. The will
of Ulysses was paralyzed in the Island of the Sun, he is helplessly
carried forward on the sea, till the yawning gulf of Charybdis
(Despair) threatens to swallow him, when he puts forth a mighty effort
of will, represented in his clinging to the branches of the fig tree,
which extends Hope to him, and thus he rescues himself. Now he rows his
raft "with both his hands," it is indeed time to exert anew his
volition. Charybdis could not take him, on account of a saving germ in
him still; she has to let him pass. Whither?

Naturally the next station rearward is that of the Sirens, and this in
a general way is what Ulysses reaches in his relapse. He comes to the
realm of the senses, for the fact is that this was the source of the
great trouble in the Island of the Sun. The companions, pressed by
appetite and the needs of the body, yielded up their conviction, their
intelligence; they had not reached that strength of the spirit which
prefers the death of the body to a surrender of the soul. Ulysses at
last acquiesced, the problem was too great for him and so he also is
cast out of the Island of the Sun back into the region of the senses.
But it is a new region of the senses, not that of the Sirens, not that
of Circe, both of which he has transcended by an effort of will-power;
it is the realm of Calypso, the Concealer, which has been reached
through the collapse of the will after the sin against light. There is
unquestionably an affinity between Circe, the Sirens, and Calypso, yet
there is also such a difference between them that the poet has assigned
to them distinct domains, It is plain, too, that Ulysses in his present
paralysis will remain long with Calypso, not at once will he recover
his power after such a negation. He is hidden, as it were, in her Dark
Island Ogygia after that undoing of light; he passes from the sun-world
of Reason to its opposite. Calypso, therefore, is reached through the
grand Relapse, not through the progressive movement, which we have seen
him going through hitherto.

Still Ulysses has in him the germ of betterment, of salvation. He longs
to reach home and country, to return to his institutional world; that
spark of aspiration has a saving power; it will not be extinguished
even in the sensuous delights of Calypso's bower.

_Observations._ In looking back at the Twelfth Book and thinking it
over as a Whole, the reader will always feel that he has not fully
sounded its depths. It has