Penelope

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Penelope is a character in "The World as Meditation," a poem which is told from her point of view.
Penelope was the wife of Odysseus /Ulysses. While her husband was away from Ithaca, fighting in the Trojan War (the events of which are retold in Homer's The Iliad ) and embarking on his epic journey back home (as chronicled in Homer's The Odyssey ), Penelope waited for him unfailingly. Rejecting her many suitors, anxious to convince her that her husband was dead, Penelope promised to decide among them only after she had finished weaving her mourning shroud, but each night she would secretly undo the progress she had made by day, and the garment was never finished. When Odysseus finally returned, he slayed all his rivals and reclaim his marriage bed with his ever faithful wife.
==Stevens' poem takes us inside Penelope's mind as, at the break of dawn, she mistakes the rising of the sun for the return of her "interminable adventurer." We learn how Penelope has prepared herself psychologically for their reunion, summoning her "barbarous strength." In her mind, they have already been reunited:==
It was Ulysses and it was not. Yet they had met, 
Friend and dear friend and a planet’s encouragement. 
The barbarous strength within her would never fail. 
She would talk a little to herself as she combed her hair,
Repeating his name with its patient syllables, 
Never forgetting him that kept coming constantly so near.