The Argonautica

But down from the mountain's highest crest toward the sea came

Chiron, Philyra's son; where the gray surf was breaking

he wet his feet, and often waved with his stout hand, urging

and invoked for the voyagers a homecoming free of all sorrow.

Chiron's wife stood close, carrying on her forearm

Peleus' son Achilles, displaying him to his dear father.

When they had left the harbor's curving shore far behind

through the skill and wise counsel of Hagnias' prudent son,

Tiphys, whose hands with practiced skill kept tending

the polished steering-oars, guiding Argo steadfastly straight,

then they stepped the great mast upright in the midship mast-box,

and bound it with forestays stretched taut upon either side;

then downward they spread the linen sail, hauled high on the yard.

A shrill wind filled it; over the half-deck then the sheets

were looped apart, then lashed to polished belaying-pins,

and ran swiftly at ease beyond the long Tisaean headland.

For them, playing his lyre, he sang in well-ordered music,

Oeagrus' son, of ship-saving Artemis, high-born goddess,

who tended every lofty watch-peak guarding the sea,

guarding those peaks and Iolcus' land. From the deep sea

fish darted up above the waves, and mingled with small ones

huge ones followed, bounding along the watery pathways.

Along a field-dwelling shepherd's well-worn tracks there move

countless sheep, all sated to fullness with grass,