air Above me, while for the last time on earth They called my name in agony of heart. As when an angler on a jutting rock Sits with his taper rod, and casts his bait To snare the smaller fish, he sends the horn Of a wild bull that guards his line afar Into the water, and jerks out a fish, And throws it gasping shoreward; so were they Uplifted gasping to the rocks, and there Scylla devoured them at her cavern’s mouth, Stretching their hands to me with piercing cries Of anguish. ’Twas in truth the saddest sight, Whatever I have suffered and where’er Have roamed the waters, that mine eyes have seen.
“Escaping thus the rocks, the dreaded haunt Of Scylla and Charybdis, we approached The pleasant island of the Sun, where grazed The oxen with broad foreheads, beautiful, And flocks of sheep, the fatlings of the god Who makes the round of heaven. While yet at sea I heard from my black ship the low of herds In stables, and the bleatings of the flocks, And straightway came into my thought the words Of the blind seer Tiresias, him of Thebes, And of Aeaean Circè, who had oft Warned me to shun the island of the god Whose light is sweet to all. And then I said To my companions with a sorrowing heart:—