Penelope's Dream

Listen: interpret me this dream: From a water's edge
twenty fat geese have come to feed on grain
beside my house. And I delight to see them.
But now a mountain eagle with great wings
and crooked beak storms in to break their necks
and strew their bodies here. Away he soars
into the bright sky; and I cry aloud--
all this in dream--I wail and round me
gather softly braided Akhaian women mourning
because the eagle killed my geese.

Then down out of the sky he drops to a-cornice beam
with mortal voice telling me not to weep.
'Be glad,' says he, 'renowned Ikarios' daughter:
here is no dream but something real as day,
something about to happen. All those geese
were suitors, and the bird was I. See now,
I am no eagle but your lord come back
to bring inglorious death upon them all!'
As he said this, my honeyed slumber left me.
Peering through half-shut eyes, I saw the geese
in hall, still feeding at the self-same trough."