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 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_.]
Read next: CHAPTER FIVE - The Tempest--The Sea-bird's Gift--The Escape by Swimming--The Sleep in the Woods.
Read previous: CHAPTER THREE - The Song of the Sirens--Scylla and Charybdis--The Oxen of the Sun--The Judgment--The Crew Killed by Lightning.
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