Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/133

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THE RECOGNITION BY PENELOPE.
123
Through perils without number now have reached;To this the short remaining watch, that yetOur senses have to wake, refuse not proofOf the unpeopled world, following the trackOf Phœbus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang: Ye were not formed to live the life of brutes,But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.'With these few words I sharpened for the voyageThe mind of my associates, that I thenCould scarcely have withheld them. To the dawnOur poop we turned, and for the witless flightMade our oars wings,[1] still gaining on the left.Each star of the other pole night now beheld,And ours so low, that from the ocean floorIt rose not. Five times re-illumed, as oftVanished the light from underneath the moon, Since the deep way we entered, when from farAppeared a mountain dim, loftiest methoughtOf all I e'er beheld. Joy seized us straight;But soon to mourning changed. From the new landA whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost sideDid strike the vessel. Thrice it whirled her roundWith all the waves; the fourth time lifted upThe poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed:And over us the booming billow closed."—Inferno, xxvi. (Cary's transl.)

Thus also Mr Tennyson—drawing from Dante not less happily than he so often does from Homer—makes his Ulysses resign the idle sceptre into the hands of the home-keeping Telemachus, and tempt the seas once more in quest of new adventures:—

"There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,That ever with a frolic welcome tookThe thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
  1. ↑ The metaphor is Homer's, Odyss. xi. 124.
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