BOOK
This new home then is that ideal land far away in the west, over
which is spread the soft beauty of an everlasting twilight, unsullied
?Aik^ by unseemly mists and murky vapours, where the radiant processions
nods. which gladden the eyes of mortal men only when the heavens are
clear are ever passing through the streets and along the flower-clad
hills. On this beautiful conception the imagination of the poet
might feed, and find there an inexhaustible banquet ; and we need
only mark the several images which he has chosen to see how faith-
fully he adheres (and it may be unconsciously) to the phenomena
of cloud-land. He who has seen in the eastern or western sky as lit
up by the rising or setting sun the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous
temples catching the light on their burnished faces, can well feel
whence came the surpassing and everlasting glory of the palace and
the gardens of Alkinoos. In those marvellous scenes which more
than all other painters Turner delighted to transfer to paper or
canvas, we may see the walls and chambers of that splendid dwelling
gleaming with the lustre of the sun or the moon, the brazen walls
with their purple bands and stringcourses, the golden doors, and
steps of silver. Nay, who has not watched the varying forms and
half convinced himself that the unsubstantial figures before him are
the shapes of men and beasts who people that shadowy kingdom ?
Who has not seen there the dogs of gold and silver who guard the
house of Alkinoos and on whom old age and death can never lay
a finger — the golden youths standing around the inmost shrine with
torches in their hands, whose light never dies out— the busy maidens
plying their golden distaffs as their fingers run along the filmy threads
spread on the bare ground of the unfading ether? Who does not
understand the poet at once when he says that their marvellous skill
came from Athene, the goddess of the dawn ? And who does not
see that in the gardens of this beautiful palace must bloom trees
laden always with golden fruits, that here the soft west
nd brings
new blossoms before the old have ripened, that here fountains send
their crystal streams to freshen the meadows which laugh beneath
the radiant heaven ? It is certainly possible that in this description
the poet may have introduced some features in the art or civilisation
of his own day ; but the magnificent imagination even of a Spanish
beggar has never dreamed of a home so splendid as that of the
Scherian chieftain, and assuredly golden statues and doors, silver stairs
and brazen walls formed no part of the possessions of any king of the
east or the west from the days of the Homeric poets to our own. In
truth, there is nothing of the earth in this exquisite picture. In the
Phaiakian land sorrow and trouble are things unknown. The house
