loose the ponderous beams. To one of these, Ulysses, clinging fast, Bestrode it, like a horseman on his steed; And now he took the garments off, bestowed By fair Calypso, binding round his breast The veil, and forward plunged into the deep, With palms outspread, prepared to swim. Meanwhile Neptune beheld him—Neptune, mighty king— And shook his head, and said within himself:—
“Go thus, and laden with mischances roam The waters till thou come among the race Cherished by Jupiter, but well I deem Thou wilt not find thy share of suffering light.”
Thus having said he urged his coursers on, With their fair-flowing manes, until he came To Aegae, where his glorious palace stands.
But Pallas, child of Jove, had other thoughts. She stayed the course of every wind beside, And bade them rest, and lulled them into sleep, But summoned the swift north to break the waves, That so Ulysses, the highborn, escaped From death and from the fates, might be the guest Of the Phaeacians—men who love the sea. Two days and nights among the mighty waves He floated, oft his heart foreboding death. But when the bright-haired Eos had fulfilled The third day’s course, and all the winds were laid, And calm was on the watery waste, he saw That land was near, as, lifted on the crest Of a huge swell, he looked with sharpened sight; And as a father’s life preserved makes glad His children’s hearts, when long time he has lain Sick, wrung with pain, and wasting by the power Of some malignant genius, till at length The gracious gods bestow a welcome cure, So welcome to Ulysses was the sight Of woods and fields. By swimming on he thought To climb and tread the shore; but when he drew So near that one who shouted could be heard From land, the sound of ocean on the rocks Came to his ear—for there huge breakers roared And spouted fearfully, and all around Was covered with the sea-foam. Haven here Was none for ships, nor sheltering creek, but shores Beetling from high, and crags and walls of rock. Ulysses trembled both in knees and heart, And thus to his great soul, lamenting, said:—