I chose my destiny to share:
Call up the valour in your souls
That made you thread Gætulian shoals,
Defy the Ionian main, and scape
The waves that buffet Malea’s cape.
’Tis not the palm that Mnestheus seeks:
No hope of victory fires his cheeks:
Yet O that thought!—but conquer they
To whom great Neptune wills the day:
Not to be last—make that your aim,
And triumph by averting shame.’
Onward with vehement zeal they bound:
Beneath them vanishes the ground:
The mailed ship labours with their blows:
Thick pantings all their members shake,
And parching heats their dry lips bake,
While sweat in torrents flows.
Accords them the success they seek:
For while Sergestus, blindly rash,
Drives to the rock his vessel’s head,
And strives the perilous pass to thread,
On jutting crags behold him dash!
Loud crash the oars with shivering shock:
The wedged prow hangs upon the rock.
With shout and scream up start the crew,
Condemned to halt where late they flew,
Ply steel-tipped poles and pointed staves,
And pick the crushed oars from the waves.
But joyous Mnestheus, made more keen
By vantage offering unforeseen,
With all his oars in rapid play
And winds to waft him on his way,
Darts forth into the shelving tides,
And o’er the sea’s broad bosom glides.
So all at once a startled dove,
Who builds her nest in rocky cove,
Bursts forth, and in her wild affright
Loud flaps her fluttering wings for flight:
Then launched in air, the smooth deep skims,
Nor stirs a pinion as she swims:
So Mnestheus: so his vessel flees
Along the residue of seas:
The very impulse of its flight
Conveys it on, how swift, how light!
And first Sergestus in the rear
He leaves, still struggling to get clear,
While vainly succour he implores,
And tries to row with shattered oars.
Chimæra nexts he puts in chase:
Her helmsman lost, she yields the race.
Cloanthus now alone remains
Just finishing the course;
Whom to o’ertake he toils and strains
With all ambition’s force.
The cheers redouble from the shore;
Heaven echoes with the wild uproar:
Those blush to lose a conquering game,
And fain would peril life for fame:
These bring success their zeal to fan;
They can because they think they can.
And now perchance with vessels paired
The rivals twain the prize had shared,
When with his palms to ocean spread
Cloanthus breathed a prayer, and said:
‘Ye Gods who o’er the deep have sway,
Whose watery realm I plough,
Before your altar in the bay
A milk-white bull I stand to slay,
Amerced in this my vow,
Cast forth the entrails o’er the brine,
And pour a sacred stream of wine.’
He said: there heard him ’neath the sea
The Nereid train and Panope,
And with his hand divinely strong
Portunus pushed the bark along:
Swifter than wind or shaft it flies
To land, and in the haven lies.
Proclaims aloud by herald’s call
Cloanthus victor of the day,
And wreaths his conquering brows with bay:
Three goodly bulls he bids him choose
(Such boon is given to all the crews)
With wine, and to his vessel bear
A silver talent, for its share.
The chiefs themselves receive beside
Rich gifts of more conspicuous pride:
A gold-wrought scarf of rare device
Upon the conqueror he bestows,
Around whose field meandering twice
A stream of Grecian purple flows:
Inwoven there the princely boy
Along the wooded hills of Troy
Is following on the flying deer
With eager foot and lifted spear,
So keen, his pants are all but heard:—
Down swoops the thunder-bearing bird,
And from the mountain bears away
In taloned claws the beauteous prey.
His aged guardians raise on high
Their hands: the fierce hounds bay the sky.
But he whose prowess in the race
Won for his bark the second place,
To him he gives a shirt of mail,
A three- piled work of golden scale,
Which from Demoleos’ breast he tore
Victorious once on Simois’ shore,
A garniture of glorious show,
Nor fitted less to ward a blow.
Beneath that burden staggering strain
Two stalwart squires of Mnestheus’ train,
Wherewith Demoleos erst endued
Troy’s scattered sons on foot pursued.
With caldrons twain the third is graced,
And silver bowls with figures chased.
Were moving stately through the crowd,
Each glorying in his several boon,
And wreathed with purple-bright festoon,
When lo! unhonoured and forlorn,
Scarce from the rock with effort torn,
One tier destroyed, ’mid gibes and jeers
His wavering bark Sergestus steers.
E’en as a snake that on the way
Some wheel has mangled as it lay,
Or passer-by with stone well aimed
Has left half-dying, crushed and maimed:
In slow retreat without avail
It strives its lengthening coils to trail:
One half erect the foe defies
With hissing throat and fiery eyes;
One, lame and wounded, backward holds
The surging spires and gathering folds:
So rows the bark on her slow way,
Yet sets her sail, and gains the
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