When for noble Achilles their babe into sudden anger she burst.
For the mortal flesh of her child did the Goddess encompass aye
Through the midst of the night with flames of fire, and day by day
With ambrosia anointed his tender frame, to make him thereby
Immortal, that loathly eld might come not his body anigh.
But Peleus from slumber upstarted, and saw his beloved son
Gasping mid flame; and he sent abroad, as he looked thereon,
A terrible cry in his folly exceeding. She heard him, and whirled
The babe aloft, and screaming adown on the earth she hurled:
And herself like a breath of the wind, or a dream at the breaking of sleep,
Forth of the hall flitted swiftly, and into the sea did she leap
In her anger: and never thereafter returned she thither again.
Amazement fettered his soul: but, for all his ’wildered pain,
To his comrades he spake forth all the commands of his Goddess-wife.
So these in the midst brake off, and refrained from the athlete-strife;
And the meat of the eventide and the earth-strawn beds they dight,
Whereon, having supped, as aforetime they laid them and slept through the night.
When Dawn ’gan sprinkle the sky from her chalice of light overbrimming,
Even then, when the wings of the West-wind the face of the waters were skimming,
They went up from the strand, and they sat on the thwarts, and aboard they drew
Blithely the anchor-stones from the deep, and in order due
The rest of the tackling all they lashed, and the sail spread wide
On high from the yard-arm, straining it taut with the sheets of hide.
Onward the fresh breeze wafted the ship: full soon they beheld
A fair isle flower-bestarred, where the Siren Destroyers dwelled,
Acheloüs’ clear-voiced daughters, whose sweet songs wont to beguile
With their witchery whosoe’er cast anchor anigh that isle.
They were children whom lovely Terpsichorê, one of the Muses, bore
To the flood Acheloüs: and unto Dêmêter’s daughter of yore,
When she yet was unwedded, the noble Persephonê, ministered they,
As in blended chorus they sang: but as birds in the latter day
Were they fashioned in part to behold, and as maidens in part they were.
And aye keeping watch from the harbour-cliffs overbeetling their lair,
From many an one had they reft sweet home-return, whom they slew
With wasting consuming them. Lo, on a sudden to Argo’s crew
Pealed from their lips their clear-sweet voice. From the galley now
Were they even at point to cast the hawser ashore from the prow;
But Thracian Orpheus matched him against that demon choir,
And the hands of Oiagrius’ scion swept the Bistonian lyre;
And the march of the song o’er the rippling melody rang ever higher,
Till their ears were filled with the chiming and thrilled with the triumph of sound,
And the Sea-maids’ shrilling chant in the storm of the lyre was drowned.
On flitted the ship, by the West-wind borne and the sighing swell
Upleaping astern; and bootless the weird song failed and fell:—
Not bootless all, for that Teleon’s goodly son did leap
From the polished thwart, ere his comrades could stay him, into the deep,
Butes, whose soul was bewitched by the Sirens’ clear-ringing breath;
And he swam through the purple surge to tread that strand of death.
Doomed wretch!—full soon had they robbed him there of his home-return;
But for him did the Cyprian Lady of Eryx in pity yearn,
And she snatched him away from the swirling wave, and safe she bore
Of her grace to dwell on the height Lilyboean on Sicily’s shore.
So in anguish of spirit they left him: but perils worse than these
Awaited them—shipwrecking gulfs in the meeting-place of the seas.
For on this side Scylla’s smooth sheer crag up-towering loomed,
And on that side Charybdis seething in ceaseless thunder boomed;
And otherwhere, swung by the mighty surge, met clanging and crashing
The Wandering Rocks, where afront were the spurts of fire out-flashing
From the crests of the cliffs, o’er the crag red-glowing on high that burned.
And with smoke was the air all mistily shrouded: thou hadst not discerned
The beams of the sun. Then, albeit Hephaistus refrained from his toil,
With the hot uprushing steam did the sea yet bubble and boil.
Then Nereus’ daughters from this side and that side the heroes met,
And Thetis the Goddess her hand to the blade of the rudder set;
And onward amidst of the Wandering Rocks the ship haled they.
And as when o’er the face of a summer sea the dolphins play
Circling around a ship as she runneth before the wind,
One while in front of her stern beheld, one while behind,
And alongside anon: and the shipmen be blithe for their gambolling;
So darted they up from the depths, so circled, a glimmering ring,
Round Argo the ship; and Thetis was steering her course through all.
And when now was the galley at point on the Wandering Rocks to fall,
Straightway they kilted their skirts above their snowy knees,
And high on the crests of the skerries, the breaking of madding seas,
To this side and that side they sped, far ranged apart to stand.
Sea-cataracts crashed on her beam, fierce surges on either hand
Higher upsoaring and higher o’er the rocks were bursting and streaming;
And these now towered to the welkin, as mountain-crags in seeming,
And now, whelmed down the abyss, on the Ocean’s nethermost floor
Grounded they: over their crests did the triumphing rollers roar.
But the Nereïds, as maidens that flit to and fro on a sandy beach,
With parted gown-laps kilted about the waist of each,
Sport with a shapely rounded ball: one tosseth it on,
And her fellow receiveth; and high ’twixt heaven and earth is it gone
Sped from her hand to the welkin; and never it toucheth the ground,
So from one unto other’s hand passed on did the galley bound
Through the air o’er the crests of the waves as they sped her, clear alway
Of the rocks; and around her the water upbelching was seething aye.
And the Fire-king’s self on the ridge of a surf-lashed scaur was there,
While his sturdy hammer the weight of his massy shoulder bare.
Thence marvelling gazed Hephaistus: the bride of Zeus looked down
Where she stood in the sunlit heaven, and round Athênê had thrown
Her arms, in such faintness of fear, as she looked thereon, did
