Many a people he saw and beheld their cities and customs.
Many a woe he endured in his heart as he tossed on the ocean.
Striving to win him his life and to bring home safely his comrades.
Ah but he rescued them not, those comrades, much as he wished it.
Ruined by their own act of infatuate madness they perished.
Fools that they were — who the cows of the sun-god, lord Hyperion,
Slaughtered and ate ; and he took from the men their day of returning.
Sing — whence-ever the lay — sing, Zeus-born goddess, for us too !

Now were all of the rest of the Greeks who had 'scaped from destruction

Safely at home and secure from the dangers of war and the ocean,

All but the one, whom yearning in vain for his wife and his homeland

Still did the beautiful goddess, the sea-nymph lady Calypso,

Hold in her hollow caves, with a longing to make him her husband.
Ay and at last, when the year in the slow revolution of seasons

Came, in the which, as the gods had ordained, he returned to his country,

Ithaca's isle, e'en then was he nowise free from his troubles.
Though once more with his own ; and the gods were touched with compassion,

All but Poseidaon, who was ever unceasingly angered

Raging at godlike Odysseus and keeping him far from his homeland.
Now was he gone to revisit the far-off Aethiop people —

Aethiop people that dwell wide-sundered, furthest of mortals.
Some where sinks Hyperion to rest, some where he ariseth.
Here he expected of rams and of oxen a solemn oblation.
Here he rejoiced as he sat at the feast. But the other immortals

Unto the mansion of Zeus the Olympian gathered together.
