Which Translation: The Odyssey

William Morris

1887 · Rhyming irregular lines

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
203
Holdings
7
Reviews

Biography

William Morris (1834-1896) was an English textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, and socialist activist, widely regarded as the central figure of the British Arts and Crafts movement. He founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. and the Kelmscott Press, and is recognized as one of the most significant cultural figures of Victorian Britain.

Morris translated the Odyssey into rhyming couplets with deliberately archaic, medievalizing diction, transforming the Greek epic into something resembling a medieval romance. He rejected modern English in favor of romance-associated vocabulary and long irregular lines, in order to portray Homer as a medieval bard.

Oscar Wilde reviewed Morris’s translation in the Pall Mall Gazette, and called Morris ‘of all our modern poets... the one best qualified by nature and by art to translate for us the marvellous epic’. More recently, scholars have argued that Morris’s archaic diction allowed his Odyssey translation to serve as a critique of modernity and industrial capitalism.

William Morris on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1887 — Reeves and Turner, The Odyssey of Homer; done into English verse ★
  • 1897 — Longmans, Green, The Odyssey of Homer; done into English verse
  • 1901 — Chiswick Press / Longmans, Green, The Odyssey of Homer; done into English verse (Kelmscott Press type)
  • 1904 — Longmans, The Odyssey of Homer; done into English verse
  • 1983 — Reeves and Turner, The Odyssey of Homer; done into English verse
  • 1992 — Routledge / Thoemmes Press, The Collected Works of William Morris; with introductions by his daughter, May Morris

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me, O Muse, of the Shifty, the man who wandered afar,
After the Holy Burg, Troy-town, he had wasted with war;
He saw the towns of menfolk, and the mind of men did he learn;
As he warded his life in the world, and his fellow-farers’ return,
Many a grief of heart on the deep-sea flood he bore,
Nor yet might he save his fellows, for all that he longed for it sore.
They died of their own souls’ folly, for witless as they were
They ate up the beasts of the Sun, the Rider of the Air,
And he took away from them all their dear returning day;
O Goddess, O daughter of Zeus, from whencesoever ye may,
Gather the tale, and tell it, yea even to us at the last!

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘O younglings, O wooers of mine, since the goodly Odysseus is dead,
Withhold you from urging my wedding till this web to an end I have brought,
Lest the yarn have been spun in vain and perish and come to nought
Tis a shroud for the lord Laertes against his doom-day strong
And the tide when Death shall seize him, that layeth men along:
Lest from the Achæan women this blame upon me hap,
There lieth a man that was wealthy, and he lacketh a linen lap.’
“So she spake and we gave consent, and our noble hearts did she sway,
And that web of worth thenceforward she was weaving ever by day,
And ever by night would undo it when the torches were set beside.
Three years she beguiled the Achæans, and the thing by craft did hide;
But when come was the fourth of the years, and season on season rolled
Then one of her women who knew it the story to us told,
And we found her there undoing that worthy web of cloth,
And so to an end must she bring it perforce and exceeding loth.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“Hard are ye, Gods, and grudging beyond all other thing!
Us Goddesses so begrudging if we by a man be laid
In open wise, when any of a man her mate hath made;
As when She took Orion, the Rosy-fingered Day,
Just so did the Gods begrudge her, soft lives that live alway,
Till Artemis chaste, gold-throned, in Ortygia at the last
With her gentle shafts fell on him and slew him with their cast.
Or as when fair-haired Demeter to her mind and her mood gave way
And blent her with Iasion and in love beside him lay
In the fallow thrice ploughed over: but the deed soon came to light
Zeus knew it, and straight he slew him with his thunder flashing white.
So now do ye grudge me, O Gods, this mortal man by my side,
Though him I saved, as lonely on the upturned keel did he ride,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
And she found him there asitting on the beach, and ever aswim
Were his eyes with tears and weeping, and the sweet life ebbed from him
As his lost return he lamented. But he had no joy of the May,
Although perforce in the night-tide by the side of her he lay
In the hollow den of the rocks, he loth, though fain were she.
But by day on the rocks was he sitting and down by the shore of the sea,
And with grief he wore his soul and with tears, and many a moan,
As he gazed o’er the untilled sea-flood and let the tears fall down.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Forth then from under the bushes came Odysseus as he spake,
And a leafy bough of the thicket with his heavy hand he brake,
His man’s unseemly members to cover up from sight.
So he went as a fell-bred lion that trusteth in his might
As he goes through the wind and the rain-drift, and his eyes they gleam and glare
As after the neat he goeth and forth for the sheep doth fare,
And after the wild-deer wendeth; for his belly biddeth him on
To try for the flock, and betake him to the garth well-builded and done.
E’en so did Odysseus betake him, for as naked as he were
To consort with the well-tressed damsels, now need was come so near.
And he seemed to them but dreadful, befouled with the brine all o’er,
And they fled scared hither and thither about the bays of the shore.
But alone stood Alcinous’ daughter, for Athene made her bold
Of her heart, and from her body all trembling did withhold;

War-widow simile

8.521–532
So sang the all-glorious singer, but Odysseus was melted withal,
And over his cheeks the tear-dew from his eyelids ‘gan to fall;
And e’en as a wife falls clinging to her mate with wailing sore,
Yea, to him who in front of his city and folk hath fallen in war,
While his burg and his children he warded from the utter hapless day.
And she beholdeth him dying and gasping his life away,
And with shrill wails walloweth on him, and the men behind her smite
Her shoulders and back with the spear-shafts, as they drive her away forth right
To the thraldom where she shall suffer all toil and grief and pain,
And with most grievous sorrow her cheeks they waste and wane—
E’en so the woful tear-drops Odysseus poured from his brow.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“So I spake, but never an answer from his ruthless mind he made:
But forthwith rushing onward his hands on my fellows he laid,
And clutching two together he dashed them on the ground
Like whelps; and forth flowed the brains and red wet was the earth around.
And then he shredded them limb-meal and both for his supper dight,
And e’en as a hill-bred lion he ate them up outright,
And neither flesh nor inwards, nor marrow-bones left he.
But to Zeus our hands we lifted all weeping wofully,
For all we were helpless and witless when such foul deeds we saw.
“But now whenas the Cyclops had filled his mighty maw,
The flesh of men devouring and of mere milk drinking deep,
Then adown in the den he laid him stretched out amidst his sheep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, my name renowned thou askest, the which I will tell,
But the guest-gift thou wouldst give me, now give me it me I pray.
My name is Noman: Noman they called me on a day,
My father and my mother, and all my folk of old.’
“So I spake, but straight he answered from cruel heart and cold:
‘Noman shall I eat the latest of all his fellows here,
And all the others before him; lo, a guest-gift good and dear!’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
“‘What man art thou? of what kindred, of what city comest thou?
For I marvel that drinking this venom thou art nought enchanted now;
Since never hath any other borne my venom ere to-day,
When once he hath drunk, and the drink by the tooth-hedge hath taken its way.
Then proof against all witchcraft is the heart that thy bosom doth hold.
Yea, art thou that shifty Odysseus, whom the Lord of the Staff of Gold,
The Argus-bane, would tell of? the man who should come, said he,
From Troy-town wending homeward in his swift black ship o’er the sea?
But set thou thy sword in the scabbard! and then how well if we went,
We twain, in one bed together! and thereafter we being blent
In love and friendly pleasure shall trust each other well.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“She spake, and my mind clung round it and longed that it might be
That I might take in my arms that soul of my mother dead;
And thrice did I essay it, and my heart my longing sped,
And thrice from my arms as a shadow or a very dream did she flit,
And waxed the biting sorrow in my heart because of it;
And therewith my voice I uttered and a winged word I spake:
“‘Why bidest thou not, my mother, when thee I fain would take,
That with dear arms laid on each other, e’en here in Hades’ Hold,
We twain might have fill of sorrow and lamentation cold?
Doth Persephone the mighty thrust on some image here,
That with yet heavier mourning my life-days I may wear?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘And thou, O famed Odysseus, belittle not Death to me.
Well were I on earth’s acres e’en to serve beneath the hand
Of some man of little living and lacking share of land,
Rather than here to lord it o’er all the dead outworn.
But come now, what word hither of my fair son hast thou borne,
Whether the war he followed as a chief, or did it not?
And tell me if some tidings of great Peleus thou hast got:
If yet mid the Myrmidon cities he holdeth honour still;
Or if through Hellas and Pthia all men his honour spill,
Because in bonds eld holdeth his hands and his feet foredone;
For no more am I his helper beneath the beams of the sun,
E’en such as I was aforetime when erst in Troy the wide
I slew the best of the people and held the Argive side;

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“‘Come hither, Odysseus bepraised, thou fame of Achaean folk,
Stay here thy ship beside us that our song thou may’st hearken today;
For never hereby hath any in a black ship wended his way
Ere the honey-sweet voice he had hearkened that forth from the mouth of us flows;
And then in joy he departeth, and many a thing he knows:
For all the toil we wot of that erst in Troy the wide,
The Argives and the Trojans of God must needs abide;
Yea, all things that hereafter upon the Earth shall be.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All manner of death is loathly to wretched men that die,
But to meet our fate by famine is to end most wretchedly:
So come, and these beasts of the Sun, the best thereof let us drive
And slay them unto the Deathless, who in the wide heavens live,
And so unto Ithaca coming, and our fatherland of old days,
There then to the Rider Aloft, to the Sun a fair house shall we raise
And set gifts therein a many and goodly things of price.
But and if for his straight-horned oxen his wrath should yet arise,
And he will our ships to ruin and the Gods all with him be,
Yet better to perish gasping in the swallow of the sea
Than here in an isle deserted of life to be drained all dry.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So saying into the homestead of the happy place he passed,
And straight to the hall he wended ‘mid the Wooers overbold
But the murky doom of the death-day of Argus now took hold
When he had looked on Odysseus in this the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man hath gotten by a great fire blazing out
A paunch of fat and of blood, and turneth it oft about
Hither and thither, all eager to roast it speedily;
So tossed he hither and thither, and ever pondered he
What wise he might have the handling of those Wooers bare of shame,
And he but one among many. Then anigh him Athene came,
Come adown from the lofty heavens, and e’en as a woman was made;
So over his head was she standing, and the word to him she said:
“Why watchest thou and wakest, O man most luckless of life?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So the Wooers spake; but Odysseus, that many a rede did know,
When the great bow he had handled, and eyed it about and along,
Then straight, as a man well learned in the lyre and the song,
On a new pin lightly stretcheth the cord, and maketh fast
From side to side the sheep-gut well-twined and overcast:
So the mighty bow he bended with no whit of labouring,
And caught it up in his right hand, and fell to try the string,
That ’neath his hand sang lovely as a swallow’s voice is fair.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
But Odysseus of many a rede of his rags he stripped him bare,
And on the great threshold he leapt, and the bow, and the quiver fair
Fulfilled of arrows he handled, and all the shafts to the ground
Before his feet then poured he, and spake to those Wooers around:
“Thuswise then is accomplished the strife so hard to do;
Now another mark will I loose at that no man hath hit hitherto,
If I perchance may attain it, and so fame of Apollo be earned.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So he spake; and therewith the cable of a black-prowed ship he found,
And made fast to a lofty pillar and cast it the kitchen around,
And stretched it aloft that no one might touch the earth with her feet;
And e’en as the long-winged thrushes or the doves ’gainst a net may beat,
Which, when unto roost they betake them amidst the boughs is spread,
And verily there are they taken and they come to a loathly bed;
So these held their heads in order, and round their necks each one
Ran the noose, that they might perish by the evilest death undone;
And they writhed with their feet for a little, but their season was but short

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
Thus she spake to prove her husband; but Odysseus, grieved at heart,
Spake thus unto his bed-mate well-skilled in gainful art:
“O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me!
Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead? full hard for him should it be,
For as deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come here,
Who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere.
But no mortal man is living, how strong soe’er in his youth,
Who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder forsooth
Is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought it, and I alone.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And e’en as men a-swimming of the face of earth are fain,
Whose well-wrought ship Poseidon hath wrecked amidst the main,
Driven on by the blast of the storm-wind and the over-toppling seas;
But forth from the hoary salt-sea they have fled, and few are these
Who have swum ashore, and their bodies with the brine are crusted around,
But because they have scaped the evil full fain they tread the ground,
E’en so was she fain of her husband that she looked upon at last;
Nor wholly his neck would she loosen from her white arms round it cast