Odyssey 5.466 · Book 5, lines 466–469
If I keep watch by the river
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εἰ μέν κʼ ἐν ποταμῷ δυσκηδέα νύκτα φυλάσσω, μή μʼ ἄμυδις στίβη τε κακὴ καὶ θῆλυς ἐέρση ἐξ ὀλιγηπελίης δαμάσῃ κεκαφηότα θυμόν· αὔρη δʼ ἐκ ποταμοῦ ψυχρὴ πνέει ἠῶθι πρό.
If, for my part, I keep watch through the comfortless night by the river, I fear that the cruel frost and the soft dew together may overcome in my faintness, my failing spirit; and a cold breeze blows from the river before the dawn.
Word by word
The setting
Odysseus weighs the first of two options aloud: stay down by the river through the night. He reasons out why it could kill him.
A note on this passage
The first horn of the dilemma. If he stays by the water to keep watch through the night, the cold may finish what the sea began: frost and dew together, in his weakened state, could kill the little strength he has left. The riverside is exposed, and a chill wind runs off the water in the hour before dawn.
The reasoning is exact and unromantic. He has just been saved from drowning, and his mind moves at once to the danger of the cold — the sober risk-assessment of a man who has stayed alive by never trusting a lucky break. The word for his spirit here, θυμός, is the same 'great heart' he was addressing a moment ago; now he pictures it 'gasping out,' as fragile as a guttering flame. Endurance in this poem is mostly this: seeing the next way you could die, clearly, in the dark.
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