This is from my favorite part of The Odyssey. (I've written the pronunciation for names in the parenthesis)
Penelope's Test.
Greathearted Odysseus(oh-dess-ee-us), home at last,
was being bathed now by Eurynome (your-ren-oh-me)
and rubbed with golden oil, and clothed again
in a fresh tunic and cloak. Athena(Aa-thee-nuh)
lent him beauty, head to foot. She made him
taller, and massive, too, with crisping hair
in curls like petals of wild hyacinth (hi-sin-th)
but all red-golden. Think of gold infused
on silver by a craftsman, whose fine art
Hepathestus (he-fess-tea-us) taught him, or Athena: one
whose work moves to delight: just so she lavished
beauty of Odysseus' head and shoulders.
He sat then in the same chair by the pillar,
facing his silent wife and said:
"strange woman
the immortals of Olympus made you hard,
harder than any. Who else in the world
would keep aloof as you do from her husband
if he returned to her from years of trouble,
cast on his own land for the twentieth year?
Nurse, make up a bed for me to sleep on.
her heart is iron in her breast."
Penelope
spoke to Odysseus now. She said:
"strange man,
if man you are...This is no pride on my part,
nor scorn for you-not even wonder, merely.
I know so well how you-how he-appeared
boarding the ship for Troy. But all the same...
make up his bed for him, Eurycleia. (your-eye-clee-uh)
Place it outside the bedchamber my lord
built with his own hands. Pile the big bed
with fleeces, rugs, and sheets of the purest linen."
With this, she tried him to the breaking point,
he turned on her in a flash raging:
"woman, by heaven you've stung me now!
Who dared to move my bed?
No builder had the skill for that-unless
a god came down and turned the trick. No mortal
in his best days could budge it with a crowbar.
There is our pact and pledge. Our secret sign,
built into that bed-my handiwork
and no one elses!
An old trunk of olive
grew like a pillar on the building plot,
and I laid our bedroom round that tree,
lined up the stone walls built the walls and roof,
gave it a doorway and smooth fitting doors.
Then I lopped off the silvery leaves and branches,
hewed and shaped that stump from the roots up
into a bedpost, drilled it, let it serve
as a model for the rest. I planned them all,
in laid them all with silver, gold and ivory,
and stretched a bed between-a plaint web
of oxhide thongs and dyed crimson.
There's our sign!
I know no more. Could someone else's hand
have sawed that trunk and dragged the frame away?"
Their secret! as she heard it told, her knees
grew tremulous and weak, her heart failed her.
With eyes brimming tears she ran to him,
throwing her arms around his neck and kissed him,
murmuring:
"Do not rage at me, Odysseus!
No one ever matched your caution! think
what difficulty the gods gave: they denied us
life together in our prime and flowering years,
kept us from crossing into age together.
Forgive me, don't be angry. I could not
welcome you with love on sight! I armed myself
long ago against frauds of men,
impostors who might come-and all those many
whose underhanded ways bring evil on!
But here and now, what sign could be so clear
and this of our own bed?
NO other man has ever laid eyes on it-
only my own slave, Actoris(ack-tor-iss), that mny father
sent with me as a gift-she kept our door.
You make my stiff heart know that I am yours."
Now from his breast into his eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.
