And said, “Why sing’st, with vocal nostril, dreams,
In such a crisis? In so wild a whirl,
90 Why keep’st thou only harbour? Lo! the wave
Whelms us, and our one hope is in the gods.
Thou also, whosoever is thy god,
Make vows, and, pouring prayers on bended knee,
Win o’er thy country’s Sovran!”
Then they vote
95 To learn by lot who is the culprit, who
The cause of storm; nor does the lot belie
Jonah: whom then they ask, and ask again,
“Who? whence? who in the world? from what abode,
What people, hail’st thou?” He avows himself
100 A servant, and an over-timid one,
Of God, who raised aloft the sky, who based
The earth, who corporally fused the whole:
A renegade from Him he owns himself,
And tells the reason. Rigid turned they all
105 With dread. “What grudge, then, ow’st thou us? What now
Will follow? By what deed shall we appease
The main?” For more and far more swelling grew
The savage surges. Then the seer begins
Words prompted by the Spirit of the Lord:
110 “Lo! I your tempest am; I am the sum
Of the world’s madness: ’tis in me,” he says,
“That the sea rises, and the upper air
Down rushes; land in me is far, death near,
And hope in God is none! Come, headlong hurl
115 Your cause of bane: lighten your ship, and cast
This single mighty burden to the main,
A willing prey!” But they—all vainly!—strive
Homeward to turn their course; for helm refused
To suffer turning, and the yard’s stiff poise
120 Willed not to change. At last unto the Lord
They cry: “For one soul’s sake give us not o’er
Unto death’s maw, nor let us be besprent
With righteous blood, if thus Thine own right hand
Leadeth.” And from the eddy’s depth a whale
125 Outrising on the spot, scaly with shells,
Unravelling his body’s train, ’gan urge
More near the waves, shocking the gleaming brine,
Seizing—at God’s command—the prey; which, rolled
From the poop’s summit prone, with slimy jaws
130 He sucked; and into his long belly sped
The living feast; and swallowed, with the man,