Tell me, Muse, of the ship of many ways, which was driven
to far journeys. Many were they whose cities she saw
whose minds she learned of, whose lives she touched.
Many the pains she suffered in her spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for her life and the homecoming of her companions.
Even so, she could not save her companions, for grief
is hard and devours even the gods, and long was the day
before their homecoming. She could not save her companions,
but she preserved them and all others, fleeing from sheer destruction
to escape the sea and the fighting. Within the circling of the years
the very year in which the fates had spun for them their time
of homecoming: From some point here, goddess,
speak, and begin our story.