Katha 156

Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments:

Death carries off a man who is gathering flowers and whose mind is distracted, as a flood carries off a sleeping village.

“Before thy presence, father, I appear, With conscious shame and reverential fear. Ah! had I died, ere to these walls I fled, False to my country, and my nuptial bed; My brothers, friends, and daughter left behind, False to them all, to Paris only kind! For this I mourn, till grief or dire disease Shall waste the form whose fault it was to please! The king of kings, Atrides, you survey, Great in the war, and great in arts of sway: My brother once, before my days of shame! And oh! that still he bore a brother’s name!”

Then Telemachus said, “Eurymachus, and you other suitors, I shall say no more, and entreat you no further, for the gods and the people of Ithaca now know my story. Give me, then, a ship and a crew of twenty men to take me hither and thither, and I will go to Sparta and to Pylos in quest of my father who has so long been missing. Some one may tell me something, or (and people often hear things in this way) some heaven-sent message may direct me. If I can hear of him as alive and on his way home I will put up with the waste you suitors will make for yet another twelve months. If on the other hand I hear of his death, I will return at once, celebrate his funeral rites with all due pomp, build a barrow to his memory, and make my mother marry again.”