Complete Works of William Morris, page 643
“So I spake; but that Godhead’s Glory she spake and answered again:
‘Of the deeds of toil and battle wilt thou for ever be fain,
Thou overbold, nor yield thee to the Gods that never die?
For this Thing never endeth, a bane for ever and aye.
Fierce, wild is she, and cruel, and not to be met in fight,
And nought may prevail against her: it is best to flee outright.
For if thou tarry to arm thee beside her rocky den
I fear lest she make an onrush and come against thee again,
And the clutch of her heads as aforetime on as many men shall be laid.
So drive on thy keel full swiftly, and call on Cratai’s to aid,
The mother of that Scylla, who for men that evil bore,
And thenceforward shall she stay her that she fall on nevermore.’
“‘Thence then shalt thou come to the Isle Three-horned, where a many they feed,
The neat of the Sun and his sheep-flocks, the mighty in the mead.
Seven herds of the beeves, and as many of the sheep-flocks goodly and fair,
And fifty in each, but no increase is gotten of them there,
Nor of them is any decrease: but their herds are Goddesses,
Phaethusa and Lampetie; and fair-haired nymphs are these,
And Neaera the holy bore them to the Sun the Rider Aloft:
And when their mother beworshipped had borne them and nourished them
Unto the Three-horned island she sent them aloof to dwell, [soft,
To guard the flocks of their father and his shambling oxen well.
Now if these thou leavest scatheless, and heedest thine homefare at all,
Unto Ithaca yet shall ye come whatever of trouble befal;
But if in aught ye scathe them, I bear witness of the bane
Of thy ship and all thy shipmen, and if thou escape shalt gain,
Late and evil shall be thy coming with thy company all gone.’
“So she spake, and amidst her speaking came Dawn of the Golden Throne,
And therewith the Godhead’s Glory up the island went her way,
And I to the ship and my fellows, my word on them to lay
Themselves to go a-shipboard and the hawsers loose to throw.
And therewith they went a-shipboard and sat down on the thwarts alow,
And beat the grey sea with their oar-blades as they sat in order there,
And Circe, awful Goddess of the man-speech, sweet of hair,
Sent after our ship the black-bowed a fair and following breeze,
Sail-filling, the best fellow of shipmen on the seas.
And so when all the tackling about the ship we had dight
We sat us adown, and the breezes and the rudder bore us aright.
“But therewith I spake to my fellows from a laden heart of woe:
‘O friends, it nought beseemeth that but one or two should know
The foretelling of the Goddess, and the thing that Circe saith,
So thereof I now will tell you, that ye too may be learned in death,
And how we may shun it and flee it, the death and the doom of the strong.
First then she biddeth us flee from the holy Sirens’ song,
And that fair flowery meadow of theirs to leave behind:
Me only she biddeth to hearken; me therefore shall ye bind
In bonds both strait and hard, and I steadfast there to abide
Set upright in the mast-step, whereto shall the cords be tied:
But if I bid you to loose me, and if I command or I pray,
Then bonds yet more and straiter upon me shall ye lay.’
“Now while all things I was telling to my folk and hiding nought,
That while exceeding swiftly fared on the ship well-wrought
Toward the island of the Sirens, and the breeze drave fair and well;
But now dropped all the breezes and a windless calm befel,
And the God did all the billows to sleep and slumber lay.
So therewith arose the shipmen, and struck the sails straightway,
And in the shiphold stowed them and sat down to the oars forthright,
And so with the shaven fir-wood they beat the water white.
Then piecemeal a loaf of wax I sheared with the whetted brass,
And that same with my sturdy hand I laboured, and brought it to pass
That it warmed; for my might constrained it, and the bright beams made it
The beams of the Sun, the King, the seed of the Rider Aloft. [soft,
Then one by one I anointed the ears of all my men,
And hand and foot they bound me in mine own ship there and then,
Upright in the step of the mast, and the rope-yarn thereto tied;
Then they sat and beat with their oar-blades the grey sea by our side.
“But when landward we drew so nearly as the sound of shout ye may hear,
As we ran on swiftly, they missed not the fleet ship drawing anear,
And shrilly-sweet about us the voice of song they woke:
“‘ Come hither, Odysseus bepraised, thou fame of Achaean folk,
Stay here thy ship beside us that our song thou may’st hearken today;
For never hereby hath any in a black ship wended his way
Ere the honey-sweet voice he had hearkened that forth from the mouth of
And then in joy he departeth, and many a thing he knows: [us flows;
For all the toil we wot of that erst in Troy the wide,
The Argives and the Trojans of God must needs abide;
Yea, all things that hereafter upon the Earth shall be.’
“Such words of their lovely voices they sped, but the heart in me
Was fain indeed of hearkening, and I bade men loose me away
With signs of nodding and frowning, but out on their oars they lay;
And up rose Perimedes and Eurylochus thereto,
And more bonds exceeding straitly about me did they do.
But when the ship we had driven past these and now no more
I could hear the sound of the Sirens and the song that their voices bore,
Then straight my trusty fellows did the wax from their ears away,
And therewithal they loosed me from the bonds that on me lay.
“But when we had left the island, a little afterward
A reek I saw and great billows, and the roar of the surf I heard.
Then fell their hands from the oar-hefts as they sat aghast with fear,
And all clashed as down we drifted, and the ship hung holden there,
Since now the oars long-reaching with the hands no more they plied.
Then up and down I traversed the ship my fellows to chide,
And with soothing words bespake them by each man standing anear:
“‘ O friends, no men unlearned in evil haps are here;
No greater bale is upon us than when in the Cyclops’ land,
In the hollow den he cooped us, with the very might of his hand.
But even thence we escaped by my valour and counsel and guile,
And of these things too shall we mind us, and tell the tale in a while.
But come now, e’en as I bid you, do all ye do aright,
And the heavy wash of the billows with your oar-blades do ye smite
As ye sit adown on the benches; and so Zeus give us the gain
That we shun the sheer destruction and escape the day of bane!
But this charge I give thee O helmsman, and lay it well to heart,
Since to rule the hollow ship with the rudder is thy part:
Drive thou the ship aloof through the reek and the wallowing sea,
And no less hug thou the rock, lest she slip away from thee,
And fall off yonder, and thuswise we drift upon harm and ill.’
“So I spake, and straight they hearkened and heeded my word and my will;
But nought I told them of Scylla, the all-unbearable bane,
Lest they perchance in their terror from the rowing might refrain,
And huddled all together beneath the deck should sit.
But that hard word of Circe nought I abode by it,
Whereas she straitly charged me nowise in arms to stand;
But I did on my noble war-gear, and two long spears in my hand
I gat and I bore, and onward to the foredeck did I go,
For I deemed that from there the first would that Rock-haunter show,
That Scylla who was biding for my fellows’ bale and bane:
But no sight of her I gathered, though mine eyes they toiled amain
To search the darkling rock-den inwards and all around.
So thuswise for our sorrow we sailed on through the sound,
Here Scylla: there Charybdis, the Holy, awfully
Drew in the salt-sea-water amid the wallowing sea;
But when aback she cast it, as a pot on a mighty fire
She would boil up, mingled together and ever from higher and higher,
On both the rocks high towering down fell the scattering foam.
But when the salt-sea-water again she swallowed home,
Then she showed within all mingled, and the rock roared terribly
All round about, and adown there the earth was plain to see
Black-sandy: then on my fellows came fear the deadly pale.
But while we gazed upon her foreboding utter bale,
Lo out of the hollow ship did Scylla catch away
Six men of their hands the mightiest, and the best in the battle-play;
And looking aback to my fellows along the ship the fleet
There nought of them I beheld, but above me their hands and their feet,
As they aloft were lifted; and they called and cried withal,
And cried by my name upon me the last and woeful call.
As the fisher sits on the headland with a rod that reaches long,
And unto the little fishes casts food for a guile and a wrong,
And the horn of an ox of the meadow he sendeth into the sea,
And so the fish all struggling aland there lifteth he,
E’en so were they lifted gasping into that rock-abode,
And there on the threshold she ate them still crying out aloud,
And reaching their hands unto me amid the wretched strife.
And that was the sight most piteous of all the sights of my life
Midst all my labours and troubles as I searched the ways of the sea.
“ But when the rock of Charybdis we had made a shift to flee,
And from Scylla, thence thereafter we came to the island fair,
The Isle of the God, and his kine wide-foreheaded are there,
And all the fat flocks a many of the Sun the Rider on High;
And so as we sailed the sea-flood in our black ship drawing anigh,
The lowing of neat I hearkened from the stalls, and withal I heard
The bleatings of the sheep-flocks, and into my mind came the word
Of Tiresias the Theban, the seer blind of sight,
And of./Eaean Circe, who charged me both outright
To flee away from the island of the man-delighting Sun;
So thus I spake to my fellows from a heart with grief undone:
“‘ Hearken my word, O fellows, for all the ill that ye bear
That Tiresias’ foretelling to you I may declare,
And the word of ^Eaean Circe, wherewith they bade outright
To flee the Isle of the Sun, who beareth men delight:
For there, said he, of all evils should the worst to us betide:
So drive the black ship, I bid you, beyond the island’s side.’
“So I said; but the hearts within them were broken as I spake,
And with a word unhappy did Eurylochus answer make:
“‘ Thou art overbold, Odysseus, and might abides in thee,
Nor are thy limbs for-wearied; all of iron must thou be,
Since thou wilt not suffer thy fellows, outworn with toil and sleep,
To go aland a little on this island of the deep,
Where with the sea around us fair supper we may dight;
But ever wouldst thou have us stray on through the hasty night,
And leave the isle to wander o’er the shadow-haunted sea.
Ill too are the winds of the night-tide, and the bale of ships they be;
How then might we escape it, our bale and our deadly doom,
If all unwares up”on us a blast of the wind should come
From the South, or the West hard-blowing, which most of all the winds
Will rend the ships asunder despite the King-Gods’ minds?
So now let us hearken the bidding of the dusky night, and abide,
And dight us here our supper adown by the swift ship’s side;
But at daybreak going a shipboard o’er the wide sea wend on our way.’
“So Eurylochus spake in suchwise, and the others said him yea,
But once again I, knowing the bane that the God would devise,
Set winged words before them, and bespake them in suchwise:
“‘ Eurylochus, I am alone, and great force ye lay on me,
But do all ye swear an oath, and most mighty let it be,
If we come on a herd of oxen, or a sheep-flock come our way,
No man in his fateful folly one head thereof shall slay,
Be it of kine or of sheep-kind, but in peace eat that ye have,
The meat that of her goodwill the deathless Circe gave.’
“So I spake, and thereto they hearkened and sware the oath that I bade;
But when of the oath and the swearing an end they now had made,
Then in the hollow haven the well-wrought ship did they moor
Anigh to a fair sweet water, and therewith went ashore,
And there in skilful fashion the meal of evening dight.
But when of meat and of drink they had quenched the longing outright,
Then fell they to remembrance, and their fellows they bewept,
The prey that Scylla devoured from out the ship’s womb swept;
And sleep fell on them weeping, and slumber on them lay.
“But in the third watch of the night, when the stars were shifting their way’
Then Zeus Cloud-gatherer stirred us a foul and furious wind,
Blent with a monstrous whirl-blast, and heaven with clouds did blind,
Confusing the earth and the sea-flood, and night from the’sky rushed down.
But when the Mother of Morning, Rose-fingered Daydawn, shone,
We beached the ship in a rock-den, and hauled her high therein
Where the nymphs were wont to be sitting, or the joy of dance would win.
And thereto I called an assembly wherein I spake the word:
“‘Friends, since in our ship swift-fleeting is drink and victual stored,
Do we from these beasts refrain us lest an evil fate we bear;
For these are the kine and the sheep of a God whom all men fear,
The Sun who beholdeth all things, and hearkeneth every deed.’
“So I spake, and their noble spirits unto my words gave heed;
But unlulling blew the South wind, and month-long no breeze at all
Rose up o’er the sea save the South and the Easterly wind withal.
Vet so long as for bread they lacked not, nor lacked for the ruddy wine,
Whereas they were fain of their life-days they held their hands from the kine.
But at last, when all the victual that lay in the ship was spent,
Egged on by need they wandered, and after the prey they went,
And fish and fowl and all thing that came to hand was dear,
And they fished with the crooked angles; for want their bellies did wear.
“Then up the isle I hied me unto the Gods to pray,
If yet some God among them would show me the homeward way;
So I came right up the island, and left my fellows behind,
And my hands I washed in a cranny that was sheltered from the wind
And prayed unto the God-folk that up in Olympus dwell.
And they shed sweet sleep on mine eyelids, and slumber on me fell.
“But Eurylochus in meantime stirred up the folk to ill:
‘ Hearken my words, O fellows, with evil laden still!
All manner of death is loathly to wretched men that die,
But to meet our?ate by famine is to end most wretchedly:
So come, and these beasts of the Sun, the best thereof let us drive
And slay them unto the Deathless, who in the wide heavens live,
And so unto Ithaca coming, and our fatherland of old days,
There then to the Rider Aloft, to the Sun a fair house shall we raise
And set gifts therein a many and goodly things of price.
But and if for his straight-horned oxen his wrath should yet arise,
And he will our ships to ruin and the Gods all with him be,
Yet better to perish gasping in the swallow of the sea
Than here in an isle deserted of life to be drained all dry.’
“So Eurylochus spake; and the others said yea in company,
And the best of the kine of the Sun they fell to driving now
From hard by; for no long distance from the ship of the dusky bow
Were the shambling kine a-feeding, wide-foreheaded and fair.
So now they stand around them and unto the Gods make prayer,
And from off a high-branched oak-tree the tender limbs they strip,’
For nought of barley was left them within the well-decked ship. [flayed,
But when they had hallowed and slaughtered, and the beasts withal had
Then they cut the steaks of the buttock which with fat they overlaid,
Wrapping it round twofolded and the raw flesh laying o’er;
And no sweet wine was left them on the holy roast to pour,
So they poured the water in worship and with fire the entrails dight.
But when they had burnt up the buttocks and tasted the inwards aright,
Then they cut up the rest into gobbets and spitted it fair and well.
“But in that very moment deep sleep from mine eyelids fell,
And adown to the fleet-faring ship and the side of the sea I hied,
But when on my way I drew nigh to the ship of the swelling side,
Then the roast and the fragrance of fat came up about me there,
And groaning, unto the Deathless, the Gods, I made jny prayer:
“‘Zeus Father, and all ye Happy, whose lifedays never wane,
