those faithful partakers of his toil, who with him left Asia, laden with
the spoils of Troy, now not one remains, but all a prey to the remorseless
waves, and food for some great fish; their gallant navy reduced to one
ship, and that finally swallowed up and lost. Where now are all their
anxious thoughts of home? that perseverance with which they went through
the severest sufferings and the hardest labours to which poor seafarers
were ever exposed, that their toils at last might be crowned with the
sight of their native shores and wives at Ithaca! Ulysses is now in the
isle Ogygia, called the Delightful Island. The poor shipwrecked chief, the
slave of all the elements, is once again raised by the caprice of fortune
into a shadow of prosperity. He that was cast naked upon the shore, bereft
of all his companions, has now a goddess to attend upon him, and his
companions are the nymphs which never die. Who has not heard of Calypso?
her grove crowned with alders and poplars; her grotto, against which the
luxuriant vine laid forth his purple grapes; her ever new delights,
crystal fountains, running brooks, meadows flowering with sweet
balm--gentle and with violet; blue violets which like veins enamelled the
smooth breasts of each fragrant mead! It were useless to describe over
again what has been so well told already; or to relate those soft arts
of courtship which the goddess used to detain Ulysses; the same in kind
which she afterwards practised upon his less wary son, whom Minerva, in
the shape of Mentor, hardly preserved from her snares, when they came to
the Delightful Island together in search of the scarce departed Ulysses.
A memorable example of married love, and a worthy instance how dear to
every good man his country is, was exhibited by Ulysses. If Circe loved
him sincerely, Calypso loves him with tenfold more warmth and passion: she
can deny him nothing, but his departure; she offers him everything, even
to a participation of her immortality--if he will stay and share in her
pleasures, he shall never die. But death with glory has greater charms for
a mind heroic than a life that shall never die with shame; and when he
pledged his vows to his Penelope, he reserved no stipulation that he would
forsake her whenever a goddess should think him worthy of her bed, but
they had sworn to live and grow old together; and he would not survive her
if he could, no meanly share in immortality itself, from which she was
excluded.
These thoughts kept him pensive and melancholy in the midst of pleasure.
His heart was on the seas, making voyages to Ithaca. Twelve months had
worn away, when Minerva from heaven saw her favourite, how he sat still
pining on the seashores (his daily custom), wishing for a ship to carry
him home. She (who is wisdom herself) was indignant that so wise and brave
a man as Ulysses should be held in effeminate bondage by an unworthy
goddess; and at her request her father Jove ordered Mercury to go down to
the earth to command Calypso to dismiss her guest. The divine messenger
tied fast to his feet his winged shoes, which bear him over land and seas,
and took in his hand his golden rod, the ensign of his authority. Then
wheeling in many an airy round, he stayed not till he alighted on the firm
top of the mountain Pieria; thence he fetched a second circuit over the
seas, kissing the waves in his flight with his feet, as light as any
sea-mew fishing dips her wings, till he touched the isle Ogygia, and
soared up from the blue sea to the grotto of the goddess to whom his
errand was ordained.
His message struck a horror, checked by love, through all the faculties of
Calypso. She replied to it, incensed: "You gods are insatiate, past all
that live, in all things which you affect; which makes you so envious and
grudging. It afflicts you to the heart when any goddess seeks the love of
a mortal man in marriage, though you yourselves without scruple link
yourselves to women of the earth. So it fared with you, when the
delicious-fingered Morning shared Orion's bed; you could never satisfy
your hate and your jealousy till you had incensed the chastity-loving
dame, Diana, who leads the precise life, to come upon him by stealth in
Ortygia, and pierce him through with her arrows. And when rich-haired
Ceres gave the reins to her affections, and took Iasion (well worthy) to
her arms, the secret was not so cunningly kept but Jove had soon notice of
it, and the poor mortal paid for his felicity with death, struck through
with lightnings. And now you envy me the possession of a wretched man whom
tempests have cast upon my shores, making him lawfully mine; whose ship
Jove rent in pieces with his hot thunderbolts, killing all his friends.
Him I have preserved, loved, nourished; made him mine by protection, my
creature; by every tie of gratitude, mine; have vowed to make him
deathless like myself; him you will take from me. But I know your power,
and that it is vain for me to resist. Tell your king that I obey his
mandates."
With an ill grace Calypso promised to fulfil the commands of Jove; and,
Mercury departing, she went to find Ulysses, where he sat outside the
grotto, not knowing of the heavenly message, drowned in discontent, not
seeing any human probability of his ever returning home.
She said to him: "Unhappy man, no longer afflict yourself with pining
after your country, but build you a ship, with which you may return home,
since it is the will of the gods; who, doubtless, as they are greater in
power than I, are greater in skill, and best can tell what is fittest for
man. But I call the gods and my inward conscience to witness that I have
no thought but what stood with thy safety, nor would have done or
counselled anything against thy good. I persuaded thee to nothing which
I should not have followed myself in thy extremity; for my mind is
innocent and simple. O, if thou knewest what dreadful sufferings thou must
yet endure before ever thou reachest thy native land, thou wouldest not
esteem so hardly of a goddess's offer to share her immortality with thee;
nor, for a few years' enjoyment of a perishing Penelope, refuse an
imperishable and never-dying life with Calypso."
He replied: "Ever-honoured, great Calypso, let it not displease thee, that
I a mortal man desire to see and converse again with a wife that is
mortal: human objects are best fitted to human infirmities. I well know
how far in wisdom, in feature, in stature, proportion, beauty, in all the
gifts of the mind, thou exceedest my Penelope: she is a mortal, and
subject to decay; thou immortal, ever growing, yet never old; yet in her
sight all my desires terminate, all my wishes--in the sight of her, and of
my country earth. If any god, envious of my return, shall lay his dreadful
hand upon me as I pass the seas, I submit; for the same powers have given
me a mind not to sink under oppression. In wars and waves my sufferings
have not been small."
She heard his pleaded reasons, and of force she must assent; so to her
nymphs she gave in charge from her sacred woods to cut down timber, to
make Ulysses a ship. They obeyed, though in a work unsuitable to their
soft fingers, yet to obedience no sacrifice is hard; and Ulysses busily
bestirred himself, labouring far more hard than they, as was fitting, till
twenty tall trees, driest and fittest for timber, were felled. Then, like
a skilful shipwright, he fell to joining the planks, using the plane, the
axe, and the auger with such expedition that in four days' time a ship was
made, complete with all her decks, hatches, sideboards, yards. Calypso
added linen for the sails, and tackling; and when she was finished, she
was a goodly vessel for a man to sail in, alone or in company, over the
wide seas. By the fifth morning she was launched; and Ulysses, furnished
with store of provisions, rich garments, and gold and silver, given him by
Calypso, took a last leave of her and of her nymphs, and of the isle
Ogygia which had so befriended him.
[Illustration: _Took a last leave of her and of her nymphs_.]
CHAPTER FIVE
The Tempest.--The Sea-bird's Gift.--The Escape by Swimming.--The Sleep in
the Woods.
At the stern of his solitary ship Ulysses sat, and steered right artfully.
No sleep could seize his eyelids. He beheld the Pleiads, the Bear, which
is by some called the Wain, that moves round about Orion, and keeps still
above the ocean, and the slow-setting sign Bootes, which some name the
Wagoner. Seventeen days he held his course, and on the eighteenth the
coast of Phaeacia was in sight. The figure of the land, as seen from the
sea, was pretty and circular, and looked something like a shield.
Neptune, returning from visiting his favourite Aethiopians, from the
mountains of the Solymi, descried Ulysses ploughing the waves, his domain.
The sight of the man he so much hated for Polyphemus's sake, his son,
whose eye Ulysses had put out, set the god's heart on fire; and snatching
into his hand his horrid sea-sceptre, the trident of his power, he smote
the air and the sea, and conjured up all his black storms, calling down
night from the cope of heaven, and taking the earth into the sea, as it
seemed, with clouds, through the darkness and indistinctness which
prevailed; the billows rolling up before the fury of all the winds, that
contended together in their mighty sport.
Then the knees of Ulysses bent with fear, and then all his spirit was
spent, and he wished that he had been among the number of his countrymen
who fell before Troy, and had their funerals celebrated by all the Greeks,
rather than to perish thus, where no man could mourn him or know him.
As he thought these melancholy thoughts, a huge wave took him and washed
him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he struggling afar
off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet held, her mast cracking
in two with the fury of that gust of mixed winds that struck it, sails and
sailyards fell into the deep, and he himself was long drowned under water,
nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave, as if they strove
which should depress him most; and the gorgeous garments given him by
Calypso clung about him, and hindered his swimming; yet neither for this,
nor for the overthrow of his ship, nor his own perilous condition, would
he give up his drenched vessel; but, wrestling with Neptune, got at length
hold of her again, and then sat in her hull, insulting over death, which
he had escaped, and the salt waves which he gave the seas again to give to
other men; his ship, striving to live, floated at random, cuffed from wave
to wave, hurled to and fro by all the winds: now Boreas tossed it to
Notus, Notus passed it to Eurus, and Eurus to the West Wind, who kept up
the horrid tennis.
Them in their mad sport Ino Leucothea beheld--Ino Leucothea, now a
sea-goddess, but once a mortal and the daughter of Cadmus; she with pity
beheld Ulysses the mark of their fierce contention, and rising from the
waves alighted on the ship, in shape like to the sea-bird which is called
a cormorant; and in her beak she held a wonderful girdle made of
sea-weeds, which grow at the bottom of the ocean, which she dropped at his
feet; and the bird spake to Ulysses, and counselled him not to trust any
more to that fatal vessel against which god Neptune had levelled his
furious wrath, nor to those ill-befriending garments which Calypso had
given him, but to quit both it and them, and trust for his safety to
swimming. "And here," said the seeming bird, "take this girdle and tie
about your middle, which has virtue to protect the wearer at sea, and you
shall safely reach the shore; but when you have landed, cast it far from
you back into the sea." He did as the sea-bird instructed him; he stripped
himself naked, and, fastening the wondrous girdle about his middle, cast
himself into the seas to swim. The bird dived past his sight into the
fathomless abyss of the ocean.
Two days and two nights he spent in struggling with the waves, though sore
buffeted, and almost spent, never giving up himself for lost, such
confidence he had in that charm which he wore about his middle, and in the
words of that divine bird. But the third morning the winds grew calm and
all the heavens were clear. Then he saw himself nigh land, which he knew
to be the coast of the Phaeacians, a people good to strangers and
abounding in ships, by whose favour he doubted not that he should soon
obtain a passage to his own country. And such joy he conceived in his
heart as good sons have that esteem their father's life dear, when long
sickness has held him down to his bed and wasted his body, and they see at
length health return to the old man, with restored strength and spirits,
in reward of their many prayers to the gods for his safety: so precious
was the prospect of home-return to Ulysses, that he might restore health
to his country (his better parent), that had long languished as full of
distempers in his absence. And then for his own safety's sake he had joy
to see the shores, the woods, so nigh and within his grasp as they seemed,
and he laboured with all the might of hands and feet to reach with
swimming that nigh-seeming land.
But when he approached near, a horrid sound of a huge sea beating against
rocks informed him that here was no place for landing, nor any harbour for
man's resort, but through the weeds and the foam which the sea belched up
against the land he could dimly discover the rugged shore all bristled
with flints, and all that part of the coast one impending rock that seemed
impossible to climb, and the water all about so deep that not a sand was
there for any tired foot to rest upon, and every moment he feared lest
some wave more cruel than the rest should crush him against a cliff,
rendering worse than vain all his landing; and should he swim to seek a
more commodious haven farther on, he was fearful lest, weak and spent as
he was, the winds would force him back a long way off into the main, where
the terrible god Neptune, for wrath that he had so nearly escaped his
power, having gotten him again into his domain, would send out some great
whale (of which those seas breed a horrid number) to swallow him up alive;
with such malignity he still pursued him.
While these thoughts distracted him with diversity of dangers, one bigger
wave drove against a sharp rock his naked body, which it gashed and tore,
and wanted little of breaking all his bones, so rude was the shock. But in
this extremity she prompted him that never failed him at need. Minerva
(who is wisdom itself) put it into his thoughts no longer to keep swimming
off and on, as one dallying with danger, but boldly to force the shore
that threatened him, and to hug the rock that had torn him so rudely;
which with both hands he clasped, wrestling with extremity, till the rage
of that billow which had driven him upon it was passed; but then again the
rock drove back that wave so furiously that it reft him of his hold,
sucking him with it in its return; and the sharp rock, his cruel friend,
to which he clung for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in
parting that he fell off, and could sustain no longer; quite under water
he fell, and, past the help of fate, there had the hapless Ulysses lost
all portion that he had in this life, if Minerva had not prompted his
wisdom in that peril to essay another course, and to explore some other
shelter, ceasing to attempt that landing-place.
She guided his wearied and nigh-exhausted limbs to the mouth of the fair
river Callicoe, which not far from thence disbursed its watery tribute to
the ocean. Here the shores were easy and accessible, and the rocks, which
rather adorned than defended its banks, so smooth that they seemed
polished of purpose to invite the landing of our sea-wanderer, and to
atone for the uncourteous treatment which those less hospitable cliffs had
afforded him. And the god of the river, as if in pity, stayed his current,
and smoothed his waters, to make his landing more easy; for sacred to the
ever-living deities of the fresh waters, be they mountain-stream, river,
or lake, is the cry of erring mortals that seek their aid, by reason that,
being inland-bred, they partake more of the gentle humanities of our
nature than those marine deities whom Neptune trains up in tempests in the
unpitying recesses of his salt abyss.
So by the favour of the river's god Ulysses crept to land half-drowned;
both his knees faltering, his strong hands falling down through weakness
from the excessive toils he had endured, his cheeks and nostrils flowing
with froth of the sea-brine, much of which he had swallowed in that
conflict, voice and breath spent, down he sank as in death. Dead weary he
was. It seemed that the sea had soaked through his heart, and the pains he
felt in all his veins were little less than those which one feels that has
endured the torture of the rack. But when his spirits came a little to
themselves, and his recollection by degrees began to return, he rose up,
and unloosing from his waist the girdle or charm which that divine bird
had given him, and remembering the charge which he had received with it,
he flung it far from him into the river. Back it swam with the course of
the ebbing stream till it reached the sea, where the fair hands of Ino
Leucothea received it to keep it as a pledge of safety to any future
shipwrecked mariner that, like Ulysses, should wander in those perilous
waves.
Then he kissed the humble earth in token of safety, and on he went by the
side of that pleasant river, till he came where a thicker shade of rushes
that grew on its banks seemed to point out the place where he might rest
his sea-wearied limbs. And here a fresh perplexity divided his mind,
whether he should pass the night, which was coming on, in that place,
where, though he feared no other enemies, the damps and frosts of the
chill sea-air in that exposed situation might be death to him in his weak
state; or whether he had better climb the next hill, and pierce the depth
of some shady wood, in which he might find a warm and sheltered though
insecure repose, subject to the approach of any wild beast that roamed
that way. Best did this last course appear to him, though with some
danger, as that which was more honourable and savoured more of strife and
self-exertion than to perish without a struggle the passive victim of cold
and the elements.
So he bent his course to the nearest woods, where, entering in, he found a
thicket, mostly of wild olives and such low trees, yet growing so
intertwined and knit together that the moist wind had not leave to play
through their branches, nor the sun's scorching beams to pierce their
recesses, nor any shower to beat through, they grew so thick, and as it
were folded each in the other; here creeping in, he made his bed of the
leaves which were beginning to fall, of which was such abundance that two
or three men might have spread them ample coverings, such as might shield
them from the winter's rage, though the air breathed steel and blew as it
would burst. Here creeping in, he heaped up store of leaves all about him,
as a man would billets upon a winter fire, and lay down in the midst. Rich
seed of virtue lying hid in poor leaves! Here Minerva soon gave him sound
sleep; and here all his long toils past seemed to be concluded and shut up
within the little sphere of his refreshed and closed eyelids.
CHAPTER SIX
The Princess Nausicaa.--The Washing.--The Game with the Ball.--The Court
of Phaeacia and King Alcinous.
Meantime Minerva, designing an interview between the king's daughter of
that country and Ulysses when he should awake, went by night to the palace
of king Alcinous, and stood at the bedside of the princess Nausicaa in the
shape of one of her favourite attendants, and thus addressed the sleeping
princess:
"Nausicaa, why do you lie sleeping here, and never bestow a thought upon
your bridal ornaments, of which you have many and beautiful, laid up in
your wardrobe against the day of your marriage, which cannot be far
distant; when you shall have need of all, not only to deck your own
person, but to give away in presents to the virgins that honouring you
shall attend you to the temple? Your reputation stands much upon the
timely care of these things; these things are they which fill father and
reverend mother with delight. Let us arise betimes to wash your fair
vestments of linen and silks in the river; and request your sire to lend
you mules and a coach, for your wardrobe is heavy, and the place where we
must wash is distant, and besides it fits not a great princess like you to
go so far on foot."
So saying, she went away, and Nausicaa awoke, full of pleasing thoughts of
her marriage, which the dream had told her was not far distant; and as
soon as it was dawn she arose and dressed herself, and went to find her
parents.
The queen her mother was already up, and seated among her maids, spinning
at her wheel, as the fashion was in those primitive times, when great
ladies did not disdain housewifery: and the king her father was preparing
to go abroad at that early hour to council with his grave senate.
"My father," she said, "will you not order mules and a coach to be got
ready, that I may go and wash, I and my maids, at the cisterns that stand
without the city?"
"What washing does my daughter speak of?" said Alcinous.
"Mine and my brothers' garments," she replied, "that have contracted soil
by this time with lying by so long in the wardrobe. Five sons have you
that are my brothers; two of them are married, and three are bachelors;
these last it concerns to have their garments neat and unsoiled; it may
advance their fortunes in marriage: and who but I their sister should have
a care of these things? You yourself, my father, have need of the whitest
apparel when you go, as now, to the council."
She used this plea, modestly dissembling her care of her own nuptials to
her father; who was not displeased at this instance of his daughter's
discretion; for a seasonable care about marriage may be permitted to a
young maiden, provided it be accompanied with modesty and dutiful
submission to her parents in the choice of her future husband; and there
was no fear of Nausicaa choosing wrongly or improperly, for she was as
wise as she was beautiful, and the best in all Phaeacia were suitors to
her for her love. So Alcinous readily gave consent that she should go,
ordering mules and a coach to be prepared. And Nausicaa brought from her
chamber all her vestments, and laid them up in the coach, and her mother
placed bread and wine in the coach, and oil in a golden cruse, to soften
the bright skins of Nausicaa and her maids when they came out of the
river.
Nausicaa, making her maids get up into the coach with her, lashed the
mules, till they brought her to the cisterns which stood a little on the
outside of the town, and were supplied with water from the river Callicoe.
There her attendants unyoked the mules, took out the clothes, and steeped
them in the cisterns, washing them in several waters, and afterwards
treading them clean with their feet, venturing wagers who should have done
soonest and cleanest, and using many pretty pastimes to beguile their
labours as young maids use, while the princess looked on. When they had
laid their clothes to dry, they fell to playing again, and Nausicaa joined
them in a game with the ball, which is used in that country, which is
performed by tossing the ball from hand to hand with great expedition, she
who begins the pastime singing a song. It chanced that the princess, whose
turn it became to toss the ball, sent it so far from its mark that it fell
beyond into one of the cisterns of the river; at which the whole company,
in merry consternation, set up a shriek so loud as waked the sleeping
Ulysses, who was taking his rest after his long toils in the woods not far
distant from the place where these young maids had come to wash.
[Illustration: _And Nausicaa joined them in a game with the ball_.]
At the sound of female voices Ulysses crept forth from his retirement,
making himself a covering with boughs and leaves as well as he could to
shroud his nakedness. The sudden appearance of his weather-beaten and
almost naked form so frighted the maidens that they scudded away into the
woods and all about to hide themselves, only Minerva (who had brought
about this interview to admirable purposes, by seemingly accidental means)
put courage into the breast of Nausicaa, and she stayed where she was, and
resolved to know what manner of man he was, and what was the occasion of
his strange coming to them.
He not venturing (for delicacy) to approach and clasp her knees, as
suppliants should, but standing far off, addressed this speech to the
young princess: