In the yellow eddies;
The Gods behold them. 200
They see the Heroes
Sitting in the dark ship
On the foamless, long-heaving
Violet sea,
At sunset nearing 205
The Happy Islands. deg. deg.206

These things, Ulysses,
The wise bards also
Behold and sing. 
But oh, what labour! 210
O prince, what pain!

They too can see
Tiresias;—­but the Gods,
Who give them vision,
Added this law:  215
That they should bear too
His groping blindness,
His dark foreboding,
His scorn’d white hairs;
Bear Hera’s anger deg. deg.220
Through a life lengthen’d
To seven ages.

They see the Centaurs
On Pelion;—­then they feel,
They too, the maddening wine 225
Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain
They feel the biting spears
Of the grim Lapithae, deg. and Theseus, deg. drive, deg.228
Drive crashing through their bones deg.; they feel deg.229
High on a jutting rock in the red stream 230
Alcmena’s dreadful son deg. deg.231
Ply his bow;—­such a price
The Gods exact for song: 
To become what we sing.

They see the Indian 235
On his mountain lake; but squalls
Make their skiff reel, and worms
In the unkind spring have gnawn
Their melon-harvest to the heart.—­They see
The Scythian; but long frosts 240
Parch them in winter-time on the bare stepp,
Till they too fade like grass; they crawl
Like shadows forth in spring.

They see the merchants
On the Oxus stream deg.;—­but care deg.245
Must visit first them too, and make them pale. 
Whether, through whirling sand,
A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
In the wall’d cities the way passes through, 250
Crush’d them with tolls; or fever-airs,
On some great river’s marge,
Mown them down, far from home.

They see the Heroes deg. deg.254
Near harbour;—­but they share 255
Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,
Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy deg.; deg.257
Or where the echoing oars
Of Argo first
Startled the unknown sea. deg. deg.260