As she listened on, her tears flowed and soaked her cheeks
as the heavy snow melts down from the high mountain ridges,
snow the West Wind piles there and the warm East Wind thaws
and the snow, melting, swells the rivers to overflow their banks –
so she dissolved in tears, streaming down her lovely cheeks,
weeping for him, her husband, sitting there beside her.
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 19, lines 236-241. The disguised Odysseus tells Penelope a fictitious story of how he had a friendship with her husband who stayed with him at his home in Crete on his way to Troy. Penelope weeps at the mention of her husband’s name. A Homeric simile compares her tears to snow melting down from a high mountain ridge into the rivers, swelling them to overflow their banks. The irony is that Penelope is sobbing about her lost husband, who is right in front of her! An article in The New Yorker magazine by Emily Wilson says of this scene: "In one of the most upsetting and beautiful passages of the poem, Penelope cries so desperately that her very being seems to dissolve."