The Argonautica

to learn who would cease rowing last; the air all round

lay windless, smoothed the eddies, lulled the sea to sleep.

Trusting the glassy calm, they drove the ship ahead

by force through the salt sea; Argo darted onward.

Poseidon's storm-footed horses could never catch Argo.

Still the swell awoke, aroused by violent breezes,

winds freshly rising from rivers at fall of dusk,

the exhausted rowers had nearly ceased; but one man

pulled all the weary crew along by strength of hand:

Heracles shook every timber, close-fitted in Argo.

But when heroes, hearts longing, sought Mysia's mainland,

they saw the Rhyndacus' mouths and great Aegaeon's barrow,

and measured their seaward course, just off the Phrygian coast,

then Heracles, heaving high the rough surge's furrows,

snapped his oar through the middle; one broken piece

he gripped in both hands, falling sideways; the other

the backwash swept away. He sat upright in silence,

His eyes stared round; his hands were strangers to resting.

When a vine-dresser or ploughman comes home late from fields,

gladly he walks to his hut, hungry for evening supper,

there at the threshold he sinks down and folds his toil-worn knees,

dust-caked, he stares at hands all chafed and rubbed raw,

he calls down many evils upon his own belly;

at that same hour they reached the haunts of Cianian country,