So watery fowl, that seek their fishy food,

With wings expanded o’er the foaming flood,

Now sailing smooth the level surface sweep,

Now dip their pinions in the briny deep;

Thus o’er the world of waters Hermes flew,

Till now the distant island rose in view:

Then, swift ascending from the azure wave,

He took the path that winded to the cave.

Large was the grot, in which the nymph he found

(The fair-hair’d nymph with every beauty crown’d).

The cave was brighten’d with a rising blaze;

Cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile,

Flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle;

While she with work and song the time divides,

And through the loom the golden shuttle guides.

Without the grot a various sylvan scene

Appear’d around, and groves of living green;

Poplars and alders ever quivering play’d,

And nodding cypress form’d a fragrant shade:

On whose high branches, waving with the storm,

The birds of broadest wing their mansions form,—

The chough, the sea-mew, the loquacious crow,—

and scream aloft, and skim the deeps below.

Depending vines the shelving cavern screen.

With purple clusters blushing through the green.

Four limpid fountains from the clefts distil:

And every fountain pours a several rill,

In mazy windings wandering down the hill:

Where bloomy meads with vivid greens were crown’d,

And glowing violets threw odours round.

A scene, where, if a god should cast his sight,

A god might gaze, and wander with delight!

Joy touch’d the messenger of heaven: he stay’d

Entranced, and all the blissful haunts surveyed.

Him, entering in the cave, Calypso knew;

For powers celestial to each other’s view

Stand still confess’d, though distant far they lie

To habitants of earth, or sea, or sky.

But sad Ulysses, by himself apart,

Pour’d the big sorrows of his swelling heart;

All on the lonely shore he sate to weep,

And roll’d his eyes around the restless deep: