Homer's Poseidon (aka Neptune)
Homer's Odyssey
But now the god of earthquake, storming home
"Here is a pretty cruise! While I was gone with both hands on his trident- called up wind from every quarter, and sent a wall of rain to blot out land and sea in torrential night. Hurricane winds now struck from the South and East shifting North West in a great spume of seas, on which Odysseus' knees grew slack, his heart sickened, and he said within himself: "Rag of man that I am, is this the end of me? I fear the goddess told it all too well- predicting great adversity at sea and far from home. Now all things bear her out: the whole rondure of heaven hooded so by Zeus in woeful cloud, and the sea raging under such winds. I am going down, that's sure. How lucky those Danaans were who perished on Troy's wide seaboard, serving the Atreidai! Would God I, too, had died there- met my end that time the Trojans made so many casts at me when I stood by Akhilleus after death. I should have had a soldier's burial and praise from the Akhaians- not this choking waiting for me at sea, unmarked and lonely." A great wave drove at him with toppling crest spinning him round, in one tremendous blow, and he went plungng overboard, the oar-haft wrenched from his grip. A gust that come on howling at the same instant broke his mast in two, hurling his yard and sail far out to leeward. Now the big wave a long time kept him under, helpless to surface, held by tons of water, tangled, too, by the seacloak of Kalypso. Long, long, until he came up spouting brine, with streamlets gushing from his head and beard; but still bethought him, half-drowned as he was, to flounder for the boat and get a handhold into the bilge- to crouch there, foiling death. Across the foaming water, to and fro, the boat careered like a ball of tumbleweed blown on the autumn plains, but intact still. So the winds drove this wreck over the deep, East Wind and North Wind, then South Wind and West, coursing each in turn to the brutal harry. -Robert Fitzgerald translation
|