Epic poetry, Greek -- Translations into English; Homer -- Translations into English; Odysseus, King of Ithaca (Mythological character)
So soon as early Dawn shone forth, the rosy-fingered, anon Odysseus put
on him a mantle and doublet, and the nymph clad her in a great shining
robe, light of woof and gracious, and about her waist she cast a fair
golden girdle, and a veil withal upon her head. Then she considered of
the sending of Odysseus, the great-hearted. She gave him a great axe,
fitted to his grasp, an axe of bronze double-edged, and with a goodly
handle of olive wood fastened well. Next she gave him a polished adze,
and she led the way to the border of the isle where tall trees grew,
alder and poplar, and pine that reacheth unto heaven, seasoned long
since and sere, that might lightly float for him. Now after she had
shown him where the tall trees grew, Calypso, the fair goddess,
departed homeward. And he set to cutting timber, and his work went
busily. Twenty trees in all he felled, and then trimmed them with the
axe of bronze, and deftly smoothed them, and over them made straight
the line. Meanwhile Calypso, the fair goddess, brought him augers, so
he bored each piece and jointed them together, and then made all fast
with trenails and dowels. Wide as is the floor of a broad ship of
burden, which some man well skilled in carpentry may trace him out, of
such beam did Odysseus fashion his broad raft. And thereat he wrought,
and set up the deckings, fitting them to the close-set uprights, and
finished them off with long gunwales, and there he set a mast, and a
yard-arm fitted thereto, and moreover he made him a rudder to guide the
craft. And he fenced it with wattled osier withies from stem to stern,
to be a bulwark against the wave, and piled up wood to back them.
Meanwhile Calypso, the fair goddess, brought him web of cloth to make
him sails; and these too he fashioned very skilfully. And he made fast
therein braces and halyards and sheets, and at last he pushed the raft
with levers down to the fair salt sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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