Elpenor

Among them all the youngest was Elpenor—no mainstay in a fight nor very clever—and this one, having climbed on Kirke’s roof to taste the cool night, fell asleep with wine.

Now when I saw him there I wept for pity and called out to him: ‘How is this, Elpenor, how could you journey to the western gloom swifter afoot than I in the black lugger?’

When the young Dawn with finger tips of rose made heaven bright, I sent shipmates to bring Elpenor’s body from the house of Kirke.

One shade came first—Elpenor, of our company, who lay unburied still on the wide earth as we had left him—dead in Kirke’s hall, untouched, unmourned, when other cares compelled us.

Many others came and conversed with him; but at last he was forced to depart, and return to Ææa, where he lingered to perform the funeral rites for Elpenor,—one of his followers, a youth who had fallen asleep on one of the palace turrets, and by an inadvertent movement had fallen to the ground, where he had been found dead.