To his kind host return'd the fertile land,
Euphemus hurried from the prow to take.
To ratify the sign, Saturnian Jove
Thunder'd auspicious from his throne above. 41
Now while the brazen anchor's might,46
Curb of the rapid Argo's flight,
The sailors o'er the ship suspend,
He comes their labours to attend.[1]
Twelve days from ocean's watery bed50
On the earth's desert back we led,
Counsell'd by me, the naval frame.
The cheerful mien assuming then
Of him, the most revered of men,
Alone the mighty godhead came;55
As when to each arriving guest
The liberal master of the feast
At first his courteous speech applies. 55
But sweet desire, our homeward way
To urge, forbade a longer stay.60
Eurypylus who traced his birth,
To him who girds and shakes the earth,
Observed our eager haste to move:
Then snatching straight the fertile clod,[2]
Pledge of the hospitable god,65
To give it to Euphemus strove.
Obedient to the will divine,
The hero leap'd upon the strand,
Receiving with extended hand
The mystic earth his fates assign:70
That whelm'd beneath the briny tide,
When evening's shadows gather'd round,
Was from the vessel heard to glide
Far in the watery gulf profound. 70
- ↑ The god Triton in the form of Eurypylus.
- ↑ This mythological tale is related at length by Apollonius, in the fourth book of his Argonautics: (1550–1600.)
