But still, every expression of the pleasure which Ulysses has in this landing and resting, contains uninterruptedly the reference to the utility and sensible pleasantness of all things, not to their beauty.  After his first grateful kiss given to the corn-growing land, he considers immediately how he is to pass the night; for some minutes hesitating whether it will be best to expose himself to the misty chill from the river, or run the risk of wild beasts in the wood.  He decides for the wood, and finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and a wild olive tree, interlacing their branches, or—­perhaps more accurately translating Homer’s intensely graphic expression—­“changing their branches with each other” (it is very curious how often, in an entanglement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong to the wrong trees) and forming a roof penetrated by neither rain, sun, nor wind.  Under this bower Ulysses collects the “vain (or frustrate) outpouring of the dead leaves”—­another exquisite expression, used elsewhere of useless grief or shedding of tears;—­and, having got enough together, makes his bed of them, and goes to sleep, having covered himself up with them, “as embers are covered up with ashes."[104]

Nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive of the facts than this whole passage:  the sense of utter deadness and emptiness, and frustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in the human body,—­the fire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the dead brown heap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of interchanged and close strength of living boughs above.  But there is not the smallest apparent sense of there being beauty elsewhere than in the human being.  The wreathed wood is admired simply as being a perfect roof for it; the fallen leaves only as being a perfect bed for it; and there is literally no more excitement of emotion in Homer, as he describes them, nor does he expect us to be more excited or touched by hearing about them, than if he had been telling us how the chambermaid at the Bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra blankets.

Now, exactly this same contemplation of subservience to human use makes the Greek take some pleasure in rocks, when they assume one particular form, but one only—­that of a cave.  They are evidently quite frightful things to him under any other condition, and most of all if they are rough and jagged; but if smooth, looking “sculptured,” like the sides of a ship, and forming a cave or shelter for him, he begins to think them endurable.  Hence, associating the ideas of rich and sheltering wood, sea, becalmed and made useful as a port by protecting promontories of rock, and smoothed caves or grottoes in the rocks themselves, we get the pleasantest idea which the Greek could form of a landscape, next to a marsh with poplars in it; not, indeed, if possible, ever to be without these last; thus, in commending the Cyclops’ country as one possessed of every perfection, Homer erst says:  “They have soft marshy meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crumbling, ploughing-land, giving fine deep crops, and vines always giving fruit”; then, “a port so quiet, that they have no need of cables in it; and at the head of the port, a beautiful clear spring just under a cave, and aspen poplars all round it."[105]