Which gathers more closely the petticoat
About her dainty loins.

But suddenly the door springs wide,
And in steps the nocturnal stranger
His eyes rest with confident love
On the slim, white maiden,
Who stands trembling before him,
Like a frightened lily.
And he flings his mantle to the ground
And laughs and speaks.
"Thou see'st my child! I keep my word.
And I come, and with me, comes
The olden time when the gods of heaven
Descended to the daughters of men,
And embraced the daughters of men,
And begot with them
A race of sceptre-bearing kings,
And heroes, the wonder of the world.
But thou my child, no longer stand amazed
At my divinity.
And I beseech thee, boil me some tea with rum,
For it is cold out doors,
And in such a night-air as this,
Even we, the eternal gods, must freeze.
And we easily catch a divine catarrh,
And an immortal cough."

V. POSEIDON.

The sunbeams played
Upon the wide rolling sea.
Far out on the roadstead glimmered the vessel
That was to bear me home.
But the favoring wind was lacking,
And still quietly I sat on the white down,
By the lonely shore.

And I read the lay of Odysseus,
The old, the eternally-young lay,
From whose billowy-rushing pages
Joyously into me ascended
The breath of the gods,
And the lustrous spring-tide of humanity,
And the blooming skies of Hellas.

My loyal heart faithfully followed
The son of Laertes in his wanderings and vexations,
By his side I sat with troubled soul,
On the hospitable hearth
Where queens were spinning purple.

And I helped him to lie and happily to escape
From the dens of giants and the arms of nymphs.
And I followed him into Cimmerian night,
Into storm and shipwreck,
And with him I suffered unutterable misery.

With a si