Kitap 9
Which broke the deep: their ship in part was fast,
1
Part hanging on the sea; their fates in doubt.
Fierce rage the waves till hemsReading saepit, Hosius. The passage seems to be corrupt. them in the land;
Nor Auster's force in frequent buffets spent
Prevails upon the shore. High from the main,
By seas inviolate, one bank of sand
Far from the coast arose; there watched in vain
The storm-tossed mariners, their keel aground,
No shore descrying. Thus in sea were lost
Some portion, but the major part by helm
And rudder guided, and by pilots' hands
Who knew the devious channels, safe at length
Floated the marsh of Triton loved (as saith
The fable) by that god, whose sounding shell'Scaly Triton's winding shell' ('Comus,' 873). He was Neptune's son and trumpeter.
All seas and shores re-echo; and by her,
Pallas, who springing from her father's head
First lit on Libya, nearest land to heaven,
(As by its heat is proved); here on the brink
She stood, reflected in the placid wave
And called herself Tritonis. Lethe's flood
Flows silent near, in fable from a source
Infernal sprung, oblivion in his stream;
Here, too, that garden of the Hesperids,
Its boughs all golden, where of old his watch
The sleepless dragon held. Shame be on him
Who calls upon the poet for the proof
Of that which in the ancient days befell;
But here were golden groves by yellow growth
Weighed down in richness, here a maiden band
Were guardians; and a serpent, on whose eyes
Sleep never fell, was coiled around the trees,
Whose branches bowed beneath their ruddy load.
But great Alcides stripped the goodly boughs
Of all their riches, left them poor and light,
And bore the shining fruit to Argos' king.
Driven on the Libyan realms, more fruitful here,
Pompeius Cnaeus. stayed the fleet, nor further dared
To Garamantian waves. But Cato's soul
Leaped in his breast, impatient of delay,
To pass the Syrtes by a landward march,
