Odyssey 9.541 · Book 9, lines 541–547
The wave carries them back to the fleet
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ἐκλύσθη δὲ θάλασσα κατερχομένης ὑπὸ πέτρης· τὴν δὲ πρόσω φέρε κῦμα, θέμωσε δὲ χέρσον ἱκέσθαι. ἀλλʼ ὅτε δὴ τὴν νῆσον ἀφικόμεθʼ, ἔνθα περ ἄλλαι νῆες ἐύσσελμοι μένον ἁθρόαι, ἀμφὶ δʼ ἑταῖροι ἥατʼ ὀδυρόμενοι, ἡμέας ποτιδέγμενοι αἰεί, νῆα μὲν ἔνθʼ ἐλθόντες ἐκέλσαμεν ἐν ψαμάθοισιν, ἐκ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ βῆμεν ἐπὶ ῥηγμῖνι θαλάσσης.
The sea surged up as the rock came down; and the wave carried it forward, and drove it on to reach the shore. But when at last we reached the island, the very place where the other well-benched ships lay waiting all together, and around them the companions sat lamenting, awaiting us always, there we came and beached the ship in the sands, and we ourselves too stepped out onto the surf of the sea.
Word by word
The setting
The blinded Cyclops has just hurled a mountain-top that nearly drove Odysseus's ship back to shore. The wave off that rock now carries the ship the other way, out toward the island where Odysseus had left the rest of his fleet waiting.
A note on this passage
The rock that was meant to sink them instead speeds them on. The sea churns where the peak fell, the swell shoves the ship forward, and it fetches up at the island where the rest of the fleet has been waiting. The comrades left behind sit grieving on the sand, scanning the water for a ship that might never come.
The undercurrent is the mixture the whole book runs on. The same wave is disaster and rescue; the same beach holds men who wept for the dead and men who have just escaped the cave. Homer keeps arrival and loss in one breath, and lets neither cancel the other.
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