Page 120 - the-odyssey

which is called ‘the Ogygian.’ Here dwells the cunning and
powerful goddess Calypso, daughter of Atlas. She lives by
herself far from all neighbours human or divine. Fortune,
however, brought me to her hearth all desolate and alone,
for Jove struck my ship with his thunderbolts, and broke it
up in mid-ocean. My brave comrades were drowned every
man of them, but I stuck to the keel and was carried hither
and thither for the space of nine days, till at last during the
darkness of the tenth night the gods brought me to the Ogy-
gian island where the great goddess Calypso lives. She took
me in and treated me with the utmost kindness; indeed she
wanted to make me immortal that I might never grow old,
but she could not persuade me to let her do so.
‘I stayed with Calypso seven years straight on end, and
watered the good clothes she gave me with my tears during
the whole time; but at last when the eighth year came round
she bade me depart of her own free will, either because
Jove had told her she must, or because she had changed her
mind. She sent me from her island on a raft, which she pro-
visioned with abundance of bread and wine. Moreover she
gave me good stout clothing, and sent me a wind that blew
both warm and fair. Days seven and ten did I sail over the
sea, and on the eighteenth I caught sight of the first outlines
of the mountains upon your coast—and glad indeed was I
to set eyes upon them. Nevertheless there was still much
trouble in store for me, for at this point Neptune would let
me go no further, and raised a great storm against me; the
sea was so terribly high that I could no longer keep to my
raft, which went to pieces under the fury of the gale, and I

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