Seven cities claimed blind Homer, dead,
Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread.

He follows his heart's desire, but having found what he sought he wanders round to everyone's door with his song and speech, so that all can admire the hero as he does, be proud of the hero as he is.

[I] begged for crumbs and morsels door to door...Plodding and dawdling around lanes.

"and as they walked along he sang "Tol-de-ri-de-oh!" at every step, he felt so gay."

Woe to him who has not begged!
There is nothing more exalted than to beg.
God begs. The Angels beg. Kings, Prophets, and Saints beg.

It was Homer who inspired the poet.

He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.

One must dare to show what he wants. You have to go and ask for things rather than wait for them to happen.

Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small. The priest begs God for grace, and the king begs something for something. Sometimes he begs the people for loyalty, sometimes he begs God to forgive him. No man in the world can have endured ten years without having begged God to forgive him.

There is no reason why I should run after a job. I'd have to stand up before the manager like a beggar, cap in hand, as sheepishly as if I were asking him to let me shine his shoes with my spit. In fact, usually it is less humiliating to beg for a meal than to ask for work. Can the skipper sail his bucket without sailors? Or can the engineer, no matter how clever he is, build a locomotive without workers? Nevertheless, the worker has to stand with his cap in hand and beg for a job. He has to stand there like a dog about to be beaten.

And while expecting me to be the more free I could be, he pushed me to my own corners, always asking for more. More freedom, more experiments, more noise, more trash, more, more.

"Once more, my gallant boys!" he cried:
"Three times! — you know the fable, — (I'll make it thirty," muttered he, "But I will lay the cable!")

Seven cities warred for Homer being dead,
Who living had no roofe to shrowd his head.

"Through steep, and sheer, and inaccessible,
through difficult and through impossible
places, they track him, and he flees the hunt
he has so often led, longing to cry out
to the pack behind him, "It's me! Actaeon!
Recognize your master!" But the words
betray him and the air resounds with baying.

...torn by their teeth, he makes
a sound no man would make and no stag either,
a cry that echoes through those well-know heights;
and kneeling like a supplicant at prayer,
he turns towards them pleading with his eyes,
as a man would with his hands."