The columns standing of the stately dome, 490
And covering with her white veil's lucid folds
Her features, to Antinoüs thus she spake.
Antinoüs, proud, contentious, evermore
To mischief prone! the people deem thee wise
Past thy compeers, and in all grace of speech 495
Pre-eminent, but such wast never thou.
Inhuman! why is it thy dark design
To slay Telemachus? and why with scorn
Rejectest thou the [1]suppliant's pray'r, which Jove
Himself hath witness'd? Plots please not the Gods. 500
Know'st not that thy own father refuge found
Here, when he fled before the people's wrath
Whom he had irritated by a wrong
Which, with a band of Taphian robbers joined,
He offer'd to the Thesprots, our allies? 505
They would have torn his heart, and would have laid
All his delights and his possessions waste,
But my Ulysses slaked the furious heat
Of their revenge, whom thou requitest now
Wasting his goods, soliciting his wife, 510
Slaying his son, and filling me with woe.
But cease, I charge thee, and bid cease the rest.
To whom the son of Polybus replied,
Eurymachus.—Icarius' daughter wise!
Take courage, fair Penelope, and chace 515
- ↑ Alluding probably to entreaties made to him at some former time by herself and Telemachus, that he would not harm them.Clarke.
These
