At the stern of his solitary1 ship Ulysses sat, and steered2 right artfully. No sleep could seize his eyelids3. He beheld4 the Pleiads, the Bear, which is by some called the Wain, that moves round about Orion, and keeps still above the ocean, and the slow-setting sign Bootes, which some name the Wagoner. Seventeen days he held his course, and on the eighteenth the coast of Phaeacia was in sight. The figure of the land, as seen from the sea, was pretty and circular, and looked something like a shield.
Neptune5, returning from visiting his favourite Aethiopians, from the mountains of the Solymi, descried6 Ulysses ploughing the waves, his domain7. The sight of the man he so much hated for Polyphemus's sake, his son, whose eye Ulysses had put out, set the god's heart on fire; and snatching into his hand his horrid8 sea-sceptre, the trident of his power, he smote9 the air and the sea, and conjured10 up all his black storms, calling down night from the cope of heaven, and taking the earth into the sea, as it seemed, with clouds, through the darkness and indistinctness which prevailed; the billows rolling up before the fury of all the winds, that contended together in their mighty11 sport.
Then the knees of Ulysses bent12 with fear, and then all his spirit was spent, and he wished that he had been among the number of his countrymen who fell before Troy, and had their funerals celebrated13 by all the Greeks, rather than to perish thus, where no man could mourn him or know him.
As he thought these melancholy14 thoughts, a huge wave took him and washed him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he struggling afar off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet held, her mast cracking in two with the fury of that gust15 of mixed winds that struck it, sails and sailyards fell into the deep, and he himself was long drowned under water, nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave, as if they strove which should depress him most; and the gorgeous garments given him by Calypso clung about him, and hindered his swimming; yet neither for this, nor for the overthrow16 of his ship, nor his own perilous18 condition, would he give up his drenched19 vessel20; but, wrestling with Neptune, got at length hold of her again, and then sat in her hull21, insulting over death, which he had escaped, and the salt waves which he gave the seas again to give to other men; his ship, striving to live, floated at random22, cuffed23 from wave to wave, hurled24 to and fro by all the winds: now Boreas tossed it to Notus, Notus passed it to Eurus, and Eurus to the West Wind, who kept up the horrid tennis.
Them in their mad sport Ino Leucothea beheld—Ino Leucothea, now a sea-goddess, but once a mortal and the daughter of Cadmus; she with pity beheld Ulysses the mark of their fierce contention25, and rising from the waves alighted on the ship, in shape like to the sea-bird which is called a cormorant26; and in her beak27 she held a wonderful girdle made of sea-weeds, which grow at the bottom of the ocean, which she dropped at his feet; and the bird spake to Ulysses, and counselled him not to trust any more to that fatal vessel against which god Neptune had levelled his furious wrath28, nor to those ill-befriending garments which Calypso had given him, but to quit both it and them, and trust for his safety to swimming. "And here," said the seeming bird, "take this girdle and tie about your middle, which has virtue29 to protect the wearer at sea, and you shall safely reach the shore; but when you have landed, cast it far from you back into the sea." He did as the sea-bird instructed him; he stripped himself naked, and, fastening the wondrous30 girdle about his middle, cast himself into the seas to swim. The bird dived past his sight into the fathomless31 abyss of the ocean.
Two days and two nights he spent in struggling with the waves, though sore buffeted32, and almost spent, never giving up himself for lost, such confidence he had in that charm which he wore about his middle, and in the words of that divine bird. But the third morning the winds grew calm and all the heavens were clear. Then he saw himself nigh land, which he knew to be the coast of the Phaeacians, a people good to strangers and abounding33 in ships, by whose favour he doubted not that he should soon obtain a passage to his own country. And such joy he conceived in his heart as good sons have that esteem34 their father's life dear, when long sickness has held him down to his bed and wasted his body, and they see at length health return to the old man, with restored strength and spirits, in reward of their many prayers to the gods for his safety: so precious was the prospect35 of home-return to Ulysses, that he might restore health to his country (his better parent), that had long languished36 as full of distempers in his absence. And then for his own safety's sake he had joy to see the shores, the woods, so nigh and within his grasp as they seemed, and he laboured with all the might of hands and feet to reach with swimming that nigh-seeming land.
But when he approached near, a horrid sound of a huge sea beating against rocks informed him that here was no place for landing, nor any harbour for man's resort, but through the weeds and the foam37 which the sea belched38 up against the land he could dimly discover the rugged39 shore all bristled40 with flints, and all that part of the coast one impending41 rock that seemed impossible to climb, and the water all about so deep that not a sand was there for any tired foot to rest upon, and every moment he feared lest some wave more cruel than the rest should crush him against a cliff, rendering42 worse than vain all his landing; and should he swim to seek a more commodious43 haven44 farther on, he was fearful lest, weak and spent as he was, the winds would force him back a long way off into the main, where the terrible god Neptune, for wrath that he had so nearly escaped his power, having gotten him again into his domain, would send out some great whale (of which those seas breed a horrid number) to swallow him up alive; with such malignity45 he still pursued him.
While these thoughts distracted him with diversity of dangers, one bigger wave drove against a sharp rock his naked body, which it gashed46 and tore, and wanted little of breaking all his bones, so rude was the shock. But in this extremity47 she prompted him that never failed him at need. Minerva (who is wisdom itself) put it into his thoughts no longer to keep swimming off and on, as one dallying48 with danger, but boldly to force the shore that threatened him, and to hug the rock that had torn him so rudely; which with both hands he clasped, wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow which had driven him upon it was passed; but then again the rock drove back that wave so furiously that it reft him of his hold, sucking him with it in its return; and the sharp rock, his cruel friend, to which he clung for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in parting that he fell off, and could sustain no longer; quite under water he fell, and, past the help of fate, there had the hapless Ulysses lost all portion that he had in this life, if Minerva had not prompted his wisdom in that peril17 to essay another course, and to explore some other shelter, ceasing to attempt that landing-place.
She guided his wearied and nigh-exhausted limbs to the mouth of the fair river Callicoe, which not far from thence disbursed49 its watery50 tribute to the ocean. Here the shores were easy and accessible, and the rocks, which rather adorned51 than defended its banks, so smooth that they seemed polished of purpose to invite the landing of our sea-wanderer, and to atone52 for the uncourteous treatment which those less hospitable53 cliffs had afforded him. And the god of the river, as if in pity, stayed his current, and smoothed his waters, to make his landing more easy; for sacred to the ever-living deities54 of the fresh waters, be they mountain-stream, river, or lake, is the cry of erring55 mortals that seek their aid, by reason that, being inland-bred, they partake more of the gentle humanities of our nature than those marine56 deities whom Neptune trains up in tempests in the unpitying recesses57 of his salt abyss.
So by the favour of the river's god Ulysses crept to land half-drowned; both his knees faltering58, his strong hands falling down through weakness from the excessive toils59 he had endured, his cheeks and nostrils60 flowing with froth of the sea-brine, much of which he had swallowed in that conflict, voice and breath spent, down he sank as in death. Dead weary he was. It seemed that the sea had soaked through his heart, and the pains he felt in all his veins61 were little less than those which one feels that has endured the torture of the rack. But when his spirits came a little to themselves, and his recollection by degrees began to return, he rose up, and unloosing from his waist the girdle or charm which that divine bird had given him, and remembering the charge which he had received with it, he flung it far from him into the river. Back it swam with the course of the ebbing62 stream till it reached the sea, where the fair hands of Ino Leucothea received it to keep it as a pledge of safety to any future shipwrecked mariner63 that, like Ulysses, should wander in those perilous waves.
Then he kissed the humble64 earth in token of safety, and on he went by the side of that pleasant river, till he came where a thicker shade of rushes that grew on its banks seemed to point out the place where he might rest his sea-wearied limbs. And here a fresh perplexity divided his mind, whether he should pass the night, which was coming on, in that place, where, though he feared no other enemies, the damps and frosts of the chill sea-air in that exposed situation might be death to him in his weak state; or whether he had better climb the next hill, and pierce the depth of some shady wood, in which he might find a warm and sheltered though insecure repose65, subject to the approach of any wild beast that roamed that way. Best did this last course appear to him, though with some danger, as that which was more honourable66 and savoured more of strife67 and self-exertion than to perish without a struggle the passive victim of cold and the elements.
So he bent his course to the nearest woods, where, entering in, he found a thicket68, mostly of wild olives and such low trees, yet growing so intertwined and knit together that the moist wind had not leave to play through their branches, nor the sun's scorching69 beams to pierce their recesses, nor any shower to beat through, they grew so thick, and as it were folded each in the other; here creeping in, he made his bed of the leaves which were beginning to fall, of which was such abundance that two or three men might have spread them ample coverings, such as might shield them from the winter's rage, though the air breathed steel and blew as it would burst. Here creeping in, he heaped up store of leaves all about him, as a man would billets upon a winter fire, and lay down in the midst. Rich seed of virtue lying hid in poor leaves! Here Minerva soon gave him sound sleep; and here all his long toils past seemed to be concluded and shut up within the little sphere of his refreshed and closed eyelids.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
solitary
|
|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
steered
|
|
| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
eyelids
|
|
| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
beheld
|
|
| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
Neptune
|
|
| n.海王星 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
descried
|
|
| adj.被注意到的，被发现的，被看到的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
domain
|
|
| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
horrid
|
|
| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
smote
|
|
| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
conjured
|
|
| 用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
celebrated
|
|
| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
melancholy
|
|
| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
gust
|
|
| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
overthrow
|
|
| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
peril
|
|
| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
perilous
|
|
| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
drenched
|
|
| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
vessel
|
|
| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
hull
|
|
| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
random
|
|
| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
cuffed
|
|
| v.掌打，拳打( cuff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
hurled
|
|
| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
contention
|
|
| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
cormorant
|
|
| n.鸬鹚，贪婪的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
beak
|
|
| n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
wrath
|
|
| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
wondrous
|
|
| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
fathomless
|
|
| a.深不可测的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
buffeted
|
|
| 反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续猛击； 打来打去； 推来搡去 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
abounding
|
|
| adj.丰富的，大量的v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
esteem
|
|
| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
prospect
|
|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
languished
|
|
| 长期受苦( languish的过去式和过去分词 )； 受折磨； 变得（越来越）衰弱； 因渴望而变得憔悴或闷闷不乐 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
foam
|
|
| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
belched
|
|
| v.打嗝( belch的过去式和过去分词 )；喷出，吐出；打（嗝）；嗳（气） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
rugged
|
|
| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
bristled
|
|
| adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
impending
|
|
| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
rendering
|
|
| n.表现，描写 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
commodious
|
|
| adj.宽敞的；使用方便的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
haven
|
|
| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
malignity
|
|
| n.极度的恶意，恶毒；（病的）恶性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
gashed
|
|
| v.划伤，割破( gash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
extremity
|
|
| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
dallying
|
|
| v.随随便便地对待( dally的现在分词 )；不很认真地考虑；浪费时间；调情 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
disbursed
|
|
| v.支出，付出( disburse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
watery
|
|
| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
adorned
|
|
| [计]被修饰的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
atone
|
|
| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
hospitable
|
|
| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
deities
|
|
| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
erring
|
|
| 做错事的，错误的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
marine
|
|
| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
recesses
|
|
| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
faltering
|
|
| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
toils
|
|
| 网 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
nostrils
|
|
| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
veins
|
|
| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
ebbing
|
|
| （指潮水）退( ebb的现在分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
mariner
|
|
| n.水手号不载人航天探测器，海员，航海者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
humble
|
|
| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
repose
|
|
| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
honourable
|
|
| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
strife
|
|
| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
thicket
|
|
| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
scorching
|
|
| adj. 灼热的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |