and sleep takes hold of all, I lie on my couch, and shrewd cares, thick thronging about my inmost heart, disquiet me in my sorrowing.  Even as when the daughter of Pandareus, the nightingale of the greenwood, sings sweet in the first season of the spring, from her place in the thick leafage of the trees, and with many a turn and trill she pours forth her full-voiced music bewailing her child, dear Itylus, whom on a time she slew with the sword unwitting, Itylus the son of Zethus the prince; even as her song, my troubled soul sways to and fro.  Shall I abide with my son, and keep all secure, all the things of my getting, my thralls and great high-roofed home, having respect unto the bed of my lord and the voice of the people, or even now follow with the best of the Achaeans that woos me in the halls, and gives a bride-price beyond reckoning?  Now my son, so long as he was a child and light of heart, suffered me not to marry and leave the house of my husband; but now that he is great of growth, and is come to the full measure of manhood, lo now he prays me to go back home from these walls, being vexed for his possessions that the Achaeans devour before his eyes.  But come now, hear a dream of mine and tell me the interpretation thereof.  Twenty geese I have in the house, that eat wheat, coming forth from the water, and I am gladdened at the sight.  Now a great eagle of crooked beak swooped from the mountain, and brake all their necks and slew them; and they lay strewn in a heap in the halls, while he was borne aloft to the bright air.  Thereon I wept and wailed, in a dream though it was, and around me were gathered the fair-tressed Achaean women as I made piteous lament, for that the eagle had slain my geese.  But he came back and sat him down on a jutting point of the roof-beam, and with the voice of a man he spake, and stayed my weeping: 

’"Take heart, O daughter of renowned Icarius; this is no dream but a true vision, that shall be accomplished for thee.  The geese are the wooers, and I that before was the eagle am now thy husband come again, who will let slip unsightly death upon all the wooers.”  With that word sweet slumber let me go, and I looked about, and beheld the geese in the court pecking their wheat at the trough, where they were wont before.’

Then Odysseus of many counsels answered her and said:  ’Lady, none may turn aside the dream to interpret it otherwise, seeing that Odysseus himself hath showed thee how he will fulfil it.  For the wooers destruction is clearly boded, for all and every one; not a man shall avoid death and the fates.’

Then wise Penelope answered him:  ’Stranger, verily dreams are hard, and hard to be discerned; nor are all things therein fulfilled for men.  Twain are the gates of shadowy dreams, the one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory.  Such dreams as pass through the portals of sawn ivory are deceitful, and bear tidings that are unfulfilled.  But the dreams that come forth through the gates of polished