The Bear, surnam’d the Wain, that round doth move About Orion, and keeps still above The billowy ocean; the slow-setting star Bootes call’d, by some the Waggoner. Calypso warn’d him he his course should steer Still to his left hand. Seventeen days did clear The cloudy night’s command in his moist way, And by the eighteenth light he might display The shady hills of the Phæacian shore, For which, as to his next abode, he bore. The country did a pretty figure yield, And look’d from off the dark seas like a shield. Imperious Neptune, making his retreat From th’ Æthiopian earth, and taking seat Upon the mountains of the Solymi, From thence, far off discov’ring, did descry Ulysses his fields ploughing. All on fire The sight straight set his heart, and made desire Of wreak run over, it did boil so high. When, his head nodding; “O impiety,” He cried out, “now the Gods’ inconstancy Is most apparent, alt’ring their designs Since I the Æthiops saw, and here confines To this Ulysses’ fate his misery. The great mark, on which all his hopes rely, Lies in Phæacia. But I hope he shall Feel woe at height, ere that dead calm befall.” This said; he, begging, gather’d clouds from land,[4] Frighted the seas up, snatch’d into his hand His horrid trident, and aloft did toss, Of all the winds, all storms he could engross, All earth took into sea with clouds, grim Night Fell tumbling headlong from the cope of light, The East and South winds justled in the air, The violent Zephyr, and North making-fair, Roll’d up the waves before them. And then bent Ulysses’ knees, then all his spirit was spent. In which despair, he thus spake: “Woe is me! What was I born to, man of misery! Fear tells me now, that, all the Goddess said, Truth’s self will author, that Fate would be paid Grief’s whole sum due from me, at sea, before I reach’d the dear touch of my country’s shore. With what clouds Jove heav’n’s heighten’d forehead binds! How tyrannize the wraths of all the winds! How all the tops he bottoms with the deeps, And in the bottoms all the tops he steeps! Thus dreadful is the presence of our death. Thrice four times blest were they that sunk beneath Their fates at Troy, and did to nought contend But to renown Atrides with their end! I would to God, my hour of death and fate That day had held the’ pow’r to terminate, When show’rs of darts my life bore undepress’d About divine Æacides deceas’d! Then had I been allotted to have died, By all the Greeks with fun’rals glorified, (Whence death, encouraging good life, had grown) Where now I die, by no man mourn’d nor known.” This spoke, a huge wave took him by the head, And hurl’d him o’er board; ship and all it laid Inverted quite amidst the waves, but he Far off from her sprawl’d, strow’d about the sea, His stern still holding broken off, his mast Burst in the midst, so horrible a blast Of mix’d winds struck it. Sails and sail-yards fell Amongst the billows; and himself did dwell A long time under water, nor could get