But Aias floated now on a galley’s plank,
Now through the brine with strong hands oared his path,
Like some old Titan in his tireless might.
Cleft was the salt sea-surge by the sinewy hands
Of that undaunted man: the Gods beheld
And marvelled at his courage and his strength.
But now the billows swung him up on high
Through misty air, as though to a mountain’s peak,
Now whelmed him down, as they would bury him
In ravening whirlpits: yet his stubborn hands
Toiled on unwearied. Aye to right and left
Flashed lightnings down, and quenched them in the sea;
For not yet was the Child of Thunderer Zeus
Purposed to smite him dead, despite her wrath,
Ere he had drained the cup of travail and pain
Down to the dregs; so in the deep long time
Affliction wore him down, tormented sore
On every side. Grim Fates stood round the man
Unnumbered; yet despair still kindled strength.
He cried: “Though all the Olympians banded come
In wrath, and rouse against me all the sea,
I will escape them!” But no whit did he
Elude the Gods’ wrath; for the Shaker of Earth
In fierceness of his indignation marked
Where his hands clung to the Gyraean Rock,
And in stern anger with an earthquake shook
Both sea and land. Around on all sides crashed
Caphereus’ cliffs: beneath the Sea-king’s wrath
The surf-tormented beaches shrieked and roared.
The broad crag rifted reeled into the sea,
The rock whereto his desperate hands had clung;
Yet did he writhe up round its jutting spurs,
While flayed his hands were, and from ‘neath his nails
The blood ran. Wrestling with him roared the waves,
And the foam whitened all his hair and beard.
Yet had he ‘scaped perchance his evil doom,
Had not Poseidon, wroth with his hardihood,
Cleaving the earth, hurled down the chasm the rock,
As in the old time Pallas heaved on high
Sicily, and on huge Enceladus
Dashed down the isle, which burns with the burning yet
Of that immortal giant, as he breathes
Fire underground; so did the mountain-crag,
Hurled from on high, bury the Locrian king,
Pinning the strong man down, a wretch crushed flat.
And so on him death’s black destruction came
Whom land and sea alike were leagued to slay.
Still over the great deep were swept the rest
Of those Achaeans, crouching terror-dazed
Down in the ships, save those that mid the waves
Had fallen. Misery encompassed all;
For some with heavily-plunging prows drave on,
With keels upturned some drifted. Here were masts
Snapped from the hull by rushing gusts, and there
Were tempest-rifted wrecks of scattered beams;
And some had sunk, whelmed in the mighty deep,
Swamped by the torrent downpour from the clouds:
For these endured not madness of wind-tossed sea
Leagued with heaven’s waterspout; for streamed the sky
Ceaselessly like a river, while the deep
Raved round them. And one cried: “Such floods on men
Fell only when Deucalion’s deluge came,
When earth was drowned, and all was fathomless sea!”
So cried a Danaan, seeing soul-appalled
That wild storm. Thousands perished; corpses thronged
The great sea-highways: all the beaches were
Too strait for them: the surf belched multitudes
Forth on the land. The heavy-booming sea
With weltering beams of ships was wholly paved,
And here and there the grey waves gleamed between.
So found they each his several evil fate,
Some whelmed beneath broad-rushing billows, some
Wretchedly perishing with their shattered ships
By Nauplius’ devising on the rocks.
Wroth for that son whom they had done to death,
He; when the storm rose and the Argives died,
Rejoiced amid his sorrow, seeing a God
Gave to his hands revenge, which now he wreaked
Upon the host he hated, as o’er the deep
They tossed sore-harassed. To his sea-god sire
He prayed that all might perish, ships and men
Whelmed in the deep. Poseidon heard his prayer,
And on the dark surge swept them nigh his land.
He, like a harbour-warder, lifted high
A blazing torch, and so by guile he trapped
The Achaean men, who deemed that they had won
A sheltering haven: but sharp reefs and crags
Gave awful welcome unto ships and men,
Who, dashed to pieces on the cruel rocks
In the black night, crowned ills with direr ills.
Some few escaped, by a God or Power unseen
Plucked from death’s hand. Athena now rejoiced
Her heart within, and now was racked with fears
For prudent-souled Odysseus; for his weird
Was through Poseidon’s wrath to suffer woes
Full many.
But Earth-shaker’s jealousy now
Burned against those long walls and towers uppiled
By the strong Argives for a fence against
The Trojans’ battle-onset. Swiftly then
He swelled to overbrimming all the sea
That rolls from Euxine down to Hellespont,
And hurled it on the shore of Troy: and Zeus,
For a grace unto the glorious Shaker of Earth,
Poured rain from heaven: withal Far-darter bare
In that great work his part; from Ida’s heights
Into one channel led he all her streams,
And flooded the Achaeans’ work. The sea
Dashed o’er it, and the roaring torrents still
Rushed on it, swollen by the rains of Zeus;
And the dark surge of the wide-moaning sea
Still hurled them back from mingling with the deep,
Till all the Danaan walls were blotted out
Beneath their desolating flood. Then earth
Was by Poseidon chasm-cleft: up rushed
Deluge of water, slime and sand, while quaked
Sigeum with the mighty shock, and roared
The beach and the foundations of the land
Dardanian. So vanished, whelmed from sight,
That mighty rampart. Earth asunder yawned,
And all sank down, and only sand was seen,
When back the sea rolled, o’er the beach outspread
Far down the heavy-booming shore. All this
The Immortals’ anger wrought. But in their ships
The Argives storm-dispersed went sailing on.
So came they home, as heaven guided each,
Even all that ‘scaped the fell sea-tempest blasts.
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