guide the raft along her course, and round With woven work of willow-boughs he fenced Her sides against the dashings of the sea. Calypso, gracious goddess, brought him store Of canvas, which he fitly shaped to sails, And, rigging her with cords and ropes and stays, Heaved her with levers into the great deep.
’Twas the fourth day. His labors now were done, And on the fifth the goddess from her isle Dismissed him, newly from the bath, arrayed In garments given by her, that shed perfumes. A skin of dark red wine she put on board, A larger one of water, and for food A basket, stored with viands such as please The appetite. A friendly wind and soft She sent before. The great Ulysses spread His canvas joyfully to catch the breeze, And sat and guided with nice care the helm, Gazing with fixed eye on the Pleiades, Boötes setting late, and the Great Bear, By others called the Wain, which, wheeling round, Looks ever toward Orion, and alone Dips not into the waters of the deep. For so Calypso, glorious goddess, bade That on his ocean journey he should keep That constellation ever on his left. Now seventeen days were in the voyage past, And on the eighteenth shadowy heights appeared, The nearest point of the Phaeacian land, Lying on the dark ocean like a shield.
But mighty Neptune, coming from among The Ethiopians, saw him. Far away He saw, from mountain-heights of Solyma, The voyager, and burned with fiercer wrath, And shook his head, and said within himself:—
“Strange! now I see the gods have new designs For this Ulysses, formed while I was yet In Ethiopia. He draws near the land Of the Phaeacians, where it is decreed He shall o’erpass the boundary of his woes; But first, I think, he will have much to bear.”
He spake, and round about him called the clouds And roused the ocean—wielding in his hand The trident—summoned all the hurricanes