Poseidon

His face was rugged, and his hoarie hed
Dropped with brackish deaw; his three-forkt Pyke
He stearnly shooke, and therewith fierce did stryke
The raging billowes, that on every syde
They trembling stood, and made a long broad dyke,
That his swift charet might have passage wyde,
Which foure great Hippodames did draw in temewise tyde.
Edmund Spenser

Poseidon and Athena once competed for the position of patron of Athens. Athena, who
offered the citizens the olive tree, became the city's eponymous god. In the Odyssey,
Poseidon also comes up short despite his power, tenacity, and vindictiveness. He is the
father of the cyclops Polyphemus and the grandfather of Phaeacian King Alkinoos. It is
not often that Poseidon is as calming an influence as he is in this couplet by Dryden, a
translation from Ovid's Metamorphoses: The billows fall, while Neptune lays his mace /
On the rough sea, and smooths its furrow'd face.

Chapman, George. “Al the Hymnes of Homer: To Neptune.” Chapman’s Homer. Vol. 2.
The Odyssey and the Lesser Homerica. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. 2nded. London:
Routledge, 1967. 593.

---. “Certaine Epigramms: To Neptune.”Chapman’s Homer. Vol. 2. The Odyssey and the
Lesser Homerica. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. 2nded. London: Routledge, 1967. 608.

Clewell, David. “Going Wrong in the House of Neptune.” The Missouri ReviewVol. 21.1
(1998): 38-39. [An allusion in the name of a present-day restaurant.]

Clampitt, Amy. "Remembering Greece." The Kingfisher. New York: Knopf, 1983.

Freeman, Edward Augustus. "Poseidon and Athena." Poems, Legendary and Historical.
London: Longman, 1850.

Goodman, Paul. "La Gaya Scienza" section 9. Collected Poems. New York: Random
House, 1973.

Gustafson, Ralph. "Four Exaltations for Sea-Shell, Pulley, Pan Pipes, and Golden
Clarion." Fire on Stone. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974.

---. "The Histiaean Poseidon, Athens." Ixion's Wheel. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
1969.

H. D. "Sea Gods." Collected Poems. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925.

Howes, Barbara. "Ode to Poseidon: Lines on a Grecian Urn Recently Acquired by the
Williams College Museum of Art." Looking Up at Leaves. New York: Knopf,
1966.

Lawrence, D. H. "Neptune's Little Affair with Freedom." Nettles. London: Faber &
Faber, 1930.

Sitwell, Osbert. "Neptune in Chains." Out of the Flame. London: Duckworth, 1923.

Swift, Jonathan. "The Storm; Minerva's Petition." Poems on Several Occasions. London:
J. Bromage, 1749.

Yeats, William Butler. "Colonus' Praise" stanza 4. The Tower. London: Macmillan, 1928.