Near by were the Sirens, who strove by their music to draw the navigator to certain doom:—
"Their song is death, and makes destruction please.
Unblest the man whom music wins to stay
Nigh the cursed shore and listen to the lay:
No more the wretch shall view the joys of life,
His blooming offspring, or his beauteous wife!"
Forewarned is forearmed. Ulysses took all precautions against the opposite 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 caused himself to be 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.
There are few stories which have been more popular. It was natural that it should enter into poetry and become a proverb. 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."
In the "Paradise Lost," while portraying Sin, the terrible portress at the gates of Hell, the poet repairs to this story for illustration:[5]—
"Far less abhorred than these,
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore."
And then again, when picturing Satan escaping from pursuit, he shows him[6]