His blooming offspring or his beauteous wife!”[261]
Forewarned, the wise Ulysses took all precautions against the fatal perils. Avoiding the Sicilian whirlpool, he did not run upon the Italian rock or yield to the voice of the charmer. And yet he could not renounce the opportunity of hearing the melody. Stuffing the ears of his companions with wax, so that they could not be entranced by the Sirens, or comprehend any countermanding order which his weakness might induce him to utter, he had himself tied to the mast,—like another Farragut,—and directed that the ship should be steered straight on. It was steered straight on, although he cried out to stop. His deafened companions heard nothing of the song or the countermand,—
“Till, dying off, the distant sounds decay.”
The dangers of both coasts were at length passed, not without the loss of six men, “chiefs of renown,” who became the prey of Scylla. But the Sirens, humbled by defeat, dashed themselves upon the rocks and disappeared forever.
Few stories have been more popular. It was natural that it should enter into poetry and suggest a proverb. St. Augustine uses it, when he says, “Ne iterum, quasi fugiens Charybdim, in Scyllam incurras.”[262] Milton more than once alludes to it. Thus, in the exquisite “Comus,” he shows these opposite terrors subdued by another power:—
“Scylla wept
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause.”[263]
In the “Paradise Lost,” while portraying Sin, the terrible portress at the gates of Hell, the poet repairs to this story for illustration:—
“Far less abhorred than these,