X.

Penal, attested by time-frosted plains

Of ashes; after fruitless apple-growths,

5  Born but to feed the eye; after the death

Of sea and brine, both in like fate involved;

While whatsoe’er is human still retains

In change corporeal its penal badge:

A city—Nineveh—by stepping o’er

10  The path of justice and of equity,

On her own head had well-nigh shaken down

More fires of rain supernal.  For what dread

Dwells in a mind subverted?  Commonly

Tokens of penal visitations prove

15  All vain where error holds possession.  Still,

Kindly and patient of our waywardness,

And slow to punish, the Almighty Lord

Will launch no shaft of wrath, unless He first

Admonish and knock oft at hardened hearts,

20  Rousing with mind august presaging seers.

For to the merits of the Ninevites

The Lord had bidden Jonah to foretell

Destruction; but he, conscious that He spare;

The subject, and remits to suppliants

25  The dues of penalty, and is to good

Ever inclinable, was loth to face

That errand; lest he sing his seerly strain

In vain, and peaceful issue of his threats

Ensue.  His counsel presently is flight:

30  (If, howsoe’er, there is at all the power

God to avoid, and shun the Lord’s right hand

’Neath whom the whole orb trembles and is held

In check:  but is there reason in the act

Which in his saintly heart the prophet dares?)

35  On the beach-lip, over against the shores

Of the Cilicians, is a city poised,

Far-famed for trusty port—Joppa her name.

Thence therefore Jonah speeding in a barque

Seeks Tarsus, through the signal providence

40  Of the same God; nor marvel is’t, I ween,

If, fleeing from the Lord upon the lands,

He found Him in the waves.  For suddenly

A little cloud had stained the lower air

With fleecy wrack sulphureous, itself

45  By the wind’s seed excited: by degrees,

Bearing a brood globose, it with the sun

Cohered, and with a train caliginous

Shut in the cheated day.  The main becomes

The mirror of the sky; the waves are dyed so

50  With black encirclement; the upper air

Down rushes into darkness, and the sea

Uprises; nought of middle space is left;

While the clouds touch the waves, and the waves all

Are mingled by the bluster of the winds

55  In whirling eddy.  ’Gainst the renegade,

’Gainst Jonah, diverse frenzy joined to rave,

While one sole barque did all the struggle breed

’Twixt sky and surge.  From this side and from that

Pounded she reels; ’neath each wave-breaking blow

60  The forest of her tackling trembles all;

As, underneath, her spinal length of keel,

Staggered by shock on shock, all palpitates;

And, from on high, her labouring mass of yard

Creaks shuddering; and the tree-like mast itself

65  Bends to the gale, misdoubting to be riven.

Meantime the rising clamour of the crew

Tries every chance for barque’s and dear life’s sake:

To pass from hand to hand the tardy coils

To tighten the girth’s noose:  straitly to bind

70  The tiller’s struggles; or, with breast opposed,

T’ impel reluctant curves.  Part, turn by turn,

With foremost haste outbale the reeking well

Of inward sea.  The wares and cargo all

They then cast headlong, and with losses seek

75  Their perils to subdue.  At every crash

Of the wild deep rise piteous cries; and out

They stretch their hands to majesties of gods,

Which gods are none; whom might of sea and sky

Fears not, nor yet the less from off their poops

80  With angry eddy sweeping sinks them down.

Unconscious of all this, the guilty one

’Neath the poop’s hollow arch was making sleep

Re-echo stertorous with nostril wide

Inflated:  whom, so soon as he who guides

85  The functions of the wave-dividing prow

Saw him sleep-bound in placid peace, and proud

In his repose, he, standing o’er him, shook,

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