Script for Tradition Presentation

Now when the roasts were cut, the
winebowls full,
A herad led the minstrel down the room
Amid the deference of the corwd, and
paused
to seat him neear a pillar in the center
]whereupon that resourceful man,
Odysseus,
Carved out a quarter from his chine of
pork,
Crisp with fat, and called the blind mans
guide:
Herald! Here, take this to Demodokos:
Let him feast and be merry, with my
compliments.
All men owe honor to the poets—honor
And awe, for they are dearest to the Muse
Who puts upon their lips the ways of life
Gentle Demodokos took the proffered gift
And inwardly rejoiced. When all were
served,
Every man’s hand went out upon the
banquet,
Repelling hunger and thirst, until at length
Odyssus spoke again to the blind minstrel:
Demodokos, accept my utmost praise.
The Muse, daughter of Zues in radiance,
Or else Appollo gave you skill to shape
With such great style your songs of the
Akhaians—
Their hard lot, how they fought and
suffered war.
You shared it, one would say, or heard it
all.
Now shift your theme, and sing that
wooden horse
Epeios built, insppird by Athena—
The ambuscade Odysseus filled with
frighters
And sent to take the inner town of Troy.
Sing only this for me, sing me this well,
And I shall say at once before the world
The grace of heaven has given us a song.
The minstrel stirred, murmuring to the
god, and soon
Clear words and notes came one by one, a
vision
Of the Akhains in their graceful ships
Drawing away from shore: the torches
flung
And shelters flaring: Argive soldiers
crouched
In the close dark around Odysseus: and
The horse, tall on the assembly ground of
Troy.
For when the Trojans pulled it in,
themselves,
Up to the citadel, they sat nearby
With long-drawn-out and hapless
argument—
Favoring, in the end, one course of three:
Either to stave the vault with brazen axs,
Or haul it to a cliff and pitch it down,
Or haul it to a cliff and pitch it down,
Or else to save it for the gods, a votive
glory—
The plan that could not but prevail.
For Troy must perish, as ordained, that day
She harbored the great horse of timber;
hidden
The flowr of Akhaia lay, and bore
Slaugter and death upon the men of Troy.
He sang, then, of the town sacked by
Akhaians
Pouring down from the horse’s hollow
cave,
Thi sway and that raping the steep city,
And how Odysseus came like Ares to
The door of Deiphobos, with MENELAOS,
AND BRAVED THE DESPERATE FIGHT
THERE—
CONQUERING ONCE MORE BY Athena’s
power.
The splendid minstrel sang it.
On the lost field where he has gone down
fighting
The day of wrath that came upon his
children.
At sight of the man panting and dying
there,
She slips down to enfold him, crying out;
Then feels the spears, prodding her back
and shoulders
And goes bound into slaverty and grief.
And odysseus
Let the bright molten tears run down his
cheeks,
Weeping the way a wife mourns for her
lord