Then o’er the vessel raised the taper mast,

With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind;

And to the helm the guiding rudder join’d

(With yielding osiers fenced, to break the force

Of surging waves, and steer the steady course).

Thy loom, Calypso, for the future sails

Supplied the cloth, capacious of the gales.

With stays and cordage last he rigged the ship,

And, roll’d on levers, launch’d her in the deep.


Four days were pass’d, and now the work complete,

Shone the fifth morn, when from her sacred seat

The nymph dismiss’d him (odorous garments given),

And bathed in fragrant oils that breathed of heaven:

Then fill’d two goatskins with her hands divine,

With water one, and one with sable wine:

Of every kind, provisions heaved aboard;

And the full decks with copious viands stored.

The goddess, last, a gentle breeze supplies,

To curl old Ocean, and to warm the skies.


And now, rejoicing in the prosperous gales,

With beating heart Ulysses spreads his sails;

Placed at the helm he sate, and mark’d the skies,

Nor closed in sleep his ever-watchful eyes.

There view’d the Pleiads, and the Northern Team,

And great Orion’s more refulgent beam.

To which, around the axle of the sky,

The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye:

Who shines exalted on the ethereal plain,

Nor bathes his blazing forehead in the main.

Far on the left those radiant fires to keep

The nymph directed, as he sail’d the deep.

Full seventeen nights he cut the foaming way:

The distant land appear’d the following day:

Then swell’d to sight Phæacia’s dusky coast,

And woody mountains, half in vapours lost;

That lay before him indistinct and vast,

Like a broad shield amid the watery waste.


But him, thus voyaging the deeps below,

From far, on Solyme’s aërial brow,

The king of ocean saw, and seeing burn’d

(From Æthiopia’s happy climes return’d);

The raging monarch shook his azure head,

And thus in secret to his soul he said: