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 Pheacian 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 Pheacians, where it is decreed He shall o'erpass the boundary of his woes; But first, I think, he will have much to bear." He spoke, and round about him called the clouds And roused the ocean, wielding in his hand The trident, summoned all the hurricanes Of all the winds, and covered earth and sky At once with mists, while from above, the night Fell suddenly. The east wind and the south Rushed forth at once, with the strong-blowing west, And the clear north rolled up his mighty waves. Ulysses trembled in his knees and heart, And thus to his great soul, lamenting, said: "What will become of me? unhappy man! I fear that all the goddess said was true, Foretelling what disasters should o'ertake My voyage, ere I reach my native land. Now are her words fulfilled. Now Jupiter Wraps the great heaven in clouds and stirs the deep To tumult! Wilder grow the hurricanes Of all the winds, and now my fate is sure. Thrice happy, four times happy they, who fell On Troy's wide field, warring for Atreus' sons: O, had I met my fate and perished there, That very day on which the Trojan host, Around the dead Achilles, hurled at me Their brazen javelins! I had then received Due burial and great glory with the Greeks; Now must I die a miserable death." As thus he spoke, upon him, from on high, A huge and frightful billow broke; it whirled The raft around, and far from it he fell. His hands let go the rudder; a fierce rush Of all the winds together snapped in twain The mast; far off the yard and canvas flew Into the deep; the billow held him long Beneath the waters, and he strove in vain Quickly to rise to air from that huge swell