Ulysses and his Dog, illustration from the 1905 Riverside Press edition of The Odyssey, translated by William Cullen Bryant (The McCune Collection). In Homer’s poem, Odysseus returns home to find it has been overtaken by men in pursuit of his wife. His dog Argos is sleeping, old and neglected, on a pile of cow manure. Argos wakes and recognises his master, but is too weak to stand and greet him; he dies as Odysseus prepares his attack.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags, and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.
