With an ill grace Calypso promised to fulfil the commands of Jove; and,
Mercury departing, she went to find Ulysses, where he sat outside the
grotto, not knowing of the heavenly message, drowned in discontent, not
seeing any human probability of his ever returning home.

She said to him: "Unhappy man, no longer afflict yourself with pining
after your country, but build you a ship, with which you may return home,
since it is the will of the gods; who, doubtless, as they are greater in
power than I, are greater in skill, and best can tell what is fittest for
man. But I call the gods and my inward conscience to witness that I have
no thought but what stood with thy safety, nor would have done or
counselled anything against thy good. I persuaded thee to nothing which
I should not have followed myself in thy extremity; for my mind is
innocent and simple. O, if thou knewest what dreadful sufferings thou must
yet endure before ever thou reachest thy native land, thou wouldest not
esteem so hardly of a goddess's offer to share her immortality with thee;
nor, for a few years' enjoyment of a perishing Penelope, refuse an
imperishable and never-dying life with Calypso."

He replied: "Ever-honoured, great Calypso, let it not displease thee, that
I a mortal man desire to see and converse again with a wife that is
mortal: human objects are best fitted to human infirmities. I well know
how far in wisdom, in feature, in stature, proportion, beauty, in all the
gifts of the mind, thou exceedest my Penelope: she is a mortal, and
subject to decay; thou immortal, ever growing, yet never old; yet in her
sight all my desires terminate, all my wishes--in the sight of her, and of
my country earth. If any god, envious of my return, shall lay his dreadful
hand upon me as I pass the seas, I submit; for the same powers have given
me a mind not to sink under oppression. In wars and waves my sufferings