CALYPSO AND ULYSSES.

ODYSSEY, V. 148-224.

BY J. W. MACKAIL.

So saying, the mighty Shining One therefrom
Passed, and the nymph imperial from her home
Went forth to find Odysseus high of heart,
Heeding the message that from Zeus had come.

And him she found upon the ocean-brim,
Where evermore his eyes with tears were dim,
And with home-sickness all the joy of life
In lamentation wore away from him.

For now no more the nymph was his delight,
Though in the hollow caverns night by night
Perforce he needs must sleep beside her, yet
With no desire could her desire requite:

And day by day on cliff or beach apart,
Fretted with tears and sighs and bitter smart
He sate, and on the seas unharvested

Gazed with the tears down dropping, sick at heart.

Then standing by him spoke the Goddess fair:

No more, unhappy man, sit mourning there,
Nor let
your life be worn away; for now
Myself unasked your journey will prepare.

'Up therefore, hew long beams, and skilfully
Fit them with tools a broad-floored raft to be;

And build aloft a spar-deck thereupon
To carry you across the misty sea.

'But water I will store on it, and bread,
And the red wine wherewith is comforted
Man's heart, that you be stayed from famishing;
And lend you raiment; and your sail to spread

'Will send a following wind, that free from ill
Home you may win, if such indeed the will
Be of the Gods, who hold wide heaven, and are
Greater than I to purpose and fulfil.'

She spoke but toilworn bright Odysseus heard
Aghast, and answering said a winged word:
'Ah Goddess, surely not my home-going,

But some strange purpose in your heart is stirred;

'On a frail raft the mighty gulfs of sea
Bidding me cross, that fierce and dreadful be,
So that not even a swift well-balanced ship
Before God's wind may cross them running free.

'And on a raft my foot I will not set,
Goddess, unless your full consent I get,
And you take oath and swear, against my life.
Not to devise some other practice yet.'

So spake he: but the Goddess bright and bland
Calypso, smiling, stroked him with her hand,
And spoke a word and answered: 'Verily
A witch you are, and quick to understand,

'Such words are these you have devised to say!
Now Earth I take to record here to-day,
And the wide Heaven above our head, and that
Water Abhorred that trickles down alway

'(Which is the mightiest and most dread to break Of all the oaths the blessed Gods may take), No practice for your hurt will I devise,

But take such thought and counsel for your sake

'As for mine own self I would reckon good,
If in the like extremity I stood.

For my own mind is righteous, nor my heart
Iron within me, but of piteous mood.'

Uttering these words the shining Goddess fair
Led swiftly on, and he behind her there
Followed her footsteps; to the hollow cave,
A man beside a goddess, came the pair;

And to the seat whence Hermes forth was gone
Divine Odysseus went, and sat thereon.
Beside him then, that he might eat and drink,
All kinds of food that mortals feed upon

The nymph began to lay, and took her seat
Over against him; while, that she might eat,
The thralls her handmaidens set forth for her
The deathless drink and the immortal meat.

So to the ready food before them spread

They reached their hands out: and when they had fed
To quench their thirst and hunger, then began
Calypso, bright of Goddesses, and said:

'Son of Laertes, high-born, subtle-souled,
Odysseus, may your longing naught withhold
To your own land so straightway to be gone?
Then fare you well; but had your heart foretold

'How many woes the fates for you decree
Before you reach your country, here with me
You had abode, and in this house had kept,

And been immortal, how so fain to see

That wife for whom through all your days you pine

Yet deem I not her beauty more than mine.

Since hardly may a mortal woman vie

In shape and beauty with my race divine,'

Then in his wisdom spoke and answered he:
'Goddess and mistress, be not wroth with me
Herein for very well myself I know
That, set beside you, sage Penelope

'Were far less stately and less fair to view,
Being but mortal woman, nor like you
Ageless and deathless: yet even so I yearn
With longing sore to see my home anew;

'And through all days I see that one day shine :

But if amid the ocean bright as wine

Once more some God shall break me, then once more

With steadfast purpose would my heart incline

'Still to endurance, and would suffer still,
As ofttimes I have suffered, many an ill
And many a woe in wave or war; and now
Let this too follow after, if it will.'

THE NEW BOHEMIA.

BY AN OLD FOGEY.

SOMETHING more than a quarter of a century ago, before I went out to help my uncle Benjamin as a tea-planter in Assam, I used to know a little about the Bohemian circles of the town. It was rather a fashion among young fellows from Oxford and Cambridge in those days. The Thackeray tradition was still with us, and at that time we used to read 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes' and 'The Adventures of Philip.' I am told people do not read them any longer, preferring the polished compositions and chaste fancies of certain later novelists. It may be so. We are apt to fall a little behind the current of popular literature in the remoter East. At any rate, we youngsters in the seventies knew our Thackeray, with our Dickens, our Clough, our Tennyson, and other now perhaps obsolete writers, and came up to London emulous of the brave life which those gallant heroes, Warrington and Pen and Clive Newcome, led so dashingly among the taverns and the theatres, the men of the quill, and the brothers of the brush and palette-knife. Like most other things, the reality proved hardly equal to the illusion. We had hummed over the famous lines

Though its longitude 's rather uncertain,

And its latitude 's doubtful and vague,

That person I pity who knows not the city,

The beautiful city of Prague.

So we young fellows went for it bald-headed '-to use the elegant expression which I cull from the pages of one of the most cultured American authors of the day-and were never so happy as when we were spending an evening in the company of our Bohemian friends, who, to do them justice, being a hospitable set,

were not averse to see us.

They were a jovial crew, who worked hard, and amused themselves in a roystering, companionable fashion. I am bound to say that already, when I first came upon the town and took chambers in Hare Court, Temple (dingy old Hare Court, whose venerable buildings have now been pulled down and replaced