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The Game with the Ball. The Court of Phaeacia and King Alcinous.
But so soon as we had sacked the steep city of Priam and had gone on board our ships, and the god had scattered the Achaeans, thereafter I have never beheld thee, daughter of Zeus, nor seen thee coming on board my ship, to ward off sorrow from me but I wandered evermore with a stricken heart, till the gods delivered me from my evil case even till the day when, within the fat land of the men of Phaeacia, thou didst comfort me with thy words, and thyself didst lead me to their city.
Finding the mouth of a small stream, he swam up it, then utterly weary flung himself down on a heap of leaves under a bush, guarded by Athena. The next episode introduces one of the most charming figures in ancient literature. Nausicaa was the daughter of Alcinous, King of Phaeacia, on whose island Odysseus had landed.
I do not know about archaeology, but as for "harmless and peaceful people," I leave it to my readers to say whether the islanders were anything of the sort. I learn that the Government has just refused to give the Museum a grant of five thousand pounds to be employed in what are called "Excavations in Ancient Phaeacia," diggings, that is, in Boothland.
Perhaps the best noun that describes Flecker's verse is brightness. He had a consumptive's longing for sunshine, and his sojourns on the Mediterranean shores illuminate his pages. The following poem is decidedly characteristic: IN PHAEACIA
No sleep could seize his eyelids. He beheld the Pleiads, the Bear, which is by some called the Wain, that moves round about Orion, and keeps still above the ocean, and the slow-setting sign Bootes, which some name the Wagoner. Seventeen days he held his course, and on the eighteenth the coast of Phaeacia was in sight.
And, if any man is so minded, let him rise up and contend with me, for I will match myself in wrestling or boxing, or even in the race, with any man in Phaeacia, save Laodamas only, for he is my friend. I can shoot with the bow; and I can cast a spear as far as other men can shoot an arrow. But as for the race, it may be that some one might outrun me, for I have suffered much on the sea."
The Gods in council command Calypso by Hermes to send away Odysseus on a raft of trees; and Poseidon, returning from Ethiopia and seeing him on the coast of Phaeacia, scattered his raft; and how by the help of Ino he was thrown ashore, and slept on a heap of dry leaves till the next day.
The vulgar indeed proclaim the Deity to be ineffable; but as they have no scientific knowledge that he is so, this is nothing more than a confused and indistinct perception of the most sublime of all truths, like that of a thing seen between sleeping and waking, like Phaeacia to Ulysses when sailing to his native land,
Yet at the last he rose, and spat the salt water out of his mouth, and sprang at the raft, and caught it, and sat thereon, and was borne hither and thither by the waves. "Luckless mortal, why doth Poseidon hate thee so? He shall not slay thee, though he fain would do it. Put off these garments, and swim to the land of Phaeacia, putting this veil under thy breast.