Odyssey 5.417 · Book 5, lines 417–420
Or the storm drags me back out to sea
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εἰ δέ κʼ ἔτι προτέρω παρανήξομαι, ἤν που ἐφεύρω ἠιόνας τε παραπλῆγας λιμένας τε θαλάσσης, δείδω μή μʼ ἐξαῦτις ἀναρπάξασα θύελλα πόντον ἐπʼ ἰχθυόεντα φέρῃ βαρέα στενάχοντα,
But if I swim on still further along, in hope somewhere I may find beaches beaten by surf or harbors of the sea, I dread that a storm-blast may snatch me up once more and bear me out onto the fish-filled deep, groaning heavily.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus weighs the alternative to landing here — swimming on for a gentler shore — and finds it just as deadly.
A note on this passage
The other option, and its own trap. If instead of landing here he swims on along the coast, hoping to find a shelving beach or a harbour-mouth, he fears the wind will simply seize him again and drag him back out to the open sea — undoing every yard he has won. Both choices, landing and swimming on, end in death.
The deep he dreads is called 'fish-filled,' the standard epithet, but here it lands with a chill: the sea teeming with life is the place he would die. And the last word leaves him 'groaning heavily,' already voicing the grief of the drowned man he imagines becoming. The speech closes with him swept out, mourning himself.
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