Through tumbling billows and a war of wind.

“Now sunk the west, and now a southern breeze,

More dreadful than the tempest lash’d the seas;

For on the rocks it bore where Scylla raves,

And dire Charybdis rolls her thundering waves.

All night I drove; and at the dawn of day,

Fast by the rocks beheld the desperate way;

Just when the sea within her gulfs subsides,

And in the roaring whirlpools rush the tides,

Swift from the float I vaulted with a bound,

The lofty fig-tree seized, and clung around;

So to the beam the bat tenacious clings,

And pendent round it clasps his leather wings.

High in the air the tree its boughs display’d,

And o’er the dungeon cast a dreadful shade;

All unsustain’d between the wave and sky,

Beneath my feet the whirling billows fly.

What time the judge forsakes the noisy bar

To take repast, and stills the wordy war,

Charybdis, rumbling from her inmost caves,

The mast refunded on her refluent waves.

Swift from the tree, the floating mass to gain,

Sudden I dropp’d amidst the flashing main;

Once more undaunted on the ruin rode,

And oar’d with labouring arms along the flood.

Unseen I pass’d by Scylla’s dire abodes.

So Jove decreed (dread sire of men and gods).

Then nine long days I plow’d the calmer seas,

Heaved by the surge, and wafted by the breeze.

Weary and wet the Ogygian shores I gain,

When the tenth sun descended to the main.

There, in Calypso’s ever-fragrant bowers,

Refresh’d I lay, and joy beguiled the hours.

“My following fates to thee, O king, are known,

And the bright partner of thy royal throne.

Enough: in misery can words avail?

And what so tedious as a twice-told tale?”


BOOK XIII.


ARGUMENT.

THE ARRIVAL OF ULYSSES IN ITHACA.


Ulysses takes his leave of Alcinous and Arete, and embarks in the evening. Next

morning the ship arrives at Ithaca; where the sailors, as Ulysses is yet