But come, accept our gifts, and join to pray

Great Neptune’s blessing on the watery way;

For his I am, and I the lineage own;

The immortal father no less boasts the son.

His power can heal me, and relight my eye;

And only his, of all the gods on high.’

“‘Oh! could this arm (I thus aloud rejoin’d)

From that vast bulk dislodge thy bloody mind,

And send thee howling to the realms of night!

As sure as Neptune cannot give thee sight.’

“Thus I; while raging he repeats his cries,

With hands uplifted to the starry skies?

‘Hear me, O Neptune; thou whose arms are hurl’d

From shore to shore, and gird the solid world;

If thine I am, nor thou my birth disown,

And if the unhappy Cyclop be thy son,

Let not Ulysses breathe his native air,

Laertes’ son, of Ithaca the fair.

If to review his country be his fate,

Be it through toils and sufferings long and late;

His lost companions let him first deplore;

Some vessel, not his own, transport him o’er;

And when at home from foreign sufferings freed,

More near and deep, domestic woes succeed!’

With imprecations thus he fill’d the air,

And angry Neptune heard the unrighteous prayer,

A larger rock then heaving from the plain,

He whirl’d it round: it sung across the main;

It fell, and brush’d the stern: the billows roar,

Shake at the weight, and refluent beat the shore.

With all our force we kept aloof to sea,

And gain’d the island where our vessels lay.

Our sight the whole collected navy cheer’d.

Who, waiting long, by turns had hoped and fear’d.

There disembarking on the green sea side,

We land our cattle, and the spoil divide;

Of these due shares to every sailor fall;

The master ram was voted mine by all;

And him (the guardian of Ulysses’ fate)

With pious mind to heaven I consecrate.

But the great god, whose thunder rends the skies,

Averse, beholds the smoking sacrifice;

And sees me wandering still from coast to coast,

And all my vessels, all my people, lost!