The yawning dungeon, and the tumbling flood;

When lo! fierce Scylla stoop’d to seize her prey,

Stretch’d her dire jaws, and swept six men away.

Chiefs of renown! loud-echoing shrieks arise;

I turn, and view them quivering in the skies;

They call, and aid with outstretch’d arms implore;

In vain they call! those arms are stretch’d no more.

As from some rock that overhangs the flood

The silent fisher casts the insidious food,

With fraudful care he waits the finny prize,

And sudden lifts it quivering to the skies:

So the foul monster lifts her prey on high,

So pant the wretches struggling in the sky;

In the wide dungeon she devours her food,

And the flesh trembles while she churns the blood.

Worn as I am with griefs, with care decay’d,

Never, I never scene so dire survey’d!

My shivering blood, congeal’d, forgot to flow;

Aghast I stood, a monument of woe!


“Now from the rocks the rapid vessel flies,

And the hoarse din like distant thunder dies;

To Sol’s bright isle our voyage we pursue,

And now the glittering mountains rise to view.

There, sacred to the radiant god of day,

Graze the fair herds, the flocks promiscuous stray:

Then suddenly was heard along the main

To low the ox, to bleat the woolly train.

Straight to my anxious thoughts the sound convey’d

The words of Circe and the Theban shade;

Warn’d by their awful voice these shores to shun,

With cautious fears oppress’d I thus begun:


“‘O friends! O ever exercised in care!

Hear Heaven’s commands, and reverence what ye hear!

To fly these shores the prescient Theban shade

And Circe warn! Oh be their voice obey’d;

Some mighty woe relentless Heaven forebodes:

Fly these dire regions, and revere the gods!’


“While yet I spoke, a sudden sorrow ran

Through every breast, and spread from man to man,

Till wrathful thus Eurylochus began:


“‘O cruel thou! some Fury sure has steel’d

That stubborn soul, by toil untaught to yield!