Canto 7Sole in the meadows of Thebes
Book 14. Book IX
Thou who controllest
Thou who controllest the wide-spuming Ocean and settest its paces,
Hear me, thou strong and resistless Poseidon, lord of the waters.
Dancing thy waves in their revel Titanic, tossing my vessel
5One to another, laugh from their raucous throats of derision,
Dropping it deep in their troughs till it buries its prow in the welter.
Comrades dear as the drops of my heart have been left when it rises,
Left in thy salt and lonely seas, and the scream of the tempest
Chides me that still I live, but I live and I yield not to Hades.
10Staggering on as one laughed at and buffeted, straining for shelter,
Hopes despairingly, so by the pitiless mob of thy billows
Seized the ship goes stumbling on and is wounded and blinded,
Seeming allowed to run through their ranks, but they mock at the
struggle,
15Seeming allowed to escape, but they mean it not. They are thy minions.
They are thy servants, thy nation, heartless and loud and triumphant,
God of the waters, ruthless Poseidon.
Sole in the meadows of Thebes
Sole in the meadows of Thebes Teiresias sat by the Dirce,
20Blind Teiresias lonely and old. The song of the river
Moaned in his ears and the scent of the flowers afflicted his spirit
Wandering naked and chill in the winds of the world and its greyness.
Silent awhile, then he smote on the ground with the stay of his
blindness,
25Calling “O murmuring waters of Dirce, loved by my childhood,
Waters of murmuring Dirce, flowers that were dear to the lover,
Then was your perfume a sweetness, then were your voices a carol;
Now you are dark to me, scents that hurt; you are dirges, O waters.
We are weary of sorrow,
30Sated with salt of human tears; and the thron`ed oppressor