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But I had a better thought than yours: Ulysses, like us, swimming over the 'wine-dark sea'! Do you remember it? 'Then two days and two nights on the resistless waves he drifted; many a time his heart faced death." "That's not a bit better thought than mine; but I like it. And I know what follows, too.
His father had lost the half of it over cards; now he himself had thrown away the rest in like manner. There was the grouse moor; he counted up the 'amenities' as he lay in bed, even as a lover enumerates the charms of his mistress. The wine-dark moorland how he loved it! And the great days in autumn after grouse and blackcock.
So they came up in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea- nymphs, Myriad fiery globes, swam heaving and panting, and rainbows, Crimson, and azure, and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting, Far in the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus, Coral, and sea-fan, and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean.
For Agamemnon king of men himself gave them benched ships wherewith to cross the wine-dark sea, even he the son of Atreus; for matters of seafaring concerned them not.
So I began starting in with a little prelude in the manner of my host, just to enter into the spirit of the game: "My Lord Alcinoüs; your guest, the far wanderer, having partaken of your golden hospitality, is now fain to open his heart to you, and tell you of himself and his race, his home and his loved ones across the wine-dark sea, and such of his adventures as may give pleasure to your ears" ... though, having no talents in that direction, I was glad enough to abandon my lame attempt at his Homeric style for a plain straightforward narrative of the events of the past three months.
It was pointed out that we know little of the actual liquid drunk by the Greeks; that the analogy of modern Greek wines may suggest that it was dark and sticky, perhaps a sort of syrup always taken with water; that archaic language about colour is always a little dubious, as where Homer speaks of the "wine-dark sea" and so on.
"See the slim iceberg with the top afire!" Cairns had whispered, as she entered. Other lives must explain it, but the Titian hair went straight to his heart. And those wine-dark eyes, now cryptic black, now suffused with red glows like a night-sky above a prairie-fire, said to him, "Better come over and see if I'm tamable."
As far as a man seeth with his eyes into the haze of distance as he sitteth on a place of outlook and gazeth over the wine-dark sea, so far leap the loudly neighing horses of the gods.
Then fleet-footed noble Achilles bethought him of one thing more: standing apart from the pyre he shore off a golden lock, the lock whose growth he nursed to offer unto the River Spercheios, and sore troubled spake be, looking forth over the wine-dark sea: "Spercheios, in other wise vowed my father Peleus unto thee that I returning thither to my native land should shear my hair for thee and offer a holy hecatomb, and fifty rams should sacrifice there above thy springs, where is the sacred close and altar burning spice.
And grey-eyed Athene sent them a favourable gale, a fresh West Wind, singing over the wine-dark sea. And Telemachus called unto his company and bade them lay hands on the tackling, and they hearkened to his call. So they raised the mast of pine tree and set it in the hole of the cross plank, and made it fast with forestays, and hauled up the white sails with twisted ropes of oxhide.
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