"If only, my friend," reserved Penelope exclaimed,
"everything you say would come to pass!
You’d soon know my affection, know my gifts.
Any man you meet would call you blest.
But my heart can sense the way it all will go.
Odysseus, I tell you, is never coming back,
nor will you ever gain your passage home,
for we have no masters in our house like him
at welcoming in or sending off an honored guest."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 19, lines 354-362. Penelope is full of doubt and despair when the disguised Odysseus predicts that her husband will return soon. She believes that he is never coming back. This passage is an example of dramatic irony – Penelope doesn’t realise that she is speaking to her husband, but the audience does.