thy ship, that thou mayest listen to our song.
Never has any man driven his ship past our island
Till he has heard our voices, sweet as the honeycomb;
Gladly he has heard, and wiser has he gone on his way.
Hither, come hither, for we know all things,
All that the Greeks wrought and endured in Troyland,
All that shall hereafter be upon the fruitful earth.'

Thus they sang, offering Ulysses all knowledge and wisdom, which they
knew that he loved more than anything in the world. To other men, no
doubt, they would have offered other pleasures. Ulysses desired to
listen, and he nodded to his men to loosen his bonds. But Perimedes
and Eurylochus arose, and laid on him yet stronger bonds, and the ship
was driven past that island, till the song of the Sirens faded away, and
then the men set Ulysses free and took the wax out of their ears.

III

THE WHIRLPOOL, THE SEA MONSTER, AND THE CATTLE OF THE SUN

They had not sailed far when they heard the sea roaring, and saw a great
wave, over which hung a thick shining cloud of spray. They had drifted
to a place where the sea narrowed between two high black rocks: under
the rock on the left was a boiling whirlpool in which no ship could
live; the opposite rock showed nothing dangerous, but Ulysses had been
warned by Circe that here too lay great peril. We may ask, Why did
Ulysses pass through the narrows between these two rocks? why did he not
steer on the outer side of one or the other? The reason seems to have
been that, on the outer side of these cliffs, were the tall reefs which
men called the Rocks Wandering. Between them the sea water leaped in
high columns of white foam, and the rocks themselves rushed together,
grinding and clashing, while fire flew out of the crevices and crests as
from a volcano.

Circe had told Ulysses about the Rocks Wandering, which do not even
allow flocks of doves to pass through them; even one of the doves is
always caught and crushed, and no ship of men escapes that tries to pass
that way, and the bodies of the sailors and the planks of the ships are
confusedly tossed by the waves of the sea and the storms of ruinous
fire. Of all ships that ever sailed the sea only 'Argo,' the ship of
Jason, has escaped the Rocks Wandering, as you may read in the story of
the Fleece of Gold. For these reasons Ulysses was forced to steer
between the rock of the whirlpool and the rock which seemed harmless. In
the narrows between these two clif