,
And knew the citied realms of many a king,
Even from the hour he smote the Trojan keep.
Also a weight of sorrows in the deep
Brooding he bore, in earnest hope to save,
‘Mid hard emprise and labour all too steep,
Himself and comrades from a watery grave-
Whom yet he rescued not with zeal nor yearnings brave;
For they were slain in their own foolishness,
Self-blinded, feasting on Hyperion’s kine,
He, the great Sun, in vengeance merciless,
Wroth for the slaughter of his herds divine,
Did bend their fortunes to a stern decline,
And raze out wholly their returning day
With disadventure and destroying tyne-
These even to me, who hearken as I may,
Great goddess, child of Zeus, unfold in verse, I pray!

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
And said: ‘Young men, my suitors, what I feared
Is come; divine Odysseus is no more:
Woo ye, but leave my widowhood revered
A little while until my task is o’er,
Lest my long-purposed work fall void for evermore.
“‘I for Laertes weave a funeral sheet
Against the final debt that he must pay;
And I were shamed the Achaian dames to meet,
Should the long slumber find but shroudless clay
Of one who owned much lordship in his day.’
So did she speak amid the suitor-throng,
And so persuaded our large heart gave way.
Daily she weaved; then working grievous wrong,
By night the woof unwound, with torches ranged along.
“So for three years she prospered in her wile.
But when the fourth came with the seasons’ flight,
One of her women, making known the guile,
Showed us the queen unwinding in the night.
So force, not will, constrained her to the right.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“Hard are ye gods, and envious above all,
Who grudge that goddesses should mortals know,
And heroes of the earth their husbands call.
Thus did the rosy-fingered Dawn bestow
Love on the fair Orion long ago;
But ye, the easy-living gods, took fire,
And virgin Artemis with silver bow
And gentle arrows did his life require;
So came a bitter end on their too fond desire.
“So when Demeter loved Iasion
And yielded to her love, and with him lay
Couched in the thrice-worked fallow, Zeus anon,
Hearing far whispers of their amorous play,
Him with a white-flamed thunderbolt did slay.
And now ye deathless ones disdain that I
Live with a man, whom dangerously astray
Housed on a keel I found ‘mid billows high,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
And found him gazing o’er the long sea-reach,
Sitting with eyelids wet upon the barren beach.
There daily did his sweet life waste away
Feeding a hopeless sorrow. He by night
Unwilling fere by willing leman lay.
No more the nymph seemed pleasing in his sight.
Companion of the rocks the livelong light
He dreaming on the shore, but not at rest,
With groans and tears and lingering undelight
Gazed on the pulses of the ocean’s breast.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Then from the olive-brake Odysseus came,
And from the forest, all around him spread,
Snapped a young shoot, thick-leaved, to veil his shame—
And as a lion on the mountains bred,
With rain and wind and hunger hard bested,
Goes, trusting in his strength, his eyes on fire,
Against the sheep and oxen making head,
Or rending the wild deer; yea, fierce desire
Drives him in quest of ravin, stung with the famine-fire,
Even a house well-builded to essay—
So to the fair-haired maidens would have gone
Odysseus—such sore need upon him lay—
Though naked, his dire anguish to make known.
But terror seized them when his form was shown,
Squalid with brine; and diverse ways they fled,
Hurrying along the headlong banks. Alone
Stood firm Alcinous’ child. Athene fed
Her soul with strength, and freed her tender limbs from dread.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
All this he sang. Odysseus, melted through,
Sat listening while the tears his pale wore cheek bedew.
Even as a wife, who sees her husband die,
Flings herself round him with a piteous wail,
Where he the foe met in his people’s eye,
And fell down, pierced, beneath their iron hail,
And all to ward off wrong and bitter bale
From home and fatherland and children dear;
Him, when her help can now no more avail,
Dying she marks and the last sob can hear;
Deep in her arms she folds him; the long shriek rings clear.
And lo! the foemen to her side advance,
Led by the wildness of her yearning cry,
Spurn the weak shoulders with the shafted lance,
Unclasp her, and to doom of slavery.
Alone in sorrow, weeping bitterly,
Lead her—too hard in their inhuman haste!—
Thenceforward in extremest agony
Wrongs undeserved, the living death, to taste;
While still the thin white cheeks for ever pine and waste—
Wrung with like misery Odysseus shed
Full many a feeling tear from eyes dark-browed,
Tranced in far thought and dreaming of the dead,

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
He nought replied, but of my comrades twain
Seized, and like dog-whelps on the cavern-floor
Dashed them; the wet ground steamed with blood and brain.
Straight in his ravin limb from limb he tore
Fierce as a lion, and left nothing o’er;
Flesh, entrails, marrowly bones of men just killed,
Gorging. To Zeus our hands, bemoaning sore,
We raised in horror, while his maw he filled.
And human meat devoured, and milk in rivers swilled.
After his meal he lay down with the sheep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, thou askest me my name renowned—
Now will I make it known; nor thou withhold
That boon whereto thy solemn troth is bound—
Hear then; my name is Noman. From of old
My father, mother, these my comrades bold,
Give me this title.’ So I spake, and he
Answered at once with mind of ruthless mould:
‘This shall fit largess unto Noman be—
Last, after all thy peers, I promise to eat thee.”

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who then art thou?’ she cried: ‘Where is thy place,
Thy parents, who these philters canst defy?
Never before did lips of mortal race
Drink of this cup, and still retain their former grace.
‘Thy breast alone a charmless heart doth hold.
Art thou Odysseus many-wiled, whom he,
The golden-wanded Hermes, oft foretold,
That from far Troia wandering o’er the sea
He to this coast should sail, and visit me?
But come, return thy sword into his sheath,
And afterward ascend my couch, that we
Mingled together, this my roof beneath,
Of loves may take our fill, and mutual trust inbreathe.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
Therewith she ended, and a deep unrest
Urged me to clasp the spirit of the dead,
And fold a phantom to my yearning breast.
Thrice I essayed with eager hands outspread,
Thrice like a shadow or a dream she fled,
And my palms closed on unsubstantial air.
Then was I whelmed in disappointment dread,
Sterner calamity, more quick despair;
And sadly in winged words I spake appealing there:
‘Ah! mine own mother, tell me, tell me why
Thou scornest to abide my fond embrace.
Could we but clasp each other feelingly,
Even in Hades might we yet find place
To slake our sorrows, and enjoy long space
Of weeping. Or hath proud Persephone
Sent me a shadow with thy form and face
Only to mock me, that I yet might see
Some bitterness beyond my former misery?”

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
“Scoff not at death,” he answered, “noble chief!
Rather would I in the sun’s warmth divine
Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief,
Than the whole lordship of the dead were mine.
But came my brave son to your wars, to shine
First in the front of arms?—This also tell:
If to the blameless Peleus men assign
Due reverence in the land, or if he dwell
Spurned in his weak old age, and not regarded well.
‘Since to his help I can no longer wield
Under the sun that valour famed of yore,
Such as men knew me in the Trojan field,
Smiter of heroes, bulwark of the war.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
Hither, Odysseus, great Achaian name,
Turn thy swift keel and listen to our lay;
Since never pilgrim near these regions came
In black ship, on the azure fields astray,
But heard our sweet voice ere he sailed away,
And in his joy passed on, with ampler mind.
We know what labours were in ancient day
Wrought in wide Troia, as the gods assigned;
We know from land to land all toils of all mankind.

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
‘Friends, though to wretched man all deaths are dire,
Yet it is far most miserable to pine
With pangs of famine and for want expire.
Come, let us choose the best of the Sun’s kine,
And seek with sacrifice the powers divine;
Then for the rest, if haply we attain
To Ithaca, snatched from the perilous brine,
Soon might we build Hyperion a rich fane,
And with full many a gift his noble shrine sustain.
‘But if, for these horned beeves majestical,
Anger he feel, and yearn our ship to smite,
And win thereto all powers celestial,
Then would I rather, once for all, outright
Choke in the billows, and eternal night
Inherit, than waste piecemeal day by day,
With slow disease and withering undelight,
Pent in a desert island.’ This did say
Eurylochus. The rest that fatal word obey.

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
He, having spoken, to the doors came near,
And to the hall of banquet bent his way.
And upon Argus came the death-fate drear,
Just having seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man beside a blazing fire
Turneth a rich fat goat-paunch to and fro,
Over and over, with intense desire
Quickly to roast it, so with tossings dire
He tumbled, and debated in his bed
How on the suitors to wreak vengeful ire,
One against many. And lo! near his head
Stood in a woman’s form Athene, and thus said:
“Ill-fated above all, why dost thou wake?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
Thus spake the suitors in their foolish scorn.
But wary-wise Odysseus curiously
Eyed the great bow, and all through wood and horn
Found it a perfect weapon and worthy to be borne.
As when a lyrist, who sweet song doth know,
Round a new peg the twisted gut doth hang
And strain it to the pitch, so he the bow
Strung without pain, and gave the nerve a twang;
And in a low tone beautifully it sang,
Voiced like a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Stript of his rags then leapt the godlike king
On the great threshold, in his hand the bow
And quiver, filled with arrows of mortal sting.
These with a rattle he rained down below,
Loose at his feet, and spake among them so:
“See, at the last our matchless bout is o’er!
Now for another mark, that I may know
If I can hit what none hath hit before,
And if Apollo hear me in the prayers I pour!”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He spake, and hawser of a blue-prowed ship
Down from high pillar of the dome he let,
Fastened aloft, lest too near earth they dip.
As doves or long-winged thrushes on a net
Strike in a thick bush, when to bed they get,
And find ill roosting where they nightly throng,
So were their heads caught, and the nooses set
Fast round their necks, to make their misery strong,
And with their feet they writhed a little while, not long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
Thus she spake, proving him. He, direly stirred,
Quick to his loyal wife made answer there:
“Wife, thou hast spoken a soul-piercing word.
Tell me what hand hath set my couch elsewhere.
Yea, for a skilled man very hard it were,
Save a god helped him, who can all things do.
Lives not a mortal, though life’s flower he bear,
Could stir it. For with that bed’s growth there grew
A wondrous sign, my work; none else that secret knew.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
Sweet as to swimmers the dry land appears,
Whose bark Poseidon in the angry sea
Strikes with a tempest, and in pieces tears,
And a few swimmers from the white deep flee,
Crusted with salt foam, and with tremulous knee
Spring to the shore exulting; even so
Sweet was her husband to Penelope,
Nor from his neck could she at all let go
Her white arms, nor forbid her thickening tears to flow.