Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, every Homeric
landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a
meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very interestingly marked, as
intended for a perfect one, in the fifth book of the _Odyssey_; when
Mercury himself stops for a moment, though on a message, to look at a
landscape "which even an immortal might be gladdened to behold."[87]
This landscape consists of a cave covered with a running vine, all
blooming into grapes, and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, and
sweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains of white (foaming) water,
springing _in succession_ (mark the orderliness), and close to one
another, flow away in different directions, through a meadow full of
violets and parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture, being elsewhere
called "marsh-nourished," and associated with the lotus[88]); the air
is perfumed not only by these violets, and by the sweet cypress, but
by Calypso's fire of finely chopped cedar-wood, which sends a smoke,
as of incense, through the island; Calypso herself is singing; and
finally, upon the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and
"long-tongued sea-crows." Whether these last are considered as a part
of the ideal landscape, as marine singing birds, I know not; but the
approval of Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains
and violet meadow.
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