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these latter that Emerson often comes close to him. Most widely known of Homer's epigrams is that reply of Telemachus to Antiochus in the Odyssey, which Pope has rendered:
True hospitality is in these terms expressed,To which the following couplet from “Woodnotes” seems almost like a continuation:
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,The wise man carries rest and contentment in his own mental life, and is equally himself at the Corona d'italia and on a western ranch; while the weakling runs back to earlier associations like a colt to its stable. But Homer is also Emersonian at times. What could be more so than Achilles's memorable saying, which is repeated by Ulysses in the Odyssey: “More hateful to me than the gates of death is he who thinks one thing and speaks another;” or this exclamation of old Laertes in the last book of the Odyssey: “What a day is this when I see my son and grandson contending in excellence!” It seems a long way from Dante to Emerson, and yet there are Dantean passages in “Woodnotes” and “Voluntaries.” They are not in Dante's matchless measure, but they have much
His hearth the earth,--his hall the azure dome;