Poseidon Wrecks the Raft

27He spoke, and round about him called the clouds
And roused the ocean —wielding in his hand
The trident —summoned all the hurricanes
Of all the winds, and covered earth and sky
At once with mists, while from above the night
Fell suddenly. The east wind and the south
Pushed forth at once, with the strong-blowing west,
And the clear north rolled up his mighty waves.
Odysseus trembled in his knees and heart,
And thus to his great soul, lamenting, said: —

28“What will become of me? unhappy man!
I fear that all the goddess said was true,
Foretelling what disasters should overtake
My voyage ere I reach my native land.
Now are her words fulfilled. How Zeus
Wraps the great heaven in clouds and stirs the deep
To tumult! Wilder grow the hurricanes
Of all the winds, and now my fate is sure.
Thrice happy, four times happy, they who fell
On Troy’s wide field, warring for Atreus’ sons:
O, had I met my fate and perished there,
That very day on which the Trojan host,
Around the dead Achilles, hurled at me
Their brazen javelins, I had then received
Due burial, and great glory with the Greeks;
Now must I die a miserable death.”

29As thus he spoke, upon him, from on high,
A huge and frightful billow broke; it whirled
The raft around, and far from it he fell.
His hands let go the rudder; a fierce rush
Of all the winds together snapped in twain
The mast; far off the yard and canvas flew
Into the deep; the billow held him long
Beneath the waters, and he strove in vain
Quickly to rise to air from that huge swell
Of ocean, for the garments weighed him down
Which fair Calypso gave him. But at length
Emerging, he rejected from his throat
The bitter brine that down his forehead streamed.
Even then, though hopeless with dismay, his thought
Was on the raft; and, struggling through the waves,
He seized it, sprang on board, and, seated there,
Escaped the threatened death. Still to and fro
The rolling billows drave it. As the wind
In autumn sweeps the thistles over the field,
Clinging together, so the blasts of heaven
Hither and thither drove it over the sea.
And now the south wind flung it to the north
To buffet; now the east wind to the west.