Odysseus’s Plea

A weary wine-dark sea, stirred

By our ship’s restless keel and prow

Were it not for a journey deterred

It’d live and die to never be ashore

And sheet itself in a mossy cowl;

And god-tampered soul drawn from the core

Flown by restless winds and pools so whirred

Sunk deep, in the mouth of the quake

And if his soul should the quake-god awake

The sea-laden tongue and disturbed

The sea god, so churn and mouth agape,

Then an intolerable temperance of breakers

We shall soon learn, will shave

With rage,—and rage so uncouth in shape

That hallowed lands and temples flood away;

Those exalted skies of Olympus

That are described on rolls of papyrus

Are now second to the vaulted waves

That curl out an Archean beach, or cape,

And drown those ceremonies we stoutly obey;

Those portent terrors peruse through the night

As the Fates declared through their sight

Is our malicious outcome, if we so come

To show blithe to the lotus-eaters

And succumb to stupor’d merriment

Will this be our journeys sum?

To cower to a rush of breakers

Despite our souls writhing at this contentment?

Those grey, thunderous, maligning clouds

Are deep and grave and loud—but men!

Tread we must, we must tread on them

To cross the borders of a ravenous descent;

We men of bronze, that Zeus has so housed,

That Poised Athena has shown is proud,

For though they have quarried

That our mortal years are ageless and storied,

We are not immortal in years,

We are not immortal in years!

We will be consumed a decade

In insufferable decadence

Men— let loose sweet shackles

And collect our scree of shambles

Steer home where we are loved and honest

Please, please, seize! resist! And spade

Yourselves from your graves, and loathe

Any carrying thought that desists the urge

Of carrying on towards home