Excerpt from The Odyssey of Homer, Books I.-XII: Translated Into English Verse, With Notes and Parallel Passages I began this translation more than five years ago, soon after my return from the Antipodes by a voyage round Cape Horn, the mon otony of which I sought to beguile by reading once more that poem of which it has been well said that it is, above all others, The Epic of the Sea. My first intention was to have confined myself to the four books, 1x.-x11., in which Ulysses tells his wondrous adventures to the king and court of Phaeacia, and holds his listening audience spell-bound with the glamour of his tale. Subsequently, I was induced to add the four preceding ones, which contain the narrative of the hero's departure from Ogygia, the destruction of his raft by the implacable Poseidon, the exquisite picture of N ausicaa and her companions washing their linen upon the banks of the teacian river, and the reception of Ulysses by Alcinous and Arete. Finally, as the love for my task grew with the increased proportions it had now assumed, I resolved to work even further backwards - to end, in short, with the beginning, and complete the first half of the poem with the four first books. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.