The Sirens and Ulysses The Sirens and Ulysses The Sirens and Ulysses is a large oil painting on canvas by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1837. It depicts the scene from Homer's "Odyssey" in which Ulysses (Odysseus) resists the bewitching song of the Sirens by having his ship's crew tie him up, while they are ordered to block their own ears to prevent themselves from hearing the song. While traditionally the Sirens had been depicted as human–animal chimeras, Etty portrayed them as naked young women, on an island strewn with decaying corpses. The painting divided opinion at the time of its
Poems of the Past and the Present Poems of the Past and the Present Poems of the Past and the Present is the second collection of poems by English poet Thomas Hardy, and was published in 1901. A wide-ranging collection, divided into five headings, it contains some of Hardy's most powerful and lasting poetic contributions. The unusually favourable reception of the collection was due in large part to its opening with the section of 'War Poems', many previously published independently, and welcomed by the public for their treatment of the Boer War - the seminal "Drummer Hodge" being the outstanding example. Hardy's friend Sir George Douglas called