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Wherefore I will wash thy feet, both for Penelope's sake and for thine own, for that my heart within me is moved and troubled. But come, mark the word that I shall speak. Many strangers travel-worn have ere now come hither, but I say that I have never seen any so like another, as thou art like Odysseus, in fashion in voice and in feet.
"Heaven forbid that I should mock or insult thee, dear child!" cried the nurse, her eyes filling with tears. "I have told thee naught but the truth. The stranger whom we thought a beggar was Odysseus himself. Telemachus knew this all the time, but kept it from thee by the command of his father."
With that they strode away from the cave and left the blind giant groaning and raging with pain. Groping with his hands, he found the great stone that blocked the door, lifted it away, and sat himself down in the mouth of the cave, with his arms stretched out, hoping to catch Odysseus and his men if they should try to escape.
Then she anointed them one by one with another drug; and instantly the bristles fell away from them, and they became men again, only younger and fairer to behold than they were before. With tears of joy they embraced Odysseus, and the whole place rang with their happy greetings, so that even Circe was moved by the tender scene.
Thrice he essayed to embrace her, and thrice his arms closed on emptiness, while that ghostly presence still flitted before him like a shadow or a dream. "O my mother," cried Odysseus in deep distress, "why dost thou mock me thus? Come to my heart, dear mother; let me hold thee in mine arms once more, and mingle my tears with thine.
And so the merry feast came to an end with jesting, and mirth, and laughter; and after a few short hours they were to sit down to supper such a supper as they had never tasted before, with a hero and a goddess to spread the board. The Bow of Odysseus
They find it not, nor hast thou found it, Odysseus; and thy friends are dead; thy land is dead; nothing lives but Hope. But the life that lies before thee is new, without a remnant of the old days, except for the bitterness of longing and remembrance. Out of this new life, and the unborn hours, wilt thou not give, what never before thou gavest, one hour to me, to be my servant?"
And as when a man by a great fire burning takes a paunch full of fat and blood, and turns it this way and that and longs to have it roasted most speedily, so Odysseus tossed from side to side, musing how he might stretch forth his hands upon the shameless wooers, being but one man against so many. Then down from heaven came Athene and drew nigh him, fashioned in the likeness of a woman.
Past suffering is not always an evil, it is often an exciting reminiscence. It is good to take life adventurously, like Odysseus of old. What would one feel about Odysseus if, instead of contriving a way out of the Cyclops' cave, he had set himself to consider of what forgotten sin his danger was the consequence?
For even yesterday I told it to thee and to thy noble wife in thy house; and it liketh me not twice to tell a plain-told tale. Odysseus, sleeping, is set ashore at Ithaca by the Phaeacians, and waking knows it not. Pallas, in the form of a shepherd, helps to hide his treasure.
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