issues that the gods ordain'd:
And whatsoever all the earth can show
To inform a knowledge of desert, we know.

These were the words, but the celestial harmony of the voices which
sang them no tongue can describe: it took the ear of Ulysses with
ravishment. He would have broke his bonds to rush after them; and
threatened, wept, sued, entreated, commanded, crying out with tears
and passionate imprecations, conjuring his men by all the ties of
perils past which they had endured in common, by fellowship and love,
and the authority which he retained among them, to let him loose; but
at no rate would they obey him. And still the Sirens sang. Ulysses
made signs, motions, gestures, promising mountains of gold if they
would set him free; but their oars only moved faster. And still the
Sirens sung. And still the more he adjured them to set him free, the
faster with cords and ropes they bound him; till they were quite out
of hearing of the Sirens' notes, whose effect great Circe had so truly
predicted. And well she might speak of them, for often she had joined
her own enchanting voice to theirs, while she has sat in the flowery
meads, mingled with the Sirens and the Water Nymphs, gathering their
potent herbs and drugs of magic quality: their singing altogether has
made the gods stoop, and "heaven drowsy with the harmony."

Escaped that peril, they had not sailed yet an hundred leagues
further, when they heard a roar afar off, which Ulysses knew to be
the barking of Scylla's dogs, which surround her waist, and bark
incessantly. Coming nearer they beheld a smoke ascend, with a horrid
murmur, which arose from that other whirlpool, to which they made
nigher approaches than to Scylla. Through the furious eddy, which is
in that place, the ship stood still as a stone, for there was no man
to lend his hand to an oar, the dismal roar of Scylla's dogs at a
distance, and the nearer clamours of Charybdis, where everything made
an echo, quite taking from them the power of exertion. Ulysses went
up and down encouraging his men, one by one, giving them good words,
telling them that they were in greater perils when they were blocked
up in the Cyclop's cave, yet, heaven assisting his counsels, he had
delivered them out of that extremity. That he could not believe but
they remembered it; and wished them to give the same trust to the same
care which he had now for their welfare. That they must exert all
the strength and wit which they had, a