Homer, Homer on the range...

Reading this -

"Odysseus, who would give anything for the mere sight of the smoke rising up from his own land..." -- Homer, The Odyssey

I'm reminded of this -

Translation From Du Bellay by GK Chesterton

Happy, who like Ulysses or that lord
Who raped the fleece, returning full and sage,
With usage and the world's wide reason stored,
With his own kin can wait the end of age.
When shall I see, when shall I see, God knows!
My dear little village smoke; or pass the door,
The old dear door of that unhappy house
That is to me a kingdom and much more?
Mightier to me the house my fathers made
Than your audacious heads, O Halls of Rome!
More than immortal marbles undecayed,
The thin sad slates that cover up my home;
More than your Tiber is my Loire to me,
Than Palatine my little Lyre there;
And more than all the winds of all the sea
The quiet kindness of the Angevin air.

Also, this I like:

"There, full of vermin, lay Argus the hound. But directly he became aware of Odysseus' presence, he wagged his tail and dropped his ears, though he lacked the strength now to come nearer to his master. Odysseus turned his eyes away, and, making sure Eumaeus did not notice, brushed away a tear....As for Argus, the black hand of Death descended on him the moment he caught sight of Odysseus - after twenty years."

I love that Odysseus's dog is named in The Odyssey! Though I would have edited the name from Argus to Bravo.