486 THE GREEK SAGAS: GREEK LOCAL LEGENDS
Calypso and Ulysses, by Emily Marshall. Watercolor on paper, 1820-1835; 19 X 24 in. Ca-
lypso, in the dress of a woman of the early nineteenth century, tries to comfort Odysseus
as he looks over the ocean and thinks of Penelope. Her left hand rests on his shoulder
and behind is a river landscape with a palm tree to give a suitably exotic air. Nothing is
known of the artist, whose deceptively naive style has caught the pathos of the situation
in which the goddess and the hero find themselves. (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Col-
lection, Williamsburg, Virginia. Reproduced by permission.)some point in these things, O goddess, daughter of Zeus, begin to tell me also
the tale.
Then all the others, who had escaped sheer destruction, were at home, safe
from the sea and the war. But this man alone, longing for his homecoming and
his wife, did the nymph, the lady Calypso, keep in her hollow cave, desiring
him as her husband. But when, as the years rolled round, that year came in
which the gods had destined his return home to Ithaca, not even then did he es-
cape from his labors nor was he with his friends. Yet the gods pitied him, all
except Poseidon, and he unrelentingly was hostile to godlike Odysseus, until he
returned to his own land.