So he bowed his head, and hid
his face as he sat by the altar in the holiest of the holy shrine, and
with his right hand he grasped the horns of the altar. As he sat there,
perchance he woke, and perchance he slept. However it was, it seemed
to him that soon there came a murmuring and a whispering of the myrtle
leaves and laurels, and a sound in the tops of the pines, and then his
face was fanned by a breath more cold than the wind that wakes the dawn.
At the touch of this breath the Wanderer shuddered, and the hair on his
flesh stood up, so cold was the strange wind.
There was silence; and he heard a voice, and he knew that it was the
voice of no mortal, but of a goddess. For the speech of goddesses was
not strange in his ears; he knew the clarion cry of Athene, the Queen of
Wisdom and of War; and the winning words of Circe, the Daughter of the
Sun, and the sweet song of Calypso's voice as she wove with her golden
shuttle at the loom. But now the words came sweeter than the moaning of
doves, more soft than sleep. So came the golden voice, whether he woke
or whether he dreamed.
"Odysseus, thou knowest me not, nor am I thy lady, nor hast thou ever
been my servant! Where is she, the Queen of the Air, Athene, and why
comest _thou_ here as a suppliant at the knees of the daughter of
Dione?"
He answered nothing, but he bowed his head in deeper sorrow.
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