no manner of harm, either to you or your friends, for anything which you
say, however offensive it may be to my love or my pride, but will send
you away from my island with all marks of my friendship. Tell me now,
truly, what pleasures you hope to enjoy in the barren rock of Ithaca,
which can compensate for those you leave in this paradise, exempt from
all cares and overflowing with all delights?

_Ulysses_.--The pleasures of virtue; the supreme happiness of doing good.
Here I do nothing. My mind is in a palsy; all its faculties are
benumbed. I long to return into action, that I may worthily employ those
talents which I have cultivated from the earliest days of my youth. Toils
and cares fright not me; they are the exercise of my soul; they keep it
in health and in vigour. Give me again the fields of Troy, rather than
these vacant groves. There I could reap the bright harvest of glory;
here I am hid like a coward from the eyes of mankind, and begin to appear
comtemptible in my own. The image of my former self haunts and seems to
upbraid me wheresoever I go. I meet it under the gloom of every shade;
it even intrudes itself into your presence and chides me from your arms.
O goddess, unless you have power to lay that spirit, unless you can make
me forget myself, I cannot be happy here, I shall every day be more
wretched.

_Circe_.--May not a wise and good man, who has spent all his youth in
active life and honourable danger, when he begins to decline, be
permitted to retire and enjoy the rest of his days in quiet and pleasure?

_Ulysses_.--No retreat can be honourable to a wise and good man but in
company with the muses. Here I am deprived of that sacred society. The
muses will not inhabit the abodes of voluptuousness and sensual pleasure.
How can I study or think while such a number of beasts--and the worst