A most famous, and meaningful passage...

But once your crew has rowed you past the Sirens
a choice of route is yours. I cannot advise you
which to take, or lead you through it all--
you must decide yourself--
but I can tell you the ways of either course.
On one side beetling cliffs shoot up, and against them
pound the huge roaring breakers of blue-eyed Amphitrite--
the Clashing Rocks they're called by all the blissful gods.
No ship of men has ever approached and slipped past--
always some disaster--big timbers and sailors' corpses
whirled away by the waves and lethal blasts of fire.

On the other side loom two enormous crags...
One thrusts into the vaulting sky its jagged peak,
hooded round with a dark cloud that never leaves--
And halfway up that cliffside stands a fog-bound cavern
gaping west toward Erebus, realm of death and darkness--
past it, great Odysseus, you should steer your ship.
Scylla lurks inside it--the yelping horror,
yelping, no louder than any suckling pup
but she's a grisly monster, I assure you.
She has twelve legs, all writhing, dangling down
and six long swaying necks, a hideous head on each,
each head barbed with a triple row of fangs, thickset,
packed tight--and armed to the hilt with black death!
...with each of her six heads she snatches up
a man from the dark-prowed craft and whisks him off.

The other crag is lower--you will see, Odysseus--
Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves;
beneath it awesome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.
Three times a day she vomits it up, three times she gulps it down,
that terror! Don't be there when the whirlpool swallows down--
not even the earthquake god could save you from disaster.
No, hug Scylla's crag--sail on past her--top speed!
Better by far to lose six men and keep your ship
than lose your entire crew.

-Homer, The Odyssey

Good Song: Sun Kil Moon - Pancho Villa