st a bolt struck Eurylochus,
then another, and then another, till all the crew were killed, and
their bodies swam about like sea-mews; and the ship was split in
pieces: only Ulysses survived; and he had no hope of safety but in
tying himself to the mast, where he sat riding upon the waves, like
one that in no extremity would yield to fortune. Nine days was he
floating about with all the motions of the sea, with no other support
than the slender mast under him, till the tenth night cast him, all
spent and weary with toil, upon the friendly shores of the island
Ogygia.

CHAPTER IV

_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 ma