The Odyssey, Book I, Lines 1-20

SPEAK, MEMORY--
                                        Of the cunning hero,
The wanderer, blown off course time and again
After he plundered Troy's sacred heights.

                                                         Speak
Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, 
The suffering deep in his heart at sea 
As he struggled to survive and bring his men home 
But could not save them, hard as he tried-- 
The fools--destroyed by their own recklessness 
When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,
And that god snuffed out their day of return.

                                   Of these things,

Speak, Immortal One,
And tell the tale once more in our time.

By now, all the others who had fought at Troy--
At least those who had survived the war and the sea-- 
Were safely back home. Only Odysseus 
Still longed to return to his home and his wife. 
The nymph Calypso, a powerful goddess--
And beautiful--was clinging to him
In her caverns and yearned to possess him.