And the ship like a four-horse team careering down the plain,
all breaking as one with the whiplash cracking smartly,
leaping with hoofs high to run the course in no time –
so the stern hove high and plunged with the seething rollers
crashing dark in her wake as on she surged unwavering,
never flagging, no, not even a darting hawk,
the quickest thing on wings, could keep her pace
as on she ran, cutting the swells at top speed,
bearing a man endowed with the gods’ own wisdom,
one who had suffered twenty years of torment, sick at heart,
cleaving his way through wars of men and pounding waves at sea
but now he slept in peace, the memory of his struggles
laid to rest.
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 13, lines 93-105. A wonderful extended simile compares the Phaeacians’ ship carrying Odysseus to a four-horse team pulling a chariot. Both are speeding powerfully so that not even a hawk could keep pace. The ship was given to Odysseus by Alcinous to send him towards his homeland. Odysseus is described as a man with the wisdom of the gods, gained from twenty years of agony and struggle on the sea.