When, still inventing crafts to circumvent, He made pretext, that I should only go And help convey his freight; but thought not so, For his intent was to have sold me there, And made good gain for finding me a year. Yet him I follow’d, though suspecting this, For, being aboard his ship, I must be his Of strong necessity. She ran the flood (Driven with a northern gale, right free, and good) Amids the full stream, full on Crete. But then Jove plotted death to him and all his men, For (put off quite from Crete, and so far gone That shore was lost, and we set eye on none, But all show’d heav’n and sea) above our keel Jove pointed right a cloud as black as hell, Beneath which all the sea hid, and from whence Jove thunder’d as his hand would never thence, And thick into our ship he threw his flash;[4] That ’gainst a rock, or flat, her keel did dash With headlong rapture. Of the sulphur all Her bulk did savour; and her men let fall Amids the surges, on which all lay tost, Like sea-gulls, round about her sides, and lost. And so God took all home-return from them. But Jove himself, though plung’d in that extreme, Recover’d me by thrusting on my hand The ship’s long mast. And, that my life might stand A little more up, I embrac’d it round; And on the rude winds, that did ruins sound, Nine days we hover’d. In the tenth black night A huge sea cast me on Thesprotia’s height, Where the heroë Phidon, that was chief Of all the Thesprots, gave my wrack relief, Without the price of that redemptión[5] That Phœnix fish’d for. Where the king’s lov’d son Came to me, took me by the hand, and led Into his court my poor life, surfeited With cold and labour; and because my wrack Chanc’d on his father’s shore, he let not lack My plight or coat, or cloak, or anything Might cherish heat in me. And here the king Said, he receiv’d Ulysses as his guest, Observ’d him friend-like, and his course addrest Home to his country, showing there to me Ulysses’ goods, a very treasury Of brass, and gold, and steel of curious frame. And to the tenth succession of his name He laid up wealth enough, to serve beside In that king’s house, so hugely amplified His treasure was. But from his court the king Affirm’d him shipp’d for the Dodonean spring, To hear, from out the high-hair’d oak of Jove, Counsel from him for means to his remove To his lov’d country, whence so many a year He had been absent; if he should appear Disguis’d, or manifest; and further swore In his mid court, at sacrifice, before These very eyes, that he had ready there Both ship and soldiers, to attend and bear Him to his country. But, before, it chanc’d That a Thesprotian ship was to be launch’d For the much-corn-renown’d Dulichian land, In which the king gave to his men command To take, and bring me under tender hand To king Acastus. But, in ill design Of my poor life, did their desires combine, So far forth, as might ever keep me under In fortune’s hands, and tear my state in sunder. And when the water-treader far away