And as the winds the black ship bore afar
Sudden the hero started from his sleep,
Swiftly unclosed his eyes, to see—perchance—
Smoke rise from his long-dreamed-of Ithaca—
Faithful Eumæus standing in the pen—
His white-haired father in the well-tilled field,
His father dear, who, on the mattock propped,
Stood gazing, gazing at the lessening ship—
His goodly son, who, leaning on his spear,
Stood gazing, gazing at the lessening ship—
And, leaping round his lord, with waving tail,
Argus his dog—Yea, and perchance his house,
His dear sweet home, wherein his faithful wife
Already laboured in the chattering loom.
He gazed again—a shapeless blot of black
He saw across the purpling waste of sea—
Cloud was’t or land?—It faded into air
E’en as Odysseus’ heart emerged from sleep.
Giovanni Pascoli’s sincerity of thought, truth of feeling, breadth of
sympathy, temperateness and restraint, mark him out as a poet in the
full sense of the word; and place him, artistically and morally, on
a higher plane than the decadents who represent Italy to the foreign
public.