The Odyssey: Book 6

So their godlike king, Nausithous, led the people off
in a vast migration, settled them in Scheria,
far from the men who toil on this earth—

With that
the bright-eyed goddess sped away to Olympus, where,
they say, the gods' eternal mansion stands unmoved,
never rocked by galewinds, never drenched by rains,
nor do the drifting snows assail it, no, the clear air
stretches away without a cloud, and a great radiance
plays across that world where the blithe gods
live all their days in bliss.

Still beguiled by her dream,
down she went through the house to tell her parents now,
her beloved father and mother.

They trundled the wagon out now, rolling smoothly,
backed the mule-team into the traces, hitched them up,
while the princess brought her finery from the room
and piled it into the wagon's polished cradle.

Now fed to their hearts' content, the princess and her retinue
threw their veils to the wind, struck up a game of ball.

White-armed Nausicaa led their singing, dancing beat...
as lithe as Artemis with her arrows striding down
from a high peak—

But now, as she was about to fold her clothes
and yoke the mules and turn for home again,
now clear-eyed Pallas thought of what came next,
to make Odysseus wake and see this young beauty
and she would lead him to the Phaeacians' town.

And out he stalked
as a mountain lion exultant in his power
strides through wind and rain and his eyes blaze...

Plead now
with a subtle, winning word and stand well back,
don't clasp her knees, the girl might bridle, yes.

That vision! Just as I stood there gazing, rapt, for hours...
no shaft like that had ever risen up from the earth—
so now I marvel at you, my lady: rapt, enthralled,
too struck with awe to grasp you by the knees
though pain has ground me down.

That vision! Just as I stood there gazing, rapt, for hours...
no shaft like that had ever risen up from the earth—
so now I marvel at you, my lady: rapt, enthralled,
too struck with awe to grasp you by the knees
though pain has ground me down.

Only yesterday,
the twentieth day, did I escape the wine-dark sea.
Till then the waves and the rushing gales had swept me on
from the island of Ogygia.

Great Odysseus bathed in the river, scrubbed his body
clean of brine that clung to his back and broad shoulders,
scoured away the brackish scurf that caked his head.

And then, once he had bathed all over, rubbed in oil
and donned the clothes the virgin princess gave him,
Zeus's daughter Athena made him taller to all eyes...

They hung on her words and did her will at once,
set before Odysseus food and drink, and he ate and drank,
the great Odysseus, long deprived, so ravenous now—
it seemed like years since he had tasted food.

Some old salt might mock us behind our backs—
we have our share of insolent types in town...

Let the girl go roving to find herself
a man from foreign parts. She only spurns her own—
countless Phaeacians round about who court her...

I'd find fault with a girl who carried on that way,
flouting her parents' wishes—father, mother, still alive—
consorting with men before she'd tied the knot in public.

I'd find fault with a girl who carried on that way,
flouting her parents' wishes—father, mother, still alive—
consorting with men before she'd tied the knot in public.

The sun sank as they reached the hallowed grove,
sacred to Athena, where Odysseus stopped and sat
and said a prayer at once to mighty Zeus's daughter...