Half-Hours with Mercury and Vulcan 



the cover of a bush that's near your 

 door. 



How grateful is that sun ! How blue 

 the sky! How green today the ivies 

 and the Persian lilacs that near obscure 

 the soft-gray stuccoed walls. The 

 outer hedge-rows throw their emerald 

 belt about it all. Not even sound 

 obtrudes upon seclusion all but ab- 

 solute, save the rustling of oak leaves 

 over-head. And so I doze and dream. 

 My book today has chanced to be 

 The Odyssey. In obedience to Jove's 

 command the winged Mercury has 

 just alighted on Calypso's fabled isle. 

 I love Leigh Hunt's translation, and 

 wish you would read it with me. 



"And now arriving at the isle, he springs 

 Oblique, and landing with subsided wings, 

 Walks to the cavern 'mid the tall green rocks, 

 Where dwelt the goddess with the lovely locks. 

 He paused; and there came on him, as he 



stood, 

 A smell of cedar and of citron wood, 

 That threw a perfume all about the isle; 

 And she within sat spinning all the while, 



[33] 



