Nausicaa, as we shall see, is worthy of her parentage. The gods were gracious at her birth, and gave her the fine qualities of both father and mother. Yet courage and resource and a wise generosity sit lightly on the youthful figure that flits through the Sixth Book of the Odyssey. She is a mere girl, fresh and untried, with an irresistible gaiety of heart and a tender regard for home ties. Her changing moods and caprices are like dancing sunlight, and now and then there falls upon her a soft shadow of wistfulness, cast by the ‘long, long thoughts’ of youth.
Her pretty head holds its own romantic visions, which she cannot, from girlish shyness, bring herself to talk about freely, even to the dear indulgent father. So for fear of his teasing and laughter, she practises a little harmless deceit on him; which, however, does not deceive him in the least, because his love can look right through it.
So she moves before us, a creature of grace and beauty, of fineness and strength; but withal so happy and human that the thought of her has the bracing sweetness of upland meadows, or the breath of the summer sea. Yet it is this fresh young girl whom we have to consider for a moment as the unconscious rival of Penelope. The idea of such a rivalry seems absurd, in connection with Nausicaa. And so it is, taken clumsily out of its setting and robbed of the poet’s delicate art. Yet the suggestion is clear; and the marvel is that Homer has contrived to bring her out of the ordeal with her young innocence quite untouched. The beats of the love-god’s wings only fan her in passing, and she is left unhurt by a single barb. For a happy instant she glimpses him in flight, and stretches a welcoming hand in naïve pleasure. But the moment after, he has fled in jewelled light and she is left, wondering and wistful, but scathless yet.
So Nausicaa lives, a peerless girl in Homer’s group of immortal women. She has served his purpose in the epic plan—to link the story with Penelope and to enhance her dignified maturity. She has served too, in the strongest way, to accentuate the chivalry and constancy of the hero. But in doing this, the tenderest care has been taken that she shall not be despoiled of her exquisite charm.
Poseidon the Sea-god was still wrathful with Odysseus for the injury done to his son, the Cyclops. But having gone on a long journey to the land of the ‘blameless Æthiopians,’ Athena had compassed in his absence the escape of the hero. He had sailed joyfully from Calypso’s island, and for seventeen days had fared onward steadily, with a following wind. The wine and food that Calypso had given him were still unspent, when on the eighteenth day there loomed before him the island of Phaeacia, vast and shadowy in the morning mist. Here, he knew, were friendly hands and hearts; people who had never been known to refuse safe convoy to distressed mariners. And Odysseus, feeling that now at last the end of his struggles had come, steered straight ahead. But he reckoned without Poseidon. For that angry god, speeding on his homeward journey from Æthiopia to Olympus, looked down from the mountains of the Solymi and spied the raft of Odysseus, making for the safety of a Phaeacian harbour. Amazement smote him; then indignation, and then a furious desire for instant revenge. So this was what the immortals had been doing in his absence—plotting to befriend the man who had so foully mis-used his son. But no matter! If Athena must needs win in the end—and even the might of Poseidon could not eventually withstand her calm wisdom—her success should be at bitter cost to this artful rascal whom she favoured. So:
The clouds at his command
Gathered, and with the trident in his hand
He stirred the sea and roused the hurricane
Of all the winds, and blotted sea and land