Adrift Off a Rocky Coast

37But Athena, child of Zeus, had other thoughts.
She stayed the course of every wind beside,
And bade them rest, and lulled them into sleep,
But summoned the swift north to break the waves,
That so Odysseus, the highborn, escaped
From death and from the fates, might be the guest
Of the Phaeacians —men who love the sea.
Two days and nights among the mighty waves
He floated, oft his heart foreboding death.
But when the bright-haired Eos had fulfilled
The third day’s course, and all the winds were laid,
And calm was on the watery waste, he saw
That land was near, as, lifted on the crest
Of a huge swell, he looked with sharpened sight;
And as a father’s life preserved makes glad
His children’s hearts, when long time he has lain
Sick, wrung with pain, and wasting by the power
Of some malignant genius, till at length
The gracious gods bestow a welcome cure,
So welcome to Odysseus was the sight
Of woods and fields. By swimming on he thought
To climb and tread the shore; but when he drew
So near that one who shouted could be heard
From land, the sound of ocean on the rocks
Came to his ear —for there huge breakers roared
And spouted fearfully, and all around
Was covered with the sea-foam. Haven here
Was none for ships, nor sheltering creek, but shores
Beetling from high, and crags and walls of rock.
Odysseus trembled both in knees and heart,
And thus to his great soul, lamenting, said: —

38“Now woe is me! as soon as Zeus has shown
What I had little hoped to see, the land,
And I through all these waves have ploughed my way,
I find no issue from the hoary deep.
For sharp rocks border it, and all around
Roar the wild surges; slippery cliffs arise
Close to deep gulfs, and footing there is none
Where I might plant my steps and thus escape.
All effort now were fruitless to resist
The mighty billow hurrying me away
To dash me on the pointed rocks. If yet
I strive, by swimming further, to descry
Some sloping shore or harbor of the isle,
I fear the tempest, lest it hurl me back,
Heavily groaning, to the fishy deep;
Or huge sea-monster, from the multitude
Which sovereign Amphitrite feeds, be sent
Against me by some god —for well I know
The power who shakes the shores is wroth with me.”