Has life’s fair lamp declined by slow decays,

Or swift expired it in a sudden blaze?

Say, if my sire, good old Laertes, lives?

If yet Telemachus, my son, survives?

Say, by his rule is my dominion awed,

Or crush’d by traitors with an iron rod?

Say, if my spouse maintains her royal trust;

Though tempted, chaste, and obstinately just?

Or if no more her absent lord she wails,

But the false woman o’er the wife prevails?’


“Thus I, and thus the parent-shade returns:

‘Thee, ever thee, thy faithful consort mourns:

Whether the night descends or day prevails,

Thee she by night, and thee by day bewails.

Thee in Telemachus thy realm obeys;

In sacred groves celestial rites he pays,

And shares the banquet in superior state,

Graced with such honours as become the great

Thy sire in solitude foments his care:

The court is joyless, for thou art not there!

No costly carpets raise his hoary head,

No rich embroidery shines to grace his bed;

Even when keen winter freezes in the skies,

Rank’d with his slaves, on earth the monarch lies:

Deep are his sighs, his visage pale, his dress

The garb of woe and habit of distress.

And when the autumn takes his annual round,

The leafy honours scattering on the ground,

Regardless of his years, abroad he lies,

His bed the leaves, his canopy the skies.

Thus cares on cares his painful days consume,

And bow his age with sorrow to the tomb!


“‘For thee, my son, I wept my life away;

For thee through hell’s eternal dungeons stray:

Nor came my fate by lingering pains and slow,

Nor bent the silver-shafted queen her bow;

No dire disease bereaved me of my breath;

Thou, thou, my son, wert my disease and death;

Unkindly with my love my son conspired,

For thee I lived, for absent thee expired.’


“Thrice in my arms I strove her shade to bind,

Thrice through my arms she slipp’d like empty wind,

Or dreams, the vain illusions of the mind.

Wild with despair, I shed a copious tide