No words of his at any time could express the loveliness of those voices, of the unutterable sweetness of it, nothing.
The strains floated over the still sea like harps of heaven.
All that man had known or desired in life, all the emotions which had stirred the human heart, were blended in those magic voices. The world had nothing more to give; here, here at last, was the absolute fulfilment of beauty.
Louder and more piercingly sweet, as the unconscious sailors bent to the oars in earnest, and the sweat ran down their bare brown backs.
“Whither away, whither away, whither away? Fly no more.
Whither away from the high green field, and the happy blossoming shore?
Day and night to the billow the fountain calls:
Down shower the gambolling waterfalls
From wandering over the lea.”
The face of Ulysses grew wan and grey as the ship passed a projecting point of rock. On the smooth green turf the three singers were standing. In face and form they were sweet and lovely girls.
Naked to the waist, they wore long flowing draperies below, and as they sung the rosy bosoms rose and fell with the music, and the lucid throats rippled with song.
“Mariner, mariner, furl your sails,
For here are blissful downs and dales,
And merrily, merrily carol the gales,
And the spangle dances in bight and bay,
And the rainbow forms and flies on the land
Over the islands free;
And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand;
Hither, come hither and see.”
And still the ship went on, but more slowly, as it were some force were at work deadening the arms of the rowers.
Then the shrill loveliness fired the hero’s blood, and he knew that he must go to the three lovely singers on the strand. Earth held nothing better than this—to lie for ever with that music in his ears.