Then thus to Hermes the command was given: 
“Hermes, thou chosen messenger of heaven! 
Go, to the nymph be these our orders borne
’Tis Jove’s decree, Ulysses shall return: 
The patient man shall view his old abodes,
Nor helped by mortal hand, nor guiding gods
In twice ten days shall fertile Scheria find,
Alone, and floating to the wave and wind. 
The bold Phaecians there, whose haughty line
Is mixed with gods, half human, half divine,
The chief shall honour as some heavenly guest,
And swift transport him to his place of rest,
His vessels loaded with a plenteous store
Of brass, of vestures, and resplendent ore
(A richer prize than if his joyful isle
Received him charged with Ilion’s noble spoil),
His friends, his country, he shall see, though late: 
Such is our sovereign will, and such is fate.”

He spoke.  The god who mounts the winged winds
Fast to his feet the golden pinions binds,
That high through fields of air his flight sustain
O’er the wide earth, and o’er the boundless main: 
He grasps the wand that causes sleep to fly,
Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye;
Then shoots from heaven to high Pieria’s steep,
And stoops incumbent on the rolling deep. 
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 word 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 limped 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;