Among
other places at which he arrived, following on his father's
footsteps, was Calypso's isle, and, as in the former case, the
goddess tried every art to keep him with her, and offered to share
her immortality with him. But Minerva, who in the shape of Mentor
accompanied him and governed all his movements, made him repel her
allurements, and when no other means of escape could be found, the
two friends leaped from a cliff into the sea, and swam to a vessel
which lay becalmed off shore. Byron alludes to this leap of
Telemachus and Mentor in the following stanza:
"But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,
The sister tenants of the middle deep;
There for the weary still a haven smiles,
Though the fair goddess long has ceased to weep,
And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep
For him who dared prefer a mortal bride.
Here too his boy essayed the dreadful leap,
Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide;
While thus of both bereft the nymph-queen doubly sighed."
CHAPTER XXX
THE PHAEACIANS--FATE OF THE SUITORS
THE PHAEACIANS
Ulysses clung to the raft while any of its timbers kept together,
and when it no longer yielded him support, binding the girdle
around him, he swam. Minerva smoothed the billows before him and
sent him a wind that rolled the waves towards the shore.
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