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Beautiful indeed was that Island.  All round the cave where Calypso lived was a blossoming wood—­alder, poplar and cypress trees were there, and on their branches roosted long-winged birds—­falcons and owls and chattering sea-crows.  Before the cave was a soft meadow in which thousands of violets bloomed, and with four fountains that gushed out of the ground and made clear streams through the grass.  Across the cave grew a straggling vine, heavy with clusters of grapes.  Calypso was within the cave, and as Hermes came near, he heard her singing one of her magic songs.

She was before a loom weaving the threads with a golden shuttle.  Now she knew Hermes and was pleased to see him on her Island, but as soon as he spoke of Odysseus and how it was the will of Zeus that he should be permitted to leave the Island, her song ceased and the golden shuttle fell from her hand.

‘Woe to me,’ she said, ’and woe to any immortal who loves a mortal, for the gods are always jealous of their love.  I do not hold him here because I hate Odysseus, but because I love him greatly, and would have him dwell with me here,—­more than this, Hermes, I would make him an immortal so that he would know neither old age nor death.’

‘He does not desire to be freed from old age and death,’ said Hermes, ’he desires to return to his own land and to live with his dear wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus.  And Zeus, the greatest of the gods, commands that you let him go upon his way.’

‘I have no ship to give him,’ said Calypso, ’and I have no company of men to help him to cross the sea,’

‘He must leave the Island and cross the sea—­Zeus commands it,’ Hermes said.

‘I must help him to make his way across the sea if it must be so,’ Calypso said.  Then she bowed her head and Hermes went from her.

Straightway Calypso left her cave and went down to the sea.  By the shore Odysseus stayed, looking across the wide sea with tears in his eyes.

She came to him and she said, ’Be not sorrowful any more, Odysseus.  The time has come when thou mayst depart from my Island.  Come now.  I will show how I can help thee on thy way.’

She brought him to the side of the Island where great trees grew and she put in his hands a double-edged axe and an adze.  Then Odysseus started to hew down the timber.  Twenty trees he felled with his axe of bronze, and he smoothed them and made straight the line.  Calypso came to him at the dawn of the next day; she brought augers for boring and he made the beams fast.  He built a raft, making it very broad, and set a mast upon it and fixed a rudder to guide it.  To make it more secure, he wove out of osier rods a fence that went from stem to stern as a bulwark against the waves, and he strengthened the bulwark with wood placed behind.  Calypso wove him a web of cloth for sails, and these he made very skilfully.  Then he fastened the braces and the halyards and sheets, and he pushed the raft, with levers down to the sea.