IV: The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern

The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,
Of every ship professes agilest to be.
Nor yet a timber o'er the waves alertly flew
She might not aim to pass it; oary-wing'd alike
To fleet beyond them, or to scud beneath a sail.

Nor here presumes denial any stormy coast
Of Adriatic or the Cyclad orbed isles,
A Rhodos immemorial, or that icy Thrace,
Propontis, or the gusty Pontic ocean-arm,

Whereon, a pinnace after, in the days of yore
A leafy shaw she budded; oft Cytorus' height
With her did inly whisper airy colloquy.

Amastris, you by Pontus, you, the box-clad hill
Of high Cytorus, all, the pinnace owns, to both
Was ever, is familiar; in the primal years
She stood upon your hoary top, a baby tree,
Within your haven early dipt a virgin oar:

To carry thence a master o'er the surly seas,
A world of angry water, hail'd to left, to right
The breeze of invitation, or precisely set
The sheets together op'd to catch a kindly Jove.

Nor yet of any power whom the coasts adore
Was heard a vow to soothe them, all the weary way
From outer ocean unto glassy quiet here.

But all the past is over; indolently now
She rusts, a life in autumn, and her age devotes
To Castor and with him ador'd, the twin divine.