_The Island of Calypso.--Immortality refused._
Henceforth the adventures of the single Ulysses must be pursued. Of
all 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 sea-farers 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 ship-wrecked 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 enameled 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
every thing, 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, nor
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 sea shores (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 had no thought but what stood with thy safety, nor
would have done or counselled any thing 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 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,
side-boards, 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.