Circe and Telemachus

An excerpt from Bullfinch's Mythology

'Fenelon, in his romance of "Telemachus," has given us the adventures of the son of Ulysses in search of his father. 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 (Athena), 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."


 
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