第82章 BOOK XIV(6)

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.