The Daily Odyssey: April 18
To whom with sighs Ulysses gave reply:
“Ah why the ill-suiting pastime must I try?
To gloomy care my thoughts alone are free;
Ill the gay sports with troubled hearts agree;
Sad from my natal hour my days have ran,
A much-afflicted, much-enduring man!
Who, suppliant to the king and peers, implores
A speedy voyage to his native shore.”
“Wide wanders, Laodam, thy erring tongue
The sports of glory to the brave belong
(Retorts Euryalus): he bears no claim
Among the great, unlike the sons of Fame.
A wandering merchant he frequents the main
Some mean seafarer in pursuit of gain;
Studious of freight, in naval trade well skill’d,
But dreads the athletic labours of the field.”
Incensed, Ulysses with a frown replies:
“O forward to proclaim thy soul unwise!
With partial hands the gods their gifts dispense;
Some greatly think, some speak with manly sense;
Here Heaven an elegance of form denies,
But wisdom the defect of form supplies;
This man with energy of thought controls,
And steals with modest violence our souls;
He speaks reservedly, but he speaks with force,
Nor can one word be changed but for a worse;
In public more than mortal he appears,
And as he moves, the praising crowd reveres;
While others, beauteous as the etherial kind,
The nobler portion went, a knowing mind,
In outward show Heaven gives thee to excel.
But Heaven denies the praise of thinking well
I’ll bear the brave a rude ungovern’d tongue,
And, youth, my generous soul resents the wrong.
Skill’d in heroic exercise, I claim
A post of honour with the sons of Fame.
Such was my boast while vigour crown’d my days,
Now care surrounds me, and my force decays;
Inured a melancholy part to bear
In scenes of death, by tempest and by war
Yet thus by woes impair’d, no more I waive
To prove the hero—slander stings the brave.”