metamorphosis, when, with an ointment which she smeared over them,
suddenly their bristles fell off, and they started up in their own shapes,
men as before. They knew their leader again, and clung about him, with joy
of their late restoration, and some shame for their late change; and wept
so loud, blubbering out their joy in broken accents, that the palace was
filled with a sound of pleasing mourning, and the witch herself, great
Circe, was not unmoved at the sight. To make her atonement complete, she
sent for the remnant of Ulysses's men who stayed behind at the ship,
giving up their great commander for lost; who when they came, and saw him
again alive, circled with their fellows, no expression can tell what joy
they felt; they even cried out with rapture, and to have seen their
frantic expressions of mirth a man might have supposed that they were just
in sight of their country earth, the cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only
Eurylochus would hardly be persuaded to enter that palace of wonders, for
he remembered with a kind of horror how his companions had vanished from
his sight.

Then great Circe spake, and gave order that there should be no more
sadness among them, nor remembering of past sufferings. For as yet they
fared like men that are exiles from their country, and if a gleam of mirth
shot among them, it was suddenly quenched with the thought of their
helpless and homeless condition. Her kind persuasions wrought upon Ulysses
and the rest, and they spent twelve months in all manner of delight with
her in her palace. For Circe was a powerful magician, and could command
the moon from her sphere, or unroot the solid oak from its place to make
it dance for their diversion, and by the help of her illusions she could
vary the taste of pleasures, and contrive delights, recreations, and jolly
pastimes, to "fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious
year as in a delightful dream."