But the moment we go beyond the Greek world with its clear plastic outlines, the artistic form changes; the Hellenic sunshine is tinged with Oriental shadows; we pass from the unveiled Zeus to the veiled Isis. Homer himself gets colored with touches of Oriental mystery. The Egyptian part of this Fourth Book, therefore, will show a transformation of style as well as of thought, and changeful Proteus will become a true image of the Poet. The work will manifest a symbolic tendency; it will have an aroma of the wisdom of the East, taught in forms of the parable, the apologue, with hints of allegory. The world, thrown outside of that transparent Greek life, becomes a Fairy Tale, which is here taken up and incorporated into a great poem. We shall be compelled to look thoroughly into these strange shapes of Egypt, and, if possible, reach down to their meaning, for meaning they must have, or be meaningless. We shall find that this Fourth Book stands in the front rank of Homeric poetry for depth and suggestiveness, if not for epical lucidity. What did not Telemachus see and hear at Sparta? That was, indeed, an education. He saw the two great returned ones, the woman and the man. Helen he saw, who had passed through her long alienation and was now restored to home and country after the Trojan discipline. In her, the most beautiful woman, the human cycle was complete--the fall, the repentance, the restoration. Then the eager youth saw Menelaus, and heard his story of the Return; he is the man who seeks the treasures of the East, and brings them to Hellas in the Hellenic way. He finds them, too, after much suffering, never losing them again in the tempests of his voyage, for does he not spread them out before us in his talk? Both the man and the woman, after the greatest human trials, have reached serenity--an institutional and an intellectual harmony. The young man sees it and feels it and takes it away in his head and heart. The present Book falls easily into two distinct portions. The first is the visit of Telemachus to Sparta and what he experiences there. Sparta is at peace and in order; the youth to a degree beholds in it the ideal land to which he must help transform his own disordered country. The second portion of the Book goes back to Ithaca (line 625 of the Greek text). Here we are suddenly plunged again into the wrongful deeds of the suitors, done to the House of Ulysses. They are plotting the death of Telemachus, the bearing of whose new career has dawned upon them. Ithaca is truly the realm of discord in contrast to the harmony of Sparta and the House of Menelaus, which has also had sore trials. Hence Sparta may be considered a prophecy of the redemption of Ithaca. Following out these structural suggestions, we designate the organism of the Book in this manner:--