Poseidon

The sunbeams were playing

Lightly over the billowy ocean;

Far out at sea I saw shining the ship

That was to bear me homewards;

But the right wind as yet was wanting,

And tranquilly on the white sands I was sitting

By the lonely sea,

And I read the song of Ulysses,

That old, that ever youthful song,

From whose ocean-murmuring leaves

Rose joyfully

The breath of the gods,

And the sunny spring of mankind,

And the cloudless sky of fair Hellas.

My noble and faithful heart accompanied

The son of Laertes in toil and disaster:

It sat down with him, grieving in spirit,

At kindly hearths,

Where queens sat spinning deep rich purple;

It helped him to lie and to escape deftly

From giants' caves and from nymphs' white arms;

It followed him into Kimmerian night,

Through storm and through shipwreck,

And suffered with him unspeakable anguish.

Sighing said I, "Revengeful Poseidon,

Thy anger is awful,

And myself am afraid

Of my own return home."

Scarcely had I spoken the words,

When the sea foamed up high,

And from the white-crested billows arose

The head of the god, crowned with sea-weed,

And cried he, contemptuous:

"Fear not, my dear little Poet!

I've no intention to harm in the least

Thy poor little bark,

Nor frighten thee out of thy poor little wits

With too boist'rous a rocking:

For thou, little Poet hast never incensed me,

Thou never hast shaken the smallest turret

Of the holy city of Priam;

Nor hast thou singed e'en a single hair

From the eye of my son Polyphemus;

And never as yet has the Goddess of Wisdom

Pallas Athenae, stood counselling beside thee."

Thus cried out Poseidon,

And dived back into the ocean;

And at the vulgar old sailor's joke

I heard Amphitrite, the coarse fish-woman,

And the silly daughters of Nereus,

Giggling beneath the waters.