Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/61

it is not the flattery of a suppliant, but the quick discernment of a man of the world, which makes him at once assign her true rank to the fair stranger who stands before him. He remains at a respectful distance, while, in the language of Eastern compliment, he compares her to the young palm-tree for grace and beauty, and invokes the blessing of the gods upon her marriage-hour, if she will take pity on his miserable case. Nausicaa recalls her fugitive attendants, and rebukes them for their folly, reminding them that "the stranger and the poor are the messengers of the gods." The shipwrecked hero is supplied at once with food and drink and raiment; and when he reappears, after having bathed and clothed himself, it is with a mien and stature more majestic than his wont, with the "hyacinthine locks" of immortal youth flowing round his stately shoulders—such grace does his guardian goddess bestow upon him, that he may find favour in the sight of the Phæacian princess. She looks upon him now with simple and undisguised admiration, confessing aside to her handmaidens that, when her time for marriage does come, she should wish for just such a husband as this godlike stranger. There is nothing unmaidenly in such language from the lips of Nausicaa. To remain un- married was a reproach in her day, whatever it may be in ours, and a reproach not likely to fall upon a king's daughter; so, looking upon the marriage state as inevitable, and at her age very near at hand, she thinks and speaks of it unreservedly to her companions. Our modern conventional silence on such topics arises in great degree from the fact that a perpetual maidenhood