“. . . I have often heard
My mother Circe and the Sirens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
Culling their potent herbs and baneful drugs,
Who as they sung would take the prisoned soul
And lap it in Elysium. Scylla wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause.”
Scylla and Charybdis have become proverbial, to denote opposite dangers which beset one’s course. [See Proverbial Expressions.]