Swiftly upsprang they, ere their king's command Was fully spoken. Mightily moaned the sea As they rushed o'er it; waves like mountain-cliffs From all sides were uprolled. The Achaeans' hearts Were terror-palsied, as the uptowering surge Now swung the ships up high through palling mist, Now hurled them rolled as down a precipice To dark abysses. Up through yawning deeps Some power resistless belched the boiling sand From the sea's floor. Tossed in despair, fear-dazed, Men could not grasp the oar, nor reef the sail About the yard-arm, howsoever fain, Ere the winds rent it, could not with the sheets Trim the torn canvas, buffeted so were they By ruining blasts. The helmsman had no power To guide the rudder with his practised hands, For those ill winds hurled all confusedly.
No hope of life was left them: blackest night, Fury of tempest, wrath of deathless Gods, Raged round them. Still Poseidon heaved and swung The merciless sea, to work the heart's desire Of his brother's glorious child; and she on high Stormed with her lightnings, ruthless in her rage.
Thundered from heaven Zeus, in purpose fixed To glorify his daughter. All the isles And mainlands round were lashed by leaping seas Nigh to Euboea, where the Power divine Scourged most with unrelenting stroke on stroke The Argives. Groan and shriek of perishing men Rang through the ships; started great beams and snapped With ominous sound, for ever ship on ship With shivering timbers crashed. With hopeless toil Men strained with oars to thrust back hulls that reeled Down on their own, but with the shattered planks Were hurled into the abyss, to perish there By pitiless doom; for beams of foundering ships From this, from that side battered out their lives, And crushed were all their bodies wretchedly.
Some in the ships fell down, and like dead men Lay there; some, in the grip of destiny, Clinging to oars smooth-shaven, tried to swim;
Some upon planks were tossing. Roared the surge From fathomless depths: it seemed as though sea, sky, And land were blended all confusedly.
Still from Olympus thundering Atrytone Wielded her Father's power unshamed, and still The welkin shrieked around. Her ruin of wrath Now upon Aias hurled she: on his ship Dashed she a thunderbolt, and shivered it Wide in a moment into fragments small, While earth and air yelled o'er the wreck, and whirled And plunged and fell the whole sea down thereon.
They in the ship were all together flung Forth: all about them swept the giant waves, Round them leapt lightnings flaming through the dark.
Choked with the strangling surf of hissing brine, Gasping out life, they drifted o'er the sea.
But even in death those captive maids rejoiced, As some ill-starred ones, clasping to their breasts Their babes, sank in the sea; some flung their arms Round Danaans' horror-stricken heads, and dragged These down with them, so rendering to their foes Requital for foul outrage down to them.
And from on high the haughty Trito-born Looked down on all this, and her heart was glad.
But Aias floated now on a galley's plank, Now through the brine with strong hands oared his path, Like some old Titan in his tireless might.
Cleft was the salt sea-surge by the sinewy hands Of that undaunted man: the Gods beheld And marvelled at his courage and his strength.
But now the billows swung him up on high Through misty air, as though to a mountain's peak, Now whelmed him down, as they would bury him In ravening whirlpits: yet his stubborn hands Toiled on unwearied. Aye to right and left Flashed lightnings down, and quenched them in the sea;
For not yet was the Child of Thunderer Zeus Purposed to smite him dead, despite her wrath, Ere he had drained the cup of travail and pain Down to the dregs; so in the deep long time Affliction wore him down, tormented sore On every side. Grim Fates stood round the man Unnumbered; yet despair still kindled strength.
He cried: "Though all the Olympians banded come In wrath, and rouse against me all the sea, I will escape them!" But no whit did he Elude the Gods' wrath; for the Shaker of Earth In fierceness of his indignation marked Where his hands clung to the Gyraean Rock, And in stern anger with an earthquake shook Both sea and land. Around on all sides crashed Caphereus' cliffs: beneath the Sea-king's wrath The surf-tormented beaches shrieked and roared.
