crystal fountains, running brooks, meadows flowering with sweet balm-
gentle and with violet; blue violets which like veins enamelled 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 man 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 everything, 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, no 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 seashores (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