Thou valiant retreating heart! How oft, how bitter-oft, wast thou Hard press’d by the Northern barbarian women From large victorious eyes Shot they their burning arrows; With words both crooked and polish’d They threatened to cleave my breast, With cuniform billets-doux harass’d they My poor distracted brain-- In vain I held my shield to resist them, The arrows whizz’d and the blows crash’d heavily, And by the Northern barbarian women Back to the sea was I driven, And freely breathing I hailèd the sea, The darling life-saving sea, Thalatta! Thalatta!
Heavily lies on the ocean the storm, And through the darksome wall of clouds Quivers the forkèd lightning flash, Suddenly gleaming and suddenly vanishing, Like a thought from the head of Cronion. Over the desert, far-heaving water Afar the thunders are rolling, The snowy billowy horses are springing, Which Boreas’ self did engender Out of the beautiful mares of Erichton, And the seafowl are mournfully fluttering, Like shadowy corpses by Styx, By Charon repulsed from his desolate bark.
Poor, but merry little ship, Yonder dancing the strangest dance! Æolus sends it his briskest attendants, Who wildly strike up for the frolicsome dance; The one is piping, another is blowing, The third is beating the hollow double-bass-- And the staggering sailor stands at the rudder, And on the compass is steadily looking, That trembling soul of the vessel, And raises his hands in entreaty to heaven; “O rescue me, Castor, thou hero gigantic, And thou, knight of the ring, Polydeuces!”
Hope and love! All crumbled to atoms, And I myself, like to a corpse Thrown up by the growling sea, Lie on the strand, The dreary, naked strand. Before me, the watery waste is heaving Behind me lie but sorrow and misery, And over me high are passing the clouds, The formless grey-hued daughters of air, Who out of the sea, in misty buckets, Draw up the water, And wearily drag it and drag it, Then spill it again in the sea, A mournful and tedious business, And useless as e’en my own life. The billows murmur, the sea-mews are screaming, Olden remembrances over me drift, Dreams long forgotten and images perish’d, Painfully sweet come to light.
In the North a woman is living, A beauteous woman, royally fair. Her slender figure, like a tall cypress, By an alluring white robe is embraced; Her dark and flowing tresses, Like to a blissful night, are streaming Down from her lofty, braid-crownèd head, And dreamily-sweetly form ringlets Over her sweet pale face; And out of her sweet pale face, Large and o’erpowering, beams an eye Like a black sun in radiance.