Odyssey 5.225 · Book 5, lines 225–227
The sun sets on Ogygia
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ὣς ἔφατʼ, ἠέλιος δʼ ἄρʼ ἔδυ καὶ ἐπὶ κνέφας ἦλθεν· ἐλθόντες δʼ ἄρα τώ γε μυχῷ σπείους γλαφυροῖο τερπέσθην φιλότητι, παρʼ ἀλλήλοισι μένοντες.
So he spoke; and the sun set and darkness came on. The two of them then went to the inmost recess of the hollow cave and took their delight in love, remaining beside one another.
Word by word
The setting
The speech is over and the day closes with it. A single formula folds the whole argument into nightfall, and the two go in together for one last night before the raft. It is the last night of the seven-year captivity.
A note on this passage
The scene ends the way Homeric days end: the sun goes down, darkness comes on, and the formula does the work of a curtain. Odysseus and Calypso withdraw to the deep of the cave and lie together, as they have through the captivity — the plain fact stated plainly, without comment.
The undercurrent is the strangeness of this last night. He has just refused her immortality and named his longing for another woman's house; she has just been ordered by Zeus to let him go. Yet they pass the night side by side as before. The poem does not moralize the arrangement or pretend the coming parting has already begun. Grief and desire, refusal and habit, sit quietly in the same dark room.
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