n 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