sweet and a
wild olive tree, interlacing their branches, or--perhaps more
accurately translating Homer's intensely graphic expression--"changing
their branches with each other" (it is very curious how often, in an
entanglement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong to the wrong
trees) and forming a roof penetrated by neither rain, sun, nor wind.
Under this bower Ulysses collects the "_vain_ (or _frustrate_)
outpouring of the dead leaves"--another exquisite expression, used
elsewhere of useless grief or shedding of tears;--and, having got
enough together, makes his bed of them, and goes to sleep, having
covered himself up with them, "as embers are covered up with
ashes."[104]

Nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive of the _facts_ than
this whole passage: the sense of utter deadness and emptiness, and
frustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in the human body,--the
fire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the dead brown
heap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of interchanged and
close strength of living boughs above. But there is not the smallest
apparent sense of there being _beauty_ elsewhere than in the human
being. The wreathed wood is admired simply as being a perfect roof for
it; the fallen leaves only as being a perfect bed for it; and there is
literally no more excitement of emotion in Homer, as he describes
them, nor does he expect us to be more excited or touched by hearing
about them, than if he had been telling us how the chambermaid at the
Bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra blankets.

Now, exactly this same contemplation of subservience to human use
makes the Greek take some pleasure in _rocks_, when they assume one
particular form, but one only--that of a _cave_. They are evidently
quite frightful things to him under any other condition, and most of
all if they are rough and jagged; but if smooth, looking "sculptured,"
like the sides of a ship, and forming a cave or shelter for him, he
begins to think them endurable. Hence, associating the ideas of rich
and sheltering wood, sea, becalmed and made useful as a port by
protecting promontories of rock, and smoothed caves or grottoes in the
rocks themselves, we get the pleasantest idea which the Greek could
form of a landscape, next to a marsh with poplars in it; not, indeed,
if possible, ever to be without these last; thus, in commending the
Cyclops' country as one possessed of every perfection, Homer erst