Its rapid utterance of tremendous wrath
     With hoarse reverberations; like the roar
     Of lions when they hunger, and awake
     The sullen echoes from their forest sleep,
     To speed the ravenous noise from hill to hill
     And startle victims; but more awful, He,
     Scudding across the hills that rise and sink,
     With foam, and splash, and cataracts of spray,
     Clothed in majestic splendour; girt about
     With Sea-gods and swift creatures of the sea;
     Their briny eyes blind with the showering drops;
     Their stormy locks, salt tongues, and scaly backs,
     Quivering in harmony with the tempest, fierce
     And eager with tempestuous delight; —
     He like a moving rock above them all
     Solemnly towering while fitful gleams
     Brake from his dense black forehead, which display’d
     The enduring chiefs as their distracted fleets
     Tossed, toiling with the waters, climbing high,
     And plunging downward with determined beaks,
     In lurid anguish; but the Cretan king
     And all his crew were ’ware of under-tides,
     That for the groaning vessel made a path,
     On which the impending and precipitous waves
     Fell not, nor suck’d to their abysmal gorge.

     O, happy they to feel the mighty God,
     Without his whelming presence near:  to feel
     Safety and sweet relief from such despair,
     And gushing of their weary hopes once more
     Within their fond warm hearts, tired limbs, and eyes
     Heavy with much fatigue and want of sleep! 
     Prayers did not lack; like mountain springs they came,
     After the earth has drunk the drenching rains,
     And throws her fresh-born jets into the sun
     With joyous sparkles;—­for there needed not
     Evidence more serene of instant grace,
     Immortal mercy! and the sense which follows
     Divine interposition, when the shock
     Of danger hath been thwarted by the Gods,
     Visibly, and through supplication deep, —
     Rose in them, chiefly in the royal mind
     Of him whose interceding vow had saved. 
     Tears from that great heroic soul sprang up;
     Not painful as in grief, nor smarting keen
     With shame of weeping; but calm, fresh, and sweet;
     Such as in lofty spirits rise, and wed
     The nature of the woman to the man;
     A sight most lovely to the Gods!  They fell
     Like showers of starlight from his steadfast eyes,
     As ever towards the prow he gazed, nor moved
     One muscle, with firm lips and level lids,
     Motionless; while the winds sang in his ears,
     And took the length of his brown hair in streams
     Behind him.  Thus the hours passed, and the oars
     Plied without pause, and nothing but the sound
     Of the dull rowlocks and still watery sough,
     Far off, the carnage