A
BOOK OF MYTHS

BY JEAN LANG

(MRS. JOHN LANG)

WITH SIXTEEN ORIGINAL
DRAWINGS IN COLOUR
BY HELEN STRATTON

THOMAS NELSON & SONS
NEW YORK

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

“WHAT WAS HE DOING, THE GREAT GOD PAN,
DOWN IN THE REEDS BY THE RIVER?”
(See page 209)

[Pg vii]

PREFACE

Just as a little child holds out its hands to catch the
sunbeams, to feel and to grasp what, so its eyes tell it,
is actually there, so, down through the ages, men have
stretched out their hands in eager endeavour to know
their God. And because only through the human was
the divine knowable, the old peoples of the earth made
gods of their heroes and not unfrequently endowed
these gods with as many of the vices as of the
virtues of their worshippers. As we read the myths of
the East and the West we find ever the same story.
That portion of the ancient Aryan race which poured
from the central plain of Asia, through the rocky defiles
of what we now call “The Frontier,” to populate the
fertile lowlands of India, had gods who must once have
been wholly heroic, but who came in time to be more
degraded than the most vicious of lustful criminals.
And the Greeks, Latins, Teutons, Celts, and Slavonians,
who came of the same mighty Aryan stock, did even as
those with whom they owned a common ancestry.
Originally they gave to their gods of their best. All
that was noblest in them, all that was strongest and
most selfless, all the higher instincts of their natures
were their endowment. And although their worship
[Pg viii]
in time became corrupt and lost its beauty, there yet
remains for us, in the old tales of the gods, a wonderful
humanity that strikes a vibrant chord in the hearts
of those who are the descendants of their worshippers.
For though creeds and forms may change, human nature
never changes. We are less simple than our fathers:
that is all. And, as Professor York Powell[1] most truly
says: “It is not in a man’s creed, but in his deeds;
not in his knowledge, but in his sympathy, that there
lies the essence of what is good and of what will last in
human life.”

The most usual habits of mind in our own day are
the theoretical and analytical habits. Dissection, vivisection,
analysis—those are the processes to which
all things not conclusively historical and all things
spiritual are bound to pass. Thus we find the old
myths classified into Sun Myths and Dawn Myths,
Earth Myths and Moon Myths, Fire Myths and Wind
Myths, until, as one of the most sane and vigorous
thinkers of the present day[2] has justly observed: “If
you take the rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call
Mary the sun and the lamb the moon, you will achieve
astonishing results, both in religion and astronomy,
when you find that the lamb followed Mary to school
one day.”

In this little collection of Myths, the stories are not
presented to the student of folklore as a fresh contribution
to his knowledge. Rather is the book intended
[Pg ix]
for those who, in the course of their reading, frequently
come across names which possess for them no meaning,
and who care to read some old stories, through which
runs the same humanity that their own hearts know.
For although the old worship has passed away, it is
almost impossible for us to open a book that does not
contain some mention of the gods of long ago. In our
childhood we are given copies of Kingsley’s Heroes and
of Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales. Later on, we find in
Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Longfellow,
Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, and a host of other
writers, constant allusion to the stories of the gods.
Scarcely a poet has ever written but makes mention
of them in one or other of his poems. It would seem
as if there were no get-away from them. We might
expect in this twentieth century that the old gods of
Greece and of Rome, the gods of our Northern forefathers,
the gods of Egypt, the gods of the British race,
might be forgotten. But even when we read in a newspaper
of aeroplanes, someone is more than likely to quote
the story of Bellerophon and his winged steed, or of
Icarus, the flyer, and in our daily speech the names of
gods and goddesses continually crop up. We drive—or,
at least, till lately we drove—in Phaetons. Not only
schoolboys swear by Jove or by Jupiter. The silvery
substance in our thermometers and barometers is
named Mercury. Blacksmiths are accustomed to being
referred to as “sons of Vulcan,” and beautiful youths
to being called “young Adonises.” We accept the
names of newspapers and debating societies as being
the “Argus,” without perhaps quite realising who was
[Pg x]
Argus, the many-eyed. We talk of “a panic,” and
forget that the great god Pan is father of the word.
Even in our religious services we go back to heathenism.
Not only are the crockets on our cathedral spires
and church pews remnants of fire-worship, but one of
our own most beautiful Christian blessings is probably
of Assyrian origin. “The Lord bless thee and keep
thee…. The Lord make His face to shine upon
thee…. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance
upon thee….” So did the priests of the sun-gods
invoke blessings upon those who worshipped.

We make many discoveries as we study the myths
of the North and of the South. In the story of Baldur
we find that the goddess Hel ultimately gave her name
to the place of punishment precious to the Calvinistic
mind. And because the Norseman very much disliked
the bitter, cruel cold of the long winter, his heaven
was a warm, well-fired abode, and his place of punishment
one of terrible frigidity. Somewhere on the other
side of the Tweed and Cheviots was the spot selected
by the Celt of southern Britain. On the other hand,
the eastern mind, which knew the terrors of a sun-smitten
land and of a heat that was torture, had for a hell a
fiery place of constantly burning flames.

In the space permitted, it has not been possible to
deal with more than a small number of myths, and the
well-known stories of Herakles, of Theseus, and of the
Argonauts have been purposely omitted. These have
been so perfectly told by great writers that to retell
them would seem absurd. The same applies to the
[Pg xi]
Odyssey and the Iliad, the translations of which probably
take rank amongst the finest translations in any
language.

The writer will feel that her object has been gained
should any readers of these stories feel that for a little
while they have left the toilful utilitarianism of the
present day behind them, and, with it, its hampering
restrictions of sordid actualities that are so murderous
to imagination and to all romance.

JEAN LANG.

[Pg xii]

POSTSCRIPT

We have come, in those last long months, to date our happenings as
they have never until now been dated by those of our own generation.

We speak of things that took place “Before the War”; and between
that time and this stands a barrier immeasurable.

This book, with its Preface, was completed in 1914—“Before the
War.”

Since August 1914 the finest humanity of our race has been enduring
Promethean agonies. But even as Prometheus unflinchingly bore the
cruelties of pain, of heat and of cold, of hunger and of thirst, and the
tortures inflicted by an obscene bird of prey, so have endured the men
of our nation and of those nations with whom we are proud to be allied.
Much more remote than they seemed one little year ago, now seem the
old stories of sunny Greece. But if we have studied the strange transmogrification
of the ancient gods, we can look with interest, if with
horror, at the Teuton representation of the God in whom we believe as
a God of perfect purity, of honour, and of love. According to their
interpretation of Him, the God of the Huns would seem to be as much
a confederate of the vicious as the most degraded god of ancient worship.
And if we turn with shame from the Divinity so often and so glibly
referred to by blasphemous lips, and look on a picture that tears our
hearts, and yet makes our hearts big with pride, we can understand how
it was that those heroes who fought and died in the Valley of the
Scamander came in time to be regarded not as men, but as gods.

There is no tale in all the world’s mythology finer than the tale that
began in August 1914. How future generations will tell the tale, who
can say?

But we, for whom Life can never be the same again, can say with all
earnestness: “It is the memory that the soldier leaves behind him, like
the long train of light that follows the sunken sun—that is all which is
worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave or the
ignoble.”

And, surely, to all those who are fighting, and suffering, and dying
for a noble cause, the God of gods, the God of battles, who is also the
God of peace, and the God of Love, has become an ever near and
eternally living entity.

JEAN LANG.

[Pg xiii]

CONTENTS

[Pg xv]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 1]

A BOOK OF MYTHS

PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA

Those who are interested in watching the mental development
of a child must have noted that when the
baby has learned to speak even a little, it begins to show
its growing intelligence by asking questions. “What
is this?” it would seem at first to ask with regard to
simple things that to it are still mysteries. Soon it
arrives at the more far-reaching inquiries—“Why is
this so?” “How did this happen?” And as the
child’s mental growth continues, the painstaking and
conscientious parent or guardian is many times faced by
questions which lack of knowledge, or a sensitive honesty,
prevents him from answering either with assurance or
with ingenuity.

As with the child, so it has ever been with the human
race. Man has always come into the world asking
“How?” “Why?” “What?” and so the Hebrew,
the Greek, the Maori, the Australian blackfellow, the
Norseman—in a word, each race of mankind—has formed
for itself an explanation of existence, an answer to the
questions of the groping child-mind—“Who made the
world?” “What is God?” “What made a God
think of fire and air and water?” “Why am I, I?”

[Pg 2]
Into the explanation of creation and existence given
by the Greeks come the stories of Prometheus and of
Pandora. The world, as first it was, to the Greeks was
such a world as the one of which we read in the Book
of Genesis—“without form, and void.” It was a sunless
world in which land, air, and sea were mixed up together,
and over which reigned a deity called Chaos.
With him ruled the goddess of Night and their son was
Erebus, god of Darkness. When the two beautiful children
of Erebus, Light and Day, had flooded formless
space with their radiance, Eros, the god of Love, was
born, and Light and Day and Love, working together,
turned discord into harmony and made the earth, the sea,
and the sky into one perfect whole. A giant race, a race
of Titans, in time populated this newly-made earth, and
of these one of the mightiest was Prometheus. To him,
and to his brother Epimethus, was entrusted by Eros the
distribution of the gifts of faculties and of instincts to all
the living creatures in the world, and the task of making
a creature lower than the gods, something less great than
the Titans, yet in knowledge and in understanding infinitely
higher than the beasts and birds and fishes. At
the hands of the Titan brothers, birds, beasts, and fishes
had fared handsomely. They were Titanic in their
generosity, and so prodigal had they been in their gifts
that when they would fain have carried out the commands
of Eros they found that nothing was left for the equipment
of this being, to be called Man. Yet, nothing
daunted, Prometheus took some clay from the ground
at his feet, moistened it with water, and fashioned it into
[Pg 3]
an image, in form like the gods. Into its nostrils Eros
breathed the spirit of life, Pallas Athené endowed it with
a soul, and the first man looked wonderingly round on
the earth that was to be his heritage. Prometheus,
proud of the beautiful thing of his own creation, would
fain have given Man a worthy gift, but no gift remained
for him. He was naked, unprotected, more helpless than
any of the beasts of the field, more to be pitied than any
of them in that he had a soul to suffer.

Surely Zeus, the All Powerful, ruler of Olympus, would
have compassion on Man? But Prometheus looked to
Zeus in vain; compassion he had none. Then, in infinite
pity, Prometheus bethought himself of a power
belonging to the gods alone and unshared by any living
creature on the earth.

“We shall give Fire to the Man whom we have made,”
he said to Epimethus. To Epimethus this seemed an
impossibility, but to Prometheus nothing was impossible.
He bided his time and, unseen by the gods, he made his
way into Olympus, lighted a hollow torch with a spark
from the chariot of the Sun and hastened back to earth
with this royal gift to Man. Assuredly no other gift
could have brought him more completely the empire
that has since been his. No longer did he tremble and
cower in the darkness of caves when Zeus hurled his
lightnings across the sky. No more did he dread the
animals that hunted him and drove him in terror before
them.

Armed with fire, the beasts became his vassals. With
fire he forged weapons, defied the frost and cold, coined
[Pg 4]
money, made implements for tillage, introduced the arts,
and was able to destroy as well as to create.

From his throne on Olympus, Zeus looked down on
the earth and saw, with wonder, airy columns of blue-grey
smoke that curled upwards to the sky. He watched
more closely, and realised with terrible wrath that the
moving flowers of red and gold that he saw in that land
that the Titans shared with men, came from fire, that had
hitherto been the gods’ own sacred power. Speedily he
assembled a council of the gods to mete out to Prometheus
a punishment fit for the blasphemous daring of his crime.
This council decided at length to create a thing that
should for evermore charm the souls and hearts of men,
and yet, for evermore, be man’s undoing.

To Vulcan, god of fire, whose province Prometheus had
insulted, was given the work of fashioning out of clay
and water the creature by which the honour of the gods
was to be avenged. “The lame Vulcan,” says Hesiod,
poet of Greek mythology, “formed out of the earth an
image resembling a chaste virgin. Pallas Athené, of the
blue eyes, hastened to ornament her and to robe her in a
white tunic. She dressed on the crown of her head a
long veil, skilfully fashioned and admirable to see; she
crowned her forehead with graceful garlands of newly-opened
flowers and a golden diadem that the lame Vulcan,
the illustrious god, had made with his own hands to
please the puissant Jove. On this crown Vulcan had
chiselled the innumerable animals that the continents
and the sea nourish in their bosoms, all endowed with a
marvellous grace and apparently alive. When he had
[Pg 5]
finally completed, instead of some useful work, this illustrious
masterpiece, he brought into the assembly this
virgin, proud of the ornaments with which she had been
decked by the blue-eyed goddess, daughter of a powerful
sire.” To this beautiful creature, destined by the gods
to be man’s destroyer, each of them gave a gift. From
Aphrodite she got beauty, from Apollo music, from Hermes
the gift of a winning tongue. And when all that great
company in Olympus had bestowed their gifts, they named
the woman Pandora—“Gifted by all the Gods.” Thus
equipped for victory, Pandora was led by Hermes to the
world that was thenceforward to be her home. As a
gift from the gods she was presented to Prometheus.

But Prometheus, gazing in wonder at the violet blue
eyes bestowed by Aphrodite, that looked wonderingly back
into his own as if they were indeed as innocent as two
violets wet with the morning dew, hardened his great
heart, and would have none of her. As a hero—a worthy
descendant of Titans—said in later years, “Timeo
Danaos et dona ferentes,”—“I fear the Greeks, even
when they bring gifts.” And Prometheus, the greatly-daring,
knowing that he merited the anger of the gods,
saw treachery in a gift outwardly so perfect. Not only
would he not accept this exquisite creature for his own,
but he hastened to caution his brother also to refuse her.

But well were they named Prometheus (Forethought)
and Epimethus (Afterthought). For Epimethus it
was enough to look at this peerless woman, sent
from the gods, for him to love her and to believe in
her utterly. She was the fairest thing on earth,
[Pg 6]
worthy indeed of the deathless gods who had created her.
Perfect, too, was the happiness that she brought with
her to Epimethus. Before her coming, as he well knew
now, the fair world had been incomplete. Since she came
the fragrant flowers had grown more sweet for him, the
song of the birds more full of melody. He found new life
in Pandora and marvelled how his brother could ever
have fancied that she could bring to the world aught but
peace and joyousness.

Now when the gods had entrusted to the Titan
brothers the endowment of all living things upon the
earth, they had been careful to withhold everything
that might bring into the world pain, sickness, anxiety,
bitterness of heart, remorse, or soul-crushing sorrow. All
these hurtful things were imprisoned in a coffer which was
given into the care of the trusty Epimethus.

To Pandora the world into which she came was all
fresh, all new, quite full of unexpected joys and delightful
surprises. It was a world of mystery, but mystery
of which her great, adoring, simple Titan held the golden
key. When she saw the coffer which never was opened,
what then more natural than that she should ask Epimethus
what it contained? But the contents were known
only to the gods. Epimethus was unable to answer.
Day by day, the curiosity of Pandora increased. To her
the gods had never given anything but good. Surely
there must be here gifts more precious still. What if the
Olympians had destined her to be the one to open the
casket, and had sent her to earth in order that she might
bestow on this dear world, on the men who lived on it,
[Pg 7]
and on her own magnificent Titan, happiness and blessings
which only the minds of gods could have conceived?
Thus did there come a day when Pandora, unconscious
instrument in the hands of a vengeful Olympian, in all
faith, and with the courage that is born of faith and of
love, opened the lid of the prison-house of evil. And as
from coffers in the old Egyptian tombs, the live plague
can still rush forth and slay, the long-imprisoned evils
rushed forth upon the fair earth and on the human beings
who lived on it—malignant, ruthless, fierce, treacherous,
and cruel—poisoning, slaying, devouring. Plague and
pestilence and murder, envy and malice and revenge and
all viciousness—an ugly wolf-pack indeed was that one
let loose by Pandora. Terror, doubt, misery, had all
rushed straightway to attack her heart, while the evils of
which she had never dreamed stung mind and soul into
dismay and horror, when, by hastily shutting the lid of
the coffer, she tried to undo the evil she had done.

And lo, she found that the gods had imprisoned one good
gift only in this Inferno of horrors and of ugliness. In
the world there had never been any need of Hope. What
work was there for Hope to do where all was perfect, and
where each creature possessed the desire of body and of
heart? Therefore Hope was thrust into the chest that
held the evils, a star in a black night, a lily growing on a
dung-heap. And as Pandora, white-lipped and trembling,
looked into the otherwise empty box, courage came back
to her heart, and Epimethus let fall to his side the arm
that would have slain the woman of his love because there
came to him, like a draught of wine to a warrior spent in
[Pg 8]
battle, an imperial vision of the sons of men through all
the aeons to come, combatting all evils of body and of
soul, going on conquering and to conquer. Thus, saved
by Hope, the Titan and the woman faced the future, and
for them the vengeance of the gods was stayed.

So spoke Milton, the blind Titan of the seventeenth
century; and Shakespeare says:

Upon the earth, and on the children of men who were
as gods in their knowledge and mastery of the force of
fire, Jupiter had had his revenge. For Prometheus he
reserved another punishment. He, the greatly-daring,
once the dear friend and companion of Zeus himself, was
chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus by the vindictive
deity. There, on a dizzy height, his body thrust against
the sun-baked rock, Prometheus had to endure the torment
of having a foul-beaked vulture tear out his liver,
as though he were a piece of carrion lying on the mountain
side. All day, while the sun mercilessly smote him and the
blue sky turned from red to black before his pain-racked
eyes, the torture went on. Each night, when the filthy
bird of prey that worked the will of the gods spread its
dark wings and flew back to its eyrie, the Titan endured
the cruel mercy of having his body grow whole once more.
But with daybreak there came again the silent shadow,
[Pg 9]
the smell of the unclean thing, and again with fierce beak
and talons the vulture greedily began its work.

Thirty thousand years was the time of his sentence, and
yet Prometheus knew that at any moment he could have
brought his torment to an end. A secret was his—a
mighty secret, the revelation of which would have brought
him the mercy of Zeus and have reinstated him in the
favour of the all-powerful god. Yet did he prefer to
endure his agonies rather than to free himself by bowing
to the desires of a tyrant who had caused Man to be made,
yet denied to Man those gifts that made him nobler than
the beasts and raised him almost to the heights of the
Olympians. Thus for him the weary centuries dragged by—in
suffering that knew no respite—in endurance that
the gods might have ended. Prometheus had brought
an imperial gift to the men that he had made, and imperially
he paid the penalty.

Shelley.

Byron.

Lowell.

[Pg 11]

PYGMALION

In days when the world was young and when the gods
walked on the earth, there reigned over the island of
Cyprus a sculptor-king, and king of sculptors, named
Pygmalion. In the language of our own day, we should
call him “wedded to his art.” In woman he only saw
the bane of man. Women, he believed, lured men from
the paths to which their destiny called them. While
man walked alone, he walked free—he had given no
“hostages to fortune.” Alone, man could live for his
art, could combat every danger that beset him, could
escape, unhampered, from every pitfall in life. But
woman was the ivy that clings to the oak, and throttles
the oak in the end. No woman, vowed Pygmalion,
should ever hamper him. And so at length he came to
hate women, and, free of heart and mind, his genius
wrought such great things that he became a very perfect
sculptor. He had one passion, a passion for his art, and
that sufficed him. Out of great rough blocks of marble he
would hew the most perfect semblance of men and of
women, and of everything that seemed to him most beautiful
and the most worth preserving.

When we look now at the Venus of Milo, at the Diana of
Versailles, and at the Apollo Belvidere in the Vatican, we
can imagine what were the greater things that the sculptor
of Cyprus freed from the dead blocks of marble. One
[Pg 12]
day as he chipped and chiselled there came to him, like
the rough sketch of a great picture, the semblance of a
woman. How it came he knew not. Only he knew that
in that great mass of pure white stone there seemed to be
imprisoned the exquisite image of a woman, a woman
that he must set free. Slowly, gradually, the woman
came. Soon he knew that she was the most beautiful
thing that his art had ever wrought. All that he had
ever thought that a woman should be, this woman was.
Her form and features were all most perfect, and so perfect
were they, that he felt very sure that, had she been
a woman indeed, most perfect would have been the soul
within. For her he worked as he had never worked
before. There came, at last, a day when he felt that
another touch would be insult to the exquisite thing he
had created. He laid his chisel aside and sat down to
gaze at the Perfect Woman. She seemed to gaze back at
him. Her parted lips were ready to speak—to smile.
Her hands were held out to hold his hands. Then Pygmalion
covered his eyes. He, the hater of women, loved
a woman—a woman of chilly marble. The women he
had scorned were avenged.

THEN PYGMALION COVERED HIS EYES

Day by day his passion for the woman of his own
creation grew and grew. His hands no longer wielded
the chisel. They grew idle. He would stand under the
great pines and gaze across the sapphire-blue sea, and
dream strange dreams of a marble woman who walked
across the waves with arms outstretched, with smiling
lips, and who became a woman of warm flesh and blood
when her bare feet touched the yellow sand, and
[Pg 13]
the bright sun of Cyprus touched her marble hair and
turned it into hair of living gold. Then he would
hasten back to his studio to find the miracle still unaccomplished,
and would passionately kiss the little cold
hands, and lay beside the little cold feet the presents he
knew that young girls loved—bright shells and exquisite
precious stones, gorgeous-hued birds and fragrant flowers,
shining amber, and beads that sparkled and flashed with
all the most lovely combinations of colour that the mind
of artist could devise. Yet more he did, for he spent vast
sums on priceless pearls and hung them in her ears and
upon her cold white breast; and the merchants wondered
who could be the one upon whom Pygmalion lavished the
money from his treasury.

To his divinity he gave a name—“Galatea”; and
always on still nights the myriad silver stars would seem
to breathe to him “Galatea” … and on those days
when the tempests blew across the sandy wastes of Arabia
and churned up the fierce white surf on the rocks of
Cyprus, the very spirit of the storm seemed to moan
through the crash of waves in longing, hopeless and unutterable—“Galatea!…
Galatea!…” For her he decked a
couch with Tyrian purple, and on the softest of pillows he
laid the beautiful head of the marble woman that he loved.

So the time wore on until the festival of Aphrodite
drew near. Smoke from many altars curled out to sea, the
odour of incense mingled with the fragrance of the great
pine trees, and garlanded victims lowed and bleated as
they were led to the sacrifice. As the leader of his people,
Pygmalion faithfully and perfectly performed all his part
[Pg 14]
in the solemnities and at last he was left beside the altar
to pray alone. Never before had his words faltered as he
laid his petitions before the gods, but on this day he spoke
not as a sculptor-king, but as a child who was half afraid
of what he asked.

“O Aphrodite!” he said, “who can do all things, give
me, I pray you, one like my Galatea for my wife!”

“Give me my Galatea,” he dared not say; but Aphrodite
knew well the words he would fain have uttered, and
smiled to think how Pygmalion at last was on his knees.
In token that his prayer was answered, three times she
made the flames on the altar shoot up in a fiery point,
and Pygmalion went home, scarcely daring to hope, not
allowing his gladness to conquer his fear.

The shadows of evening were falling as he went into
the room that he had made sacred to Galatea. On the
purple-covered couch she lay, and as he entered it seemed
as though she met his eyes with her own; almost it
seemed that she smiled at him in welcome. He quickly
went up to her and, kneeling by her side, he pressed
his lips on those lips of chilly marble. So many times
he had done it before, and always it was as though
the icy lips that could never live sent their chill right
through his heart, but now it surely seemed to him
that the lips were cold no longer. He felt one of the
little hands, and no more did it remain heavy and cold
and stiff in his touch, but lay in his own hand, soft
and living and warm. He softly laid his fingers on the
marble hair, and lo, it was the soft and wavy burnished
golden hair of his desire. Again, reverently as he
[Pg 15]
had laid his offerings that day on the altar of Venus,
Pygmalion kissed her lips. And then did Galatea, with
warm and rosy cheeks, widely open her eyes, like pools in
a dark mountain stream on which the sun is shining, and
gaze with timid gladness into his own.

There are no after tales of Pygmalion and Galatea.
We only know that their lives were happy and that to
them was born a son, Paphos, from whom the city sacred
to Aphrodite received its name. Perhaps Aphrodite may
have smiled sometimes to watch Pygmalion, once the
scorner of women, the adoring servant of the woman that
his own hands had first designed.

[Pg 16]

PHAETON

Dante—Purgatorio.

To Apollo, the sun-god, and Clymene, a beautiful ocean-nymph,
there was born in the pleasant land of Greece a
child to whom was given the name of Phaeton, the Bright
and Shining One. The rays of the sun seemed to live in
the curls of the fearless little lad, and when at noon other
children would seek the cool shade of the cypress groves,
Phaeton would hold his head aloft and gaze fearlessly up
at the brazen sky from whence fierce heat beat down upon
his golden head.

“Behold, my father drives his chariot across the
heavens!” he proudly proclaimed. “In a little while I,
also, will drive the four snow-white steeds.”

His elders heard the childish boast with a smile, but
when Epaphos, half-brother to Apollo, had listened to it
many times and beheld the child, Phaeton, grow into an
arrogant lad who held himself as though he were indeed
one of the Immortals, anger grew in his heart. One day
he turned upon Phaeton and spoke in fierce scorn:

“Dost say thou art son of a god? A shameless
boaster and a liar art thou! Hast ever spoken to thy
divine sire? Give us some proof of thy sonship! No more
child of the glorious Apollo art thou than are the vermin
his children, that the sun breeds in the dust at my feet.”

[Pg 17]
For a moment, before the cruel taunt, the lad was
stricken into silence, and then, his pride aflame, his young
voice shaking with rage and with bitter shame, he cried
aloud: “Thou, Epaphos, art the liar. I have but to ask
my father, and thou shalt see me drive his golden chariot
across the sky.”

To his mother he hastened, to get balm for his hurt
pride, as many a time he had got it for the little bodily
wounds of childhood, and with bursting heart he poured
forth his story.

“True it is,” he said, “that my father has never
deigned to speak to me. Yet I know, because thou hast
told me so, that he is my sire. And now my word is
pledged. Apollo must let me drive his steeds, else I
am for evermore branded braggart and liar, and shamed
amongst men.”

Clymene listened with grief to his complaint. He
was so young, so gallant, so foolish.

“Truly thou art the son of Apollo,” she said, “and
oh, son of my heart, thy beauty is his, and thy pride the
pride of a son of the gods. Yet only partly a god art
thou, and though thy proud courage would dare all things,
it were mad folly to think of doing what a god alone
can do.”

But at last she said to him, “Naught that I can say
is of any avail. Go, seek thy father, and ask him what
thou wilt.” Then she told him how he might find the
place in the east where Apollo rested ere the labours of
the day began, and with eager gladness Phaeton set out
upon his journey. A long way he travelled, with never
[Pg 18]
a stop, yet when the glittering dome and jewelled turrets
and minarets of the Palace of the Sun came into view, he
forgot his weariness and hastened up the steep ascent to
the home of his father.

Phœbus Apollo, clad in purple that glowed like the
radiance of a cloud in the sunset sky, sat upon his
golden throne. The Day, the Month, and the Year
stood by him, and beside them were the Hours. Spring
was there, her head wreathed with flowers; Summer,
crowned with ripened grain; Autumn, with his feet
empurpled by the juice of the grapes; and Winter,
with hair all white and stiff with hoar-frost. And when
Phaeton walked up the golden steps that led to his
father’s throne, it seemed as though incarnate Youth had
come to join the court of the god of the Sun, and that
Youth was so beautiful a thing that it must surely live
forever. Proudly did Apollo know him for his son,
and when the boy looked in his eyes with the arrogant
fearlessness of boyhood, the god greeted him kindly
and asked him to tell him why he came, and what
was his petition.

As to Clymene, so also to Apollo, Phaeton told his
tale, and his father listened, half in pride and amusement,
half in puzzled vexation. When the boy stopped, and
then breathlessly, with shining eyes and flushed cheeks,
ended up his story with: “And, O light of the boundless
world, if I am indeed thy son, let it be as I have said, and for
one day only let me drive thy chariot across the heavens!”
Apollo shook his head and answered very gravely:

“In truth thou art my dear son,” he said, “and by
[Pg 19]
the dreadful Styx, the river of the dead, I swear that I will
give thee any gift that thou dost name and that will give
proof that thy father is the immortal Apollo. But never
to thee nor to any other, be he mortal or immortal, shall
I grant the boon of driving my chariot.”

But the boy pled on:

“I am shamed for ever, my father,” he said. “Surely
thou wouldst not have son of thine proved liar and
braggart?”

“Not even the gods themselves can do this thing,”
answered Apollo. “Nay, not even the almighty Zeus.
None but I, Phœbus Apollo, may drive the flaming chariot
of the sun, for the way is beset with dangers and none
know it but I.”

“Only tell me the way, my father!” cried Phaeton.
“So soon I could learn.”

Half in sadness, Apollo smiled.

“The first part of the way is uphill,” he said. “So
steep it is that only very slowly can my horses climb it.
High in the heavens is the middle, so high that even I
grow dizzy when I look down upon the earth and the sea.
And the last piece of the way is a precipice that rushes
so steeply downward that my hands can scarce check
the mad rush of my galloping horses. And all the while,
the heaven is spinning round, and the stars with it. By
the horns of the Bull I have to drive, past the Archer whose
bow is taut and ready to slay, close to where the Scorpion
stretches out its arms and the great Crab’s claws
grope for a prey….”

“I fear none of these things, oh my father!” cried
[Pg 20]
Phaeton. “Grant that for one day only I drive thy
white-maned steeds!”

Very pitifully Apollo looked at him, and for a little
space he was silent.

“The little human hands,” he said at length, “the
little human frame!—and with them the soul of a god.
The pity of it, my son. Dost not know that the boon
that thou dost crave from me is Death?”

“Rather Death than Dishonour,” said Phaeton, and
proudly he added, “For once would I drive like the god,
my father. I have no fear.”

So was Apollo vanquished, and Phaeton gained his
heart’s desire.

From the courtyard of the Palace the four white
horses were led, and they pawed the air and neighed aloud
in the glory of their strength. They drew the chariot
whose axle and pole and wheels were of gold, with spokes
of silver, while inside were rows of diamonds and of
chrysolites that gave dazzling reflection of the sun. Then
Apollo anointed the face of Phaeton with a powerful
essence that might keep him from being smitten by the
flames, and upon his head he placed the rays of the sun.
And then the stars went away, even to the Daystar that
went last of all, and, at Apollo’s signal, Aurora, the rosy-fingered,
threw open the purple gates of the east, and
Phaeton saw a path of pale rose-colour open before him.

With a cry of exultation, the boy leapt into the
chariot and laid hold of the golden reins. Barely did he
hear Apollo’s parting words: “Hold fast the reins, and
spare the whip. All thy strength will be wanted to hold
[Pg 21]
the horses in. Go not too high nor too low. The middle
course is safest and best. Follow, if thou canst, in the
old tracks of my chariot wheels!” His glad voice of
thanks for the godlike boon rang back to where Apollo
stood and watched him vanishing into the dawn that still
was soft in hue as the feathers on the breast of a dove.

Uphill at first the white steeds made their way, and
the fire from their nostrils tinged with flame-colour the
dark clouds that hung over the land and the sea. With
rapture, Phaeton felt that truly he was the son of a god,
and that at length he was enjoying his heritage. The
day for which, through all his short life, he had longed,
had come at last. He was driving the chariot whose
progress even now was awaking the sleeping earth. The
radiance from its wheels and from the rays he wore round
his head was painting the clouds, and he laughed aloud
in rapture as he saw, far down below, the sea and the
rivers he had bathed in as a human boy, mirroring the
green and rose and purple, and gold and silver, and fierce
crimson, that he, Phaeton, was placing in the sky. The
grey mist rolled from the mountain tops at his desire. The
white fog rolled up from the valleys. All living things
awoke; the flowers opened their petals; the grain grew
golden; the fruit grew ripe. Could but Epaphos see him
now! Surely he must see him, and realise that not
Apollo but Phaeton was guiding the horses of his father,
driving the chariot of the Sun.

Quicker and yet more quick grew the pace of the
white-maned steeds. Soon they left the morning breezes
behind, and very soon they knew that these were not
[Pg 22]
the hands of the god, their master, that held the golden
reins. Like an air-ship without its accustomed ballast,
the chariot rolled unsteadily, and not only the boy’s light
weight but his light hold on their bridles made them grow
mad with a lust for speed. The white foam flew from
their mouths like the spume from the giant waves of a
furious sea, and their pace was swift as that of a bolt
that is cast by the arm of Zeus.

Yet Phaeton had no fear, and when they heard
him shout in rapture, “Quicker still, brave ones! more
swiftly still!” it made them speed onwards, madly,
blindly, with the headlong rush of a storm. There was
no hope for them to keep on the beaten track, and soon
Phaeton had his rapture checked by the terrible realisation
that they had strayed far out of the course and that
his hands were not strong enough to guide them. Close
to the Great Bear and the Little Bear they passed, and
these were scorched with heat. The Serpent which, torpid,
chilly and harmless, lies coiled round the North Pole, felt
a warmth that made it grow fierce and harmful again.
Downward, ever downward galloped the maddened horses,
and soon Phaeton saw the sea as a shield of molten brass,
and the earth so near that all things on it were visible.
When they passed the Scorpion and only just missed
destruction from its menacing fangs, fear entered into the
boy’s heart. His mother had spoken truth. He was
only partly a god, and he was very, very young. In
impotent horror he tugged at the reins to try to check the
horses’ descent, then, forgetful of Apollo’s warning, he
smote them angrily. But anger met anger, and the fury
[Pg 23]
of the immortal steeds had scorn for the wrath of a mortal
boy. With a great toss of their mighty heads they had
torn the guiding reins from his grasp, and as he stood,
giddily swaying from side to side, Phaeton knew that the
boon he had craved from his father must in truth be
death for him.

And, lo, it was a hideous death, for with eyes that
were like flames that burned his brain, the boy beheld
the terrible havoc that his pride had wrought. That
blazing chariot of the Sun made the clouds smoke, and
dried up all the rivers and water-springs. Fire burst
from the mountain tops, great cities were destroyed.
The beauty of the earth was ravished, woods and
meadows and all green and pleasant places were laid
waste. The harvests perished, the flocks and they who
had herded them lay dead. Over Libya the horses took
him, and the desert of Libya remains a barren wilderness
to this day, while those sturdy Ethiopians who survived
are black even now as a consequence of that cruel heat.
The Nile changed its course in order to escape, and nymphs
and nereids in terror sought for the sanctuary of some
watery place that had escaped destruction. The face of
the burned and blackened earth, where the bodies of
thousands of human beings lay charred to ashes, cracked
and sent dismay to Pluto by the lurid light that penetrated
even to his throne.

All this Phaeton saw, saw in impotent agony of soul.
His boyish folly and pride had been great, but the excruciating
anguish that made him shed tears of blood,
was indeed a punishment even too heavy for an erring god.

[Pg 24]
From the havoc around her, the Earth at last looked
up, and with blackened face and blinded eyes, and in a
voice that was harsh and very, very weary, she called
to Zeus to look down from Olympus and behold the ruin
that had been wrought by the chariot of the Sun. And
Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, looked down and beheld. And
at the sight of that piteous devastation his brow grew
dark, and terrible was his wrath against him who had
held the reins of the chariot. Calling upon Apollo and
all the other gods to witness him, he seized a lightning
bolt, and for a moment the deathless Zeus and all the
dwellers in Olympus looked on the fiery chariot in which
stood the swaying, slight, lithe figure of a young lad,
blinded with horror, shaken with agony. Then, from
his hand, Zeus cast the bolt, and the chariot was dashed
into fragments, and Phaeton, his golden hair ablaze, fell,
like a bright shooting star, from the heavens above,
into the river Eridanus. The steeds returned to their
master, Apollo, and in rage and grief Apollo lashed them.
Angrily, too, and very rebelliously did he speak of the
punishment meted to his son by the ruler of the Immortals.
Yet in truth the punishment was a merciful one.
Phaeton was only half a god, and no human life were fit
to live after the day of dire anguish that had been his.

Bitter was the mourning of Clymene over her beautiful
only son, and so ceaselessly did his three sisters, the
Heliades, weep for their brother, that the gods turned
them into poplar trees that grew by the bank of the river,
and, when still they wept, their tears turned into precious
amber as they fell. Yet another mourned for Phaeton—Phaeton
[Pg 25]
“dead ere his prime.” Cycnus, King of Liguria,
had dearly loved the gallant boy, and again and yet again
he dived deep in the river and brought forth the charred
fragments of what had once been the beautiful son of a
god, and gave to them honourable burial. Yet he could
not rest satisfied that he had won all that remained of his
friend from the river’s bed, and so he continued to haunt
the stream, ever diving, ever searching, until the gods
grew weary of his restless sorrow and changed him into a
swan.

And still we see the swan sailing mournfully along,
like a white-sailed barque that is bearing the body of a
king to its rest, and ever and anon plunging deep into
the water as though the search for the boy who would
fain have been a god were never to come to an end.

To Phaeton the Italian Naiades reared a tomb, and
inscribed on the stone these words:

Ovid.

[Pg 26]

ENDYMION

To the modern popular mind perhaps none of the goddesses
of Greece—not even Venus herself—has more
appeal than has the huntress goddess, Diana. Those
who know but little of ancient statuary can still brighten
to intelligent recognition of the huntress with her quiver
and her little stag when they meet with them in picture
gallery or in suburban garden. That unlettered sportsman
in weather-worn pink, slowly riding over the fragrant
dead leaves by the muddy roadside on this chill, grey
morning, may never have heard of Artemis, but he is
quite ready to make intelligent reference to Diana to the
handsome young sportswoman whom he finds by the
covert side; and Sir Walter’s Diana Vernon has helped
the little-read public to realise that the original Diana was
a goddess worthy of being sponsor to one of the finest
heroines of fiction.

But not to the sportsman alone, but also to the youth
or maid who loves the moon—they know not why—to
those whom the shadows of the trees on a woodland path
at night mean a grip of the heart, while “pale Dian”
scuds over the dark clouds that are soaring far beyond
the tree-tops and is peeping, chaste and pale, through the
branches of the firs and giant pines, there is something
arresting, enthralling, in the thought of the goddess
[Pg 27]
Diana who now has for hunting-ground the blue firmament
of heaven where the pale Pleiades

Tennyson.

Andrew Lang.

Again and again in mythological history we come on
stories of the goddess, sometimes under her best known
name of Diana, sometimes under her older Greek name
of Artemis, and now and again as Selene, the moon-goddess,
the Luna of the Romans. Her twin brother was
Apollo, god of the sun, and with him she shared the
power of unerringly wielding a bow and of sending grave
plagues and pestilences, while both were patrons of music
and of poetry.

When the sun-god’s golden chariot had driven down
into the west, then would his sister’s noiseless-footed silver
steeds be driven across the sky, while the huntress shot
from her bow at will silent arrows that would slay without
warning a joyous young mother with her newly-born babe,
or would wantonly pierce, with a lifelong pain, the heart
of some luckless mortal.

Now one night as she passed Mount Latmos, there
[Pg 28]
chanced to be a shepherd lad lying asleep beside his
sleeping flock. Many times had Endymion watched the
goddess from afar, half afraid of one so beautiful and
yet so ruthless, but never before had Diana realised the
youth’s wonderful beauty. She checked her hounds when
they would have swept on in their chase through the
night, and stood beside Endymion. She judged him to
be as perfect as her own brother, Apollo—yet more
perfect, perhaps, for on his upturned sleeping face
was the silver glamour of her own dear moon. Fierce
and burning passion could come with the sun’s burning
rays, but love that came in the moon’s pale light was
passion mixed with gramarye. She gazed for long, and
when, in his sleep, Endymion smiled, she knelt beside
him and, stooping, gently kissed his lips. The touch of a
moonbeam on a sleeping rose was no more gentle than was
Diana’s touch, yet it was sufficient to wake Endymion.
And as, while one’s body sleeps on, one’s half-waking mind,
now and again in a lifetime seems to realise an ecstasy
of happiness so perfect that one dares not wake lest, by
waking, the wings of one’s realised ideal should slip
between grasping fingers and so escape forever, so did
Endymion realise the kiss of the goddess. But before
his sleepy eyes could be his senses’ witnesses, Diana had
hastened away. Endymion, springing to his feet, saw
only his sleeping flock, nor did his dogs awake when he
heard what seemed to him to be the baying of hounds in
full cry in a forest far up the mountain. Only to his own
heart did he dare to whisper what was this wonderful
thing that he believed had befallen him, and although he
[Pg 29]
laid himself down, hoping that once again this miracle
might be granted to him, no miracle came; nor could
he sleep, so great was his longing.

SHE CHECKED HER HOUNDS, AND STOOD BESIDE ENDYMION

All the next day, through the sultry hours while Apollo
drove his chariot of burnished gold through the land,
Endymion, as he watched his flocks, tried to dream his
dream once more, and longed for the day to end and the
cool, dark night to return. When night came he tried to
lie awake and see what might befall, but when kind sleep
had closed his tired eyes,

Lewis Morris.

Always she kissed him, yet when her kiss awoke him
he never could see anything more tangible than a shaft
of silver moonlight on the moving bushes of the mountain
side, never hear anything more real than the far-away
echo of the baying of pursuing hounds, and if, with eager,
greatly-daring eyes, he looked skywards, a dark cloud,
so it seemed to him, would always hasten to hide the moon
from his longing gaze.

In this manner time passed on. The days of Endymion
were filled by longing day-dreams. His sleeping
hours ever brought him ecstasy. Ever, too, to the goddess,
the human being that she loved seemed to her to
grow more precious. For her all the joy of day and of
night was concentrated in the moments she spent by the
side of the sleeping Endymion. The flocks of the shepherd
flourished like those of no other herd. No wild
beast dared come near them; no storm nor disease
[Pg 30]
assailed them. Yet for Endymion the things of earth no
longer held any value. He lived only for his dear dream’s
sake. Had he been permitted to grow old and worn and
tired, and still a dreamer, who knows how his story might
have ended? But to Diana there came the fear that with
age his beauty might wane, and from her father, Zeus,
she obtained for the one she loved the gifts of unending
youth and of eternal sleep.

There came a night when the dreams of Endymion
had no end. That was a night when the moon made
for herself broad silver paths across the sea, from far
horizon to the shore where the little waves lapped and
curled in a radiant, ever-moving silver fringe. Silver
also were the leaves of the forest trees, and between the
branches of the solemn cypresses and of the stately
dark pines, Diana shot her silver arrows. No baying
of hounds came then to make Endymion’s flocks move
uneasily in their sleep, but the silver stars seemed
to sing in unison together. While still those gentle
lips touched his, hands as gentle lifted up the sleeping
Endymion and bore him to a secret cave in Mount Latmos.
And there, for evermore, she came to kiss the
mouth of her sleeping lover. There, forever, slept Endymion,
happy in the perfect bliss of dreams that have no
ugly awaking, of an ideal love that knows no ending.

[Pg 31]

ORPHEUS

Shakespeare.

Fiona Macleod.

It is the custom nowadays for scientists and for other
scholarly people to take hold of the old myths, to take
them to pieces, and to find some deep, hidden meaning in
each part of the story. So you will find that some will
tell you that Orpheus is the personification of the winds
which “tear up trees as they course along, chanting their
wild music,” and that Eurydice is the morning “with its
short-lived beauty.” Others say that Orpheus is “the
mythological expression of the delight which music gives
[Pg 32]
to the primitive races,” while yet others accept without
hesitation the idea that Orpheus is the sun that, when day
is done, plunges into the black abyss of night, in the vain
hope of overtaking his lost bride, Eurydice, the rosy dawn.
And, whether they be right or wrong, it would seem that
the sadness that comes to us sometimes as the day dies
and the last of the sun’s rays vanish to leave the hills and
valleys dark and cold, the sorrowful feeling that we cannot
understand when, in country places, we hear music coming
from far away, or listen to the plaintive song of the bird,
are things that very specially belong to the story of
Orpheus.

In the country of Thrace, surrounded by all the best
gifts of the gods, Orpheus was born. His father was
Apollo, the god of music and of song, his mother the
muse Calliope. Apollo gave his little son a lyre, and himself
taught him how to play it. It was not long before
all the wild things in the woods of Thrace crept out from
the green trees and thick undergrowth, and from the holes
and caves in the rocks, to listen to the music that the
child’s fingers made. The coo of the dove to his mate,
the flute-clear trill of the blackbird, the song of the lark,
the liquid carol of the nightingale—all ceased when the
boy made music. The winds that whispered their secrets
to the trees owned him for their lord, and the proudest
trees of the forest bowed their heads that they might not
miss one exquisite sigh that his fingers drew from the
magical strings. Nor man nor beast lived in his day that
he could not sway by the power of his melody. He played
a lullaby, and all things slept. He played a love-lilt, and
[Pg 33]
the flowers sprang up in full bloom from the cold earth,
and the dreaming red rosebud opened wide her velvet
petals, and all the land seemed full of the loving echoes of
the lilt he played. He played a war-march, and, afar off,
the sleeping tyrants of the forest sprang up, wide awake,
and bared their angry teeth, and the untried youths of
Thrace ran to beg their fathers to let them taste battle,
while the scarred warriors felt on their thumbs the sharpness
of their sword blades, and smiled, well content.
While he played it would seem as though the very stones
and rocks gained hearts. Nay, the whole heart of the
universe became one great, palpitating, beautiful thing,
an instrument from whose trembling strings was drawn
out the music of Orpheus.

He rose to great power, and became a mighty prince
of Thrace. Not his lute alone, but he himself played on
the heart of the fair Eurydice and held it captive. It
seemed as though, when they became man and wife, all
happiness must be theirs. But although Hymen, the god of
marriage, himself came to bless them on the day they wed,
the omens on that day were against them. The torch that
Hymen carried had no golden flame, but sent out pungent
black smoke that made their eyes water. They feared
they knew not what; but when, soon afterwards, as Eurydice
wandered with the nymphs, her companions, through
the blue-shadowed woods of Thrace, the reason was discovered.
A bold shepherd, who did not know her for a
princess, saw Eurydice, and no sooner saw her than he
loved her. He ran after her to proclaim to her his love,
and she, afraid of his wild uncouthness, fled before him. She
[Pg 34]
ran, in her terror, too swiftly to watch whither she went,
and a poisonous snake that lurked amongst the fern bit the
fair white foot that flitted, like a butterfly, across it. In
agonised suffering Eurydice died. Her spirit went to the
land of the Shades, and Orpheus was left broken-hearted.

The sad winds that blow at night across the sea, the
sobbing gales that tell of wreck and death, the birds that
wail in the darkness for their mates, the sad, soft whisper
of the aspen leaves and the leaves of the heavy clad blue-black
cypresses, all now were hushed, for greater than all,
more full of bitter sorrow than any, arose the music of
Orpheus, a long-drawn sob from a broken heart in the
Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Grief came alike to gods and to men as they listened,
but no comfort came to him from the expression of his
sorrow. At length, when to bear his grief longer was
impossible for him, Orpheus wandered to Olympus, and
there besought Zeus to give him permission to seek his
wife in the gloomy land of the Shades. Zeus, moved
by his anguish, granted the permission he sought, but
solemnly warned him of the terrible perils of his undertaking.

But the love of Orpheus was too perfect to know any
fear; thankfully he hastened to the dark cave on the
side of the promontory of Taenarus, and soon arrived at
the entrance of Hades. Stark and grim was the three-headed
watchdog, Cerberus, which guarded the door, and
with the growls and the furious roaring of a wild beast
athirst for its prey it greeted Orpheus. But Orpheus
touched his lute, and the brute, amazed, sank into silence.
[Pg 35]
And still he played, and the dog would gently have licked
the player’s feet, and looked up in his face with its savage
eyes full of the light that we see in the eyes of the dogs of
this earth as they gaze with love at their masters. On,
then, strode Orpheus, playing still, and the melody he drew
from his lute passed before him into the realms of Pluto.

Surely never were heard such strains. They told of
perfect, tender love, of unending longing, of pain too
great to end with death. Of all the beauties of the earth
they sang—of the sorrow of the world—of all the world’s
desire—of things past—of things to come. And ever,
through the song that the lute sang, there came, like a
thread of silver that is woven in a black velvet pall, a
limpid melody. It was as though a bird sang in the mirk
night, and it spoke of peace and of hope, and of joy that
knows no ending.

Into the blackest depths of Hades the sounds sped on
their way, and the hands of Time stood still. From his
bitter task of trying to quaff the stream that ever receded
from the parched and burning lips, Tantalus ceased for a
moment. The ceaseless course of Ixion’s wheel was stayed,
the vulture’s relentless beak no longer tore at the Titan’s
liver; Sisyphus gave up his weary task of rolling the stone
and sat on the rock to listen, the Danaïdes rested from their
labour of drawing water in a sieve. For the first time, the
cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears, and the restless
shades that came and went in the darkness, like dead
autumn leaves driven by a winter gale, stood still to gaze
and listen. Before the throne where Pluto and his queen
Proserpine were seated, sable-clad and stern, the relentless
[Pg 36]
Fates at their feet, Orpheus still played on. And to
Proserpine then came the living remembrance of all the
joys of her girlhood by the blue Ægean Sea in the fair
island of Sicily. Again she knew the fragrance and the
beauty of the flowers of spring. Even into Hades the scent
of the violets seemed to come, and fresh in her heart was
the sorrow that had been hers on the day on which the
ruthless King of Darkness tore her from her mother and
from all that she held most dear. Silent she sat beside
her frowning, stern-faced lord, but her eyes grew dim.

When, with a quivering sigh, the music stopped,
Orpheus fearlessly pled his cause. To let him have Eurydice,
to give him back his more than life, to grant that he
might lead her with him up to “the light of Heaven”—that
was his prayer.

The eyes of Pluto and Proserpine did not dare to meet,
yet with one accord was their answer given. Eurydice
should be given back to him, but only on one condition.
Not until he had reached the light of earth again was he
to turn round and look upon the face for a sight of which
his eyes were tired with longing. Eagerly Orpheus complied,
and with a heart almost breaking with gladness he
heard the call for Eurydice and turned to retrace his way,
with the light footfall of the little feet that he adored
making music behind him. Too good a thing it seemed—too
unbelievable a joy. She was there—quite close to
him. Their days of happiness were not ended. His love
had won her back, even from the land of darkness. All
that he had not told her of that love while yet she was on
earth he would tell her now. All that he had failed in
[Pg 37]
before, he would make perfect now. The little limping
foot—how it made his soul overflow with adoring tenderness.
So near she was, he might even touch her were he
to stretch back his hand….

And then there came to him a hideous doubt. What
if Pluto had played him false? What if there followed
him not Eurydice, but a mocking shade? As he climbed
the steep ascent that led upwards to the light, his fear grew
more cruelly real. Almost he could imagine that her
footsteps had stopped, that when he reached the light he
would find himself left once more to his cruel loneliness.
Too overwhelming for him was the doubt. So nearly there
they were that the darkness was no longer that of night,
but as that of evening when the long shadows fall upon
the land, and there seemed no reason for Orpheus to wait.

Swiftly he turned, and found his wife behind him, but
only for a moment she stayed. Her arms were thrown
open and Orpheus would fain have grasped her in his
own, but before they could touch each other Eurydice
was borne from him, back into the darkness.

“Farewell!” she said—“Farewell!” and her voice
was a sigh of hopeless grief. In mad desperation Orpheus
sought to follow her, but his attempt was vain. At the
brink of the dark, fierce-flooded Acheron the boat with its
boatman, old Charon, lay ready to ferry across to the
further shore those whose future lay in the land of Shades.
To him ran Orpheus, in clamorous anxiety to undo the
evil he had wrought. But Charon angrily repulsed
him. There was no place for such as Orpheus in his
ferry-boat. Those only who went, never to return, could
[Pg 38]
find a passage there. For seven long days and seven
longer nights Orpheus waited beside the river, hoping
that Charon would relent, but at last hope died, and he
sought the depths of the forests of Thrace, where trees
and rocks and beasts and birds were all his friends.

He took his lyre again then and played:

Milton.

Day and night he stayed in the shadow of the woodlands,
all the sorrow of his heart expressing itself in
the song of his lute. The fiercest beasts of the forest
crawled to his feet and looked up at him with eyes full
of pity. The song of the birds ceased, and when the
wind moaned through the trees they echoed his cry,
“Eurydice! Eurydice!”

In the dawning hours it would seem to him that he
saw her again, flitting, a thing of mist and rising sun,
across the dimness of the woods. And when evening
came and all things rested, and the night called out
the mystery of the forest, again he would see her.
In the long blue shadows of the trees she would stand—up
the woodland paths she walked, where her little
feet fluttered the dry leaves as she passed. Her face
was white as a lily in the moonlight, and ever she held
out her arms to Orpheus:

Lowell.

SWIFTLY HE TURNED, AND FOUND HIS WIFE BEHIND HIM

[Pg 39]
For Orpheus it was a good day when Jason, chief of
the Argonauts, sought him out to bid him come with the
other heroes and aid in the quest of the Golden Fleece.

“Have I not had enough of toil and of weary wandering
far and wide,” sighed Orpheus. “In vain is the
skill of the voice which my goddess mother gave me;
in vain have I sung and laboured; in vain I went down
to the dead, and charmed all the kings of Hades, to win
back Eurydice, my bride. For I won her, my beloved,
and lost her again the same day, and wandered away
in my madness even to Egypt and the Libyan sands,
and the isles of all the seas…. While I charmed in
vain the hearts of men, and the savage forest beasts,
and the trees, and the lifeless stones, with my magic
harp and song, giving rest, but finding none.”[3]

But in the good ship Argo, Orpheus took his place
with the others and sailed the watery ways, and the
songs that Orpheus sang to his shipmates and that tell
of all their great adventures are called the Songs of
Orpheus, or the Orphics, to this day.

Many were the mishaps and disasters that his music
warded off. With it he lulled monsters to sleep; more
powerful to work magic on the hearts of men were his
melodies than were the songs of the sirens when they tried
to capture the Argonauts by their wiles, and in their
downward, destroying rush his music checked mountains.

When the quest of the Argonauts was ended, Orpheus
returned to his own land of Thrace. As a hero he had
fought and endured hardship, but his wounded soul
[Pg 40]
remained unhealed. Again the trees listened to the
songs of longing. Again they echoed, “Eurydice!
Eurydice!”

As he sat one day near a river in the stillness of the
forest, there came from afar an ugly clamour of sound.
It struck against the music of Orpheus’ lute and slew
it, as the coarse cries of the screaming gulls that fight
for carrion slay the song of a soaring lark. It was the
day of the feast of Bacchus, and through the woods
poured Bacchus and his Bacchantes, a shameless rout,
satyrs capering around them, centaurs neighing aloud.
Long had the Bacchantes hated the loyal poet-lover of
one fair woman whose dwelling was with the Shades.
His ears were ever deaf to their passionate voices, his
eyes blind to their passionate loveliness as they danced
through the green trees, a riot of colour, of fierce beauty,
of laughter and of mad song. Mad they were indeed
this day, and in their madness the very existence of
Orpheus was a thing not to be borne. At first they
stoned him, but his music made the stones fall harmless
at his feet. Then in a frenzy of cruelty, with the
maniac lust to cause blood to flow, to know the joy of
taking life, they threw themselves upon Orpheus and
did him to death. From limb to limb they tore him,
casting at last his head and his blood-stained lyre into
the river. And still, as the water bore them on, the
lyre murmured its last music and the white lips of
Orpheus still breathed of her whom at last he had gone
to join in the shadowy land, “Eurydice! Eurydice!”

“Combien d’autres sont morts de même! C’est la
[Pg 41]
lutte éternelle de la force brutale contre l’intelligence
douce et sublime inspirée du ciel, dont le royaume n’est
pas de ce monde.”

In the heavens, as a bright constellation called
Lyra, or Orpheus, the gods placed his lute, and to the
place of his martyrdom came the Muses, and with loving
care carried the fragments of the massacred body to
Libetlera, at the foot of Mount Olympus, and there buried
them. And there, unto this day, more sweetly than at
any other spot in any other land, the nightingale sings.
For it sings of a love that knows no ending, of life
after death, of a love so strong that it can conquer even
Death, the all-powerful.

[Pg 42]

APOLLO AND DAPHNE

Conqueror of all conquerable earth, yet not always victorious
over the heart of a maid was the golden-locked
Apollo.

As mischievous Eros played one day with his bow
and arrows, Apollo beheld him and spoke to him mockingly.

“What hast thou to do with the weapons of war,
saucy lad?” he said. “Leave them for hands such as
mine, that know full well how to wield them. Content
thyself with thy torch, and kindle flames, if indeed thou
canst, but such bolts as thy white young arms can
drive will surely not bring scathe to god nor to man.”

Then did the son of Aphrodite answer, and as he
made answer he laughed aloud in his glee. “With
thine arrows thou mayst strike all things else, great
Apollo, a shaft of mine shall surely strike thy heart!”

Carefully, then, did Eros choose two arrows from his
quiver. One, sharp-pointed and of gold, he fitted carefully
to his bow, drew back the string until it was taut,
and then let fly the arrow, that did not miss its mark,
but flew straight to the heart of the sun-god. With
the other arrow, blunt, and tipped with lead, he smote
the beautiful Daphne, daughter of Peneus, the river-god.
And then, full joyously did the boy-god laugh, for his
[Pg 43]
roguish heart knew well that to him who was struck by
the golden shaft must come the last pangs that have
proved many a man’s and many a god’s undoing, while
that leaden-tipped arrow meant to whomsoever it struck,
a hatred of Love and an immunity from all the heart
weakness that Love can bring. Those were the days
when Apollo was young. Never before had he loved.

But as the first fierce storm that assails it bends the
young, supple tree with its green budding leaves before
its furious blast, so did the first love of Apollo bend low
his adoring heart. All day as he held the golden reins
of his chariot, until evening when its fiery wheels were
cooled in the waters of the western seas, he thought of
Daphne. All night he dreamed of her. But never did
there come to Daphne a time when she loved Love for
Love’s sake. Never did she look with gentle eye on
the golden-haired god whose face was as the face of all
the exquisite things that the sunlight shows, remembered
in a dream. Her only passion was a passion for
the chase. One of Diana’s nymphs was she, cold and
pure and white in soul as the virgin goddess herself.

There came a day when Apollo could no longer put
curbing hands on his fierce longing. The flames from
his chariot still lingered in reflected glories on sea and
hill and sky. The very leaves of the budding trees of
spring were outlined in gold. And through the dim
wood walked Daphne, erect and lithe and living as a
sapling in the early spring.

With beseeching hands, Apollo followed her. A
god was he, yet to him had come the vast humility of
[Pg 44]
passionate intercession for the gift of love to a little
nymph. She heard his steps behind her and turned
round, proud and angry that one should follow her
when she had not willed it.

“Stay!” he said, “daughter of Peneus. No foe am
I, but thine own humble lover. To thee alone do I bow
my head. To all others on earth am I conqueror and
king.”

But Daphne, hating his words of passionate love, sped
on. And when his passion lent wings to his feet and she
heard him gaining on her as she fled, not as a lover did
Daphne look on deathless Apollo, but as a hateful foe.
More swiftly than she had ever run beside her mistress
Diana, leaving the flying winds behind her as she sped,
ran Daphne now. But ever did Apollo gain upon her,
and almost had he grasped her when she reached the
green banks of the river of which her father, Peneus, was
god.

“Help me, Peneus!” she cried. “Save me, oh my
father, from him whose love I fear!”

As she spoke the arms of Apollo seized her, yet,
even as his arms met around her waist, lissome and
slight as a young willow, Daphne the nymph was Daphne
the nymph no longer. Her fragrant hair, her soft white
arms, her tender body all changed as the sun-god
touched them. Her feet took root in the soft, damp
earth by the river. Her arms sprouted into woody
branches and green leaves. Her face vanished, and the
bark of a big tree enclosed her snow-white body. Yet
Apollo did not take away his embrace from her who had
[Pg 45]
been his dear first love. He knew that her cry to Peneus
her father had been answered, yet he said, “Since thou
canst not be my bride, at least thou shalt be my tree;
my hair, my lyre, my quiver shall have thee always, oh
laurel tree of the Immortals!”

So do we still speak of laurels won, and worn by those
of deathless fame, and still does the first love of Apollo
crown the heads of those whose gifts have fitted them
to dwell with the dwellers on Olympus.

Ovid (Dryden’s translation).

[Pg 46]

PSYCHE

Those who read for the first time the story of Psyche
must at once be struck by its kinship to the fairy
tales of childhood. Here we have the three sisters, the
two elder jealous and spiteful, the youngest beautiful
and gentle and quite unable to defend herself against
her sisters’ wicked arts. Here, too, is the mysterious
bridegroom who is never seen and who is lost to his
bride because of her lack of faith. Truly it is an old,
old tale—older than all fairy tales—the story of love
that is not strong enough to believe and to wait, and so
to “win through” in the end—the story of seeds of suspicion
sown by one full of malice in an innocent heart,
and which bring to the hapless reaper a cruel harvest.

Once upon a time, so goes the tale, a king and queen
had three beautiful daughters. The first and the second
were fair indeed, but the beauty of the youngest was
such that all the people of the land worshipped it as a
thing sent straight from Olympus. They awaited her
outside the royal palace, and when she came, they
threw chaplets of roses and violets for her little feet to
tread upon, and sang hymns of praise as though she were
no mortal maiden but a daughter of the deathless gods.

There were many who said that the beauty of
Aphrodite herself was less perfect than the beauty of
Psyche, and when the goddess found that men were
[Pg 47]
forsaking her altars in order to worship a mortal maiden,
great was her wrath against them and against the princess
who, all unwittingly, had wrought her this shameful
harm.

In her garden, sitting amongst the flowers and idly
watching his mother’s fair white doves as they preened
their snowy feathers in the sun, Aphrodite found her
son Eros, and angrily poured forth to him the story
of her shame.

“Thine must be the task of avenging thy mother’s
honour,” she said. “Thou who hast the power of
making the loves of men, stab with one of thine arrows
the heart of this presumptuous maiden, and shame her
before all other mortals by making her love a monster
from which all others shrink and which all despise.”
With wicked glee Eros heard his mother’s commands.
His beautiful face, still the face of a mischievous boy,
lit up with merriment. This was, in truth, a game after
his own heart. In the garden of Aphrodite is a fountain
of sweet, another of bitter water, and Eros filled two
amber vases, one from each fountain, hung them from
his quiver, and

In her chamber Psyche lay fast asleep, and swiftly,
almost without a glance at her, Eros sprinkled some of
the bitter drops upon her lips, and then, with one of
his sharpest arrows, pricked her snowy breast. Like a
child who half awakes in fear, and looks up with puzzled,
wondering eyes, Psyche, with a little moan, opened
[Pg 48]
eyes that were bluer than the violets in spring and gazed
at Eros. He knew that he was invisible, and yet her
gaze made him tremble.

“They spoke truth!” said the lad to himself. “Not
even my mother is as fair as this princess.”

For a moment her eyelids quivered, and then dropped.
Her long dark lashes fell on her cheeks that were pink as
the hearts of the fragile shells that the waves toss up on
western beaches, her red mouth, curved like the bow of
Eros, smiled happily, and Psyche slept again. With
heart that beat as it had never beaten before, Eros
gazed upon her perfect loveliness. With gentle, pitying
finger he wiped away the red drop where his arrow had
wounded her, and then stooped and touched her lips with
his own, so lightly that Psyche in her dreams thought
that they had been brushed by a butterfly’s wings. Yet
in her sleep she moved, and Eros, starting back, pricked
himself with one of his arrows. And with that prick,
for Eros there passed away all the careless ease of the
heart of a boy, and he knew that he loved Psyche with
the unquenchable love of a deathless god. Now, with
bitter regret, all his desire was to undo the wrong he
had done to the one that he loved. Speedily he sprinkled
her with the sweet water that brings joy, and when
Psyche rose from her couch she was radiant with the
beauty that comes from a new, undreamed-of happiness.

William Morris.

Meantime it came to be known all over that land,
and in other lands to which the fame of the fair Psyche
had spread, that the mighty goddess Aphrodite had
declared herself the enemy of the princess. Therefore
none dared seek her in marriage, and although many a
noble youth sighed away his heart for love of her, she
remained in her father’s palace like an exquisite rose
whose thorns make those who fain would have it
for their own, fear to pluck it from the parent stem.
Her sisters married, and her father marvelled why so
strange a thing should come about and why the most
beautiful by far of his three daughters should remain
unwed.

At length, laden with royal gifts, an embassy was
sent by the king to the oracle of Apollo to inquire what
might be the will of the dwellers on Olympus concerning
his fairest daughter. In a horror of anxiety the king
and his queen and Psyche awaited the return of the
ambassadors. And when they returned, before ever a
word was spoken, they knew that the oracle had spoken
Psyche’s doom.

“No mortal lover shall fair Psyche know,” said the
[Pg 50]
oracle. “For bridegroom she shall have a monster
that neither man nor god can resist. On the mountain
top he awaits her coming. Woe unutterable shall come
to the king and to all the dwellers in his land if he dares
to resist the unalterable dictum of the deathless gods!”

William Morris.

Only for a little while did the wretched king strive
to resist the decrees of fate. And in her own chamber,
where so short a time before the little princess had
known the joy of something inexpressible—something
most exquisite—intangible—unknown—she sat, like a
flower broken by the ruthless storm, sobbing pitifully,
dry-eyed, with sobs that strained her soul, for the
shameful, hideous fate that the gods had dealt her.

All night, until her worn-out body could no longer
feel, her worn-out mind think, and kind sleep came to
bring her oblivion, Psyche faced the horror for the sake
of her father and of his people, that she knew she could
not avoid. When morning came, her handmaids, white-faced
and red-eyed, came to deck her in all the bridal
magnificence that befitted the most beautiful daughter
of a king, and when she was dressed right royally, and
as became a bride, there started up the mountain a
procession at sight of which the gods themselves must
have wept. With bowed heads the king and queen
walked before the litter upon which lay their daughter
in her marriage veil of saffron colour, with rose wreath
on her golden hair. White, white were the faces of the
[Pg 51]
maidens who bore the torches, and yet rose red were
they by the side of Psyche. Minstrels played wedding
hymns as they marched onwards, and it seemed as though
the souls of unhappy shades sobbed through the reeds
and moaned through the strings as they played.

At length they reached the rocky place where they
knew they must leave the victim bride, and her father
dared not meet her eyes as he turned his head to go.
Yet Psyche watched the procession wending its way
downhill. No more tears had she to shed, and it seemed
to her that what she saw was not a wedding throng, but
an assembly of broken-hearted people who went back
to their homes with heavy feet after burying one that
they loved. She saw no sign of the monster who was to
be her bridegroom, yet at every little sound her heart
grew sick with horror, and when the night wind swept
through the craggy peaks and its moans were echoed in
loneliness, she fell on her face in deadly fear and lay on
the cold rock in a swoon.

Yet, had Psyche known it, the wind was her friend.
For Eros had used Zephyrus as his trusty messenger
and sent him to the mountain top to find the bride of
him “whom neither man nor god could resist.” Tenderly—very
tenderly—he was told, must he lift her in his
arms, and bear her to the golden palace in that green
and pleasant land where Eros had his home. So, with
all the gentleness of a loving nurse to a tired little child
Zephyrus lifted Psyche, and sped with her in his strong
arms to the flowery meadows behind which towered the
golden palace of Eros, like the sun behind a sky of green
[Pg 52]
and amber and blue and rose. Deeply, in the weariness
of her grief, Psyche slept, and when she awoke it was
to start up with the chill hands of the realisation of
terrible actualities on her heart. But when her eyes
looked round to find the barren rocks, the utter forsakenness,
the coming of an unnameable horror, before her
she saw only fair groves with trees bedecked with fruit
and blossom, fragrant meadows, flowers whose beauty
made her eyes grow glad. And from the trees sang
birds with song more sweet than any that Psyche had
ever known, and with brilliant plumage which they
preened caressingly when they had dipped their wings
in crystal-sparkling fountains. There, too, stood a
noble palace, golden fronted, and with arcades of stainless
marble that shone like snow in the sun. At first
all seemed like part of a dream from which she dreaded
to awake, but soon there came to her the joy of knowing
that all the exquisite things that made appeal to her
senses were indeed realities. Almost holding her breath,
she walked forward to the open golden doors. “It is a
trap,” she thought. “By this means does the monster
subtly mean to lure me into his golden cage.” Yet,
even as she thought, there seemed to be hovering round
her winged words, like little golden birds with souls.
And in her ears they whispered, “Fear not. Doubt not.
Recall the half-formed dreams that so short a time ago
brought to thy heart such unutterable joy. No evil
shall come to thee—only the bliss of loving and of being
loved.”

THUS DID PSYCHE LOSE HER FEAR, AND ENTER THE GOLDEN DOORS

Thus did Psyche lose her fear, and enter the golden
[Pg 53]
doors. And inside the palace she found that all the
beautiful things of which she had ever dreamed, all the
perfect things for which she had ever longed, were there
to greet her. From one to another she flitted, like a
humming-bird that sucks honey from one and then
from another gorgeous flower. And then, when she was
tired with so much wearing out of her thankful mind,
she found a banquet ready spread for her, with all the
dainties that her dainty soul liked best; and, as
she ate, music so perfect rejoiced her ears that all her
soul was soothed and joyous and at peace. When she
had refreshed herself, a soft couch stood before
her, ready for her there to repose, and when that
strange day had come to an end, Psyche knew that,
monster or not, she was beloved by one who had
thought for her every thought, and who desired only
her desire.

Night came at last, and when all was dark and still,
and Psyche, wide awake, was full of forebodings and fears
lest her happy dreams might only be misleading fancies,
and Horror incarnate might come to crown her peaceful
day, Eros softly entered the palace that was his own.
Even as he had gone to the palace of her father he went
now, and found Psyche lying with violet eyes that
stared into the velvety darkness, seeking something
that she hoped for, trembling before something that
brought her dread.

His voice was as the voice of spring when it breathes
on the sleeping earth; he knew each note in Love’s
music, every word in the great thing that is Love’s
[Pg 54]
vocabulary. Love loved, and Psyche listened, and soon
she knew that her lover was Love himself.

Thus, for Psyche, did a time of perfect happiness
begin. All through the day she roamed in her Love’s
dominion, and saw on every side the signs of his passion
and of his tenderness. All through the night he stayed
by her, and satisfied all the longing of her heart. Yet
always, ere daybreak, Eros left her, and when she begged
him to stay he only made answer:

Lewis Morris.

So did time glide past for Psyche, and ever she grew
more in love with Love; always did her happiness become
more complete. Yet, ever and again, there
returned to her the remembrance of those sorrowful days
when her father and mother had broken their hearts
over her martyrdom, and her sisters had looked askance
at her as at one whose punishment must assuredly
have come from her own misdoing. Thus at length she
asked Eros to grant her, for love’s sake, a boon—to
permit her to have her sisters come to see for themselves
the happiness that was hers. Most unwillingly
was her request granted, for the heart of Eros told him
that from their visit no good could come. Yet he was
unable to deny anything to Psyche, and on the following
day Zephyrus was sent to bring the two sisters to
the pleasant valley where Psyche had her home.
[Pg 55]
Eagerly, as she awaited them, Psyche thought she
might make the princely palace wherein she dwelt yet
fairer than it was. And almost ere she could think,
her thoughts became realities. When the two sisters
came, they were bewildered with the beauty and the
magnificence of it all. Beside this, their own possessions
were paltry trifles indeed. Quickly, in their little
hearts, black envy grew. They had always been jealous of
their younger sister, and now that they found her, whom
all the world believed to have been slain by a horrible
monster, more beautiful than ever, decked with rare
jewels, radiant in her happiness, and queen of a palace
fit for the gods, their envy soon turned to hatred, and
they sought how best to wreak their malice upon the
joyous creature who loaded them with priceless gifts.
They began to ply Psyche with questions. He who was
her lord, to whom she owed all her happiness, where was
he? Why did he stay away when her sisters came to be
presented to him? What manner of man was he?
Was he fair or dark? Young or old? And as they
questioned her, Psyche grew like a bewildered child
and answered in frightened words that contradicted one
another. And well the wicked sisters, who brooded evil
in their hearts, knew that this husband whom Psyche
had never seen must indeed be one of the deathless gods.
Wily words they spoke to her then.

“Alas! unhappy one,” they said, “dost think to
escape the evil fate the gods meted out for thee? Thy
husband is none other than the monster of which the
oracle spake! Oh, foolish Psyche! canst not understand
[Pg 56]
that the monster fears the light? Too great horror would
it mean for thee to see the loathsome thing that comes in
the blackness of night and speaks to thee words of love.”

White-lipped and trembling, Psyche listened. Drop
by drop the poisonous words passed into her soul. She
had thought him king of all living things—worthy to
rule over gods as well as men. She was so sure that his
body was worthy sheath for the heart she knew so
well…. She had pictured him beautiful as Eros,
son of Aphrodite—young and fair, with crisp, golden
locks—a husband to glory in—a lover to adore. And
now she knew, with shame and dread, that he who had
won her love between the twilight and the dawn was a
thing to shame her, a monster to be shunned of men.

“What, then, shall I do?” piteously she asked of
her sisters. And the women, pitilessly, and well content,
answered:

“Provide thyself with a lamp and a knife sharp
enough to slay the man or monster. And when this
creature to whom, to thy undying shame, thou belongest,
sleeps sound, slip from thy couch and in the
rays of the lamp have courage to look upon him in all
his horror. Then, when thou hast seen for thyself that
what we say is truth, with thy knife swiftly slay him.
Thus shalt thou free thyself from the pitiless doom
meted out by the gods.”

Shaking with sobs, Psyche made answer:

“I love him so!… I love him so!”

And her sisters turned upon her with furious scorn
and well-simulated wrath.

[Pg 57]
“Shameless one!” they cried; “and does our
father’s daughter confess to a thing so unutterable!
Only by slaying the monster canst thou hope to regain
thy place amongst the daughters of men.”

They left her when evening fell, carrying with them
their royal gifts. And while she awaited the coming of
her lord, Psyche, provided with knife and lamp, crouched
with her head in her hands, a lily broken by a cruel storm.
So glad was Eros to come back to her, to find her safely
there—for greatly had he feared the coming of that
treacherous pair—that he did not note her silence. Nor
did the dark night show him that her eyes in her sad
face looked like violets in a snow wreath. He wanted
only to hold her safely in his arms, and there she lay,
passive and still, until sleep came to lay upon him an
omnipotent hand. Then, very gently, she withdrew
herself from his embrace, and stole to the place where
her lamp was hidden. Her limbs shook under her as
she brought it to the couch where he lay asleep; her
arm trembled as she held it aloft.

As a martyr walks to death, so did she walk. And
when the yellow light fell upon the form of him who lay
there, still she gazed steadily.

And, lo, before her she saw the form of him who had
ever been the ideal of her dreams. Love himself, incarnate
Love, perfect in beauty and in all else was he
whom her sisters had told her was a monster—he, of
whom the oracle had said that neither gods nor men
could resist him. For a moment of perfect happiness
she gazed upon his beauty. Then he turned in his
[Pg 58]
sleep, and smiled, and stretched out his arms to find
the one of his love. And Psyche started, and, starting,
shook the lamp; and from it fell a drop of burning oil
on the white shoulder of Eros. At once he awoke, and
with piteous, pitying eyes looked in those of Psyche.
And when he spoke, his words were like daggers that
pierced deep into her soul. He told her all that had
been, all that might have been. Had she only had
faith and patience to wait, an immortal life should have
been hers.

William Morris.

He left her alone then, with her despair, and as the
slow hours dragged by, Psyche, as she awaited the
dawn, felt that in her heart no sun could ever rise again.
When day came at last, she felt she could no longer
endure to stay in the palace where everything spoke to
her of the infinite tenderness of a lost love. Through
the night a storm had raged, and even with the day
there came no calm. And Psyche, weary and chill,
wandered away from the place of her happiness, onward
and ever on, until she stood on the bank of a
swift-flowing river. For a little she stayed her steps
and listened to the sound of its wash against the rocks
and tree roots as it hurried past, and to her as she waited
came the thought that here had she found a means by
which to end her woe.

[Pg 59]
“I have lost my Love,” she moaned. “What
is Life to me any longer! Come to me then, O
Death!”

So then she sprang into the wan water, hoping that
very swiftly it might bear her grief-worn soul down to
the shades. But the river bore her up and carried her
to its shallows in a fair meadow where Pan himself sat
on the bank and merrily dabbled his feet in the flowing
water. And when Psyche, shamed and wet, looked at
him with sad eyes, the god spoke to her gently and
chid her for her folly. She was too young and much too
fair to try to end her life so rudely, he said. The river
gods would never be so unkind as to drive so beautiful
a maiden in rough haste down to the Cocytus valley.

“Thou must dree thy weird like all other daughters of
men, fair Psyche,” he said. “He or she who fain would
lose their lives, are ever held longest in life. Only when
the gods will it shall thy days on earth be done.”

And Psyche, knowing that in truth the gods had
spared her to endure more sorrow, looked in his face
with a very piteous gaze, and wandered on. As she
wandered, she found that her feet had led her near the
place where her two sisters dwelt.

“I shall tell them of the evil they have wrought,”
she thought. “Surely they must sorrow when they
know that by their cruel words they stole my faith from
me and robbed me of my Love and of my happiness.”

Gladly the two women saw the stricken form of
Psyche and looked at her face, all marred by grief.
Well, indeed, had their plot succeeded; their malice
[Pg 60]
had drunk deep, yet deeper still they drank, for with
scornful laughter they drove her from their palace doors.
Very quickly, when she had gone, the elder sought the
place where she had stood when Zephyrus bore her in
safety to that palace of pleasure where Psyche dwelt
with her Love. Now that Psyche was no longer there,
surely the god by whom she had been beloved would
gladly have as her successor the beautiful woman who
was now much more fair than the white-faced girl with
eyes all red with weeping. And such certainty did the
vengeful gods put in her heart that she held out her
arms, and calling aloud:

“Bear me to him in thine arms, Zephyrus! Behold
I come, my lord!” she sprang from the high cliff on
which she stood, into space. And the ravens that night
feasted on her shattered body. So also did it befall the
younger sister, deluded by the Olympians to her own
destruction, so that her sin might be avenged.

For many a weary day and night Psyche wandered,
ever seeking to find her Love, ever longing to do something
by which to atone for the deed that had been her
undoing. From temple to temple she went, but nowhere
did she come near him, until at length in Cyprus
she came to the place where Aphrodite herself had her
dwelling. And inasmuch as her love had made her very
bold, and because she no longer feared death, nor could
think of pangs more cruel than those that she already
knew, Psyche sought the presence of the goddess who
was her enemy, and humbly begged her to take her
life away.

[Pg 61]
With flaming scorn and anger Aphrodite received her.

There began then for Psyche a time of torturing
misery of which only those could speak who have knowledge
of the merciless stripes with which the goddess
can scourge the hearts of her slaves. With cruel ingenuity,
Aphrodite invented labours for her.

In uncountable quantity, and mingled in inextricable
and bewildering confusion, there lay in the granary of
the goddess grains of barley and of wheat, peas and
millet, poppy and coriander seed. To sort out each
kind and lay them in heaps was the task allotted for one
day, and woe be to her did she fail. In despair, Psyche
began her hopeless labour. While the sun shone,
through a day that was for her too short, she strove to
separate the grains, but when the shadows of evening
made it hard for her to distinguish one sort from another,
only a few very tiny piles were the result of her weary
toil. Very soon the goddess would return, and Psyche
dared not think what would be the punishment meted
out to her. Rapidly the darkness fell, but while the
dying light still lingered in some parts of the granary,
it seemed to Psyche as though little dark trickles of
water began to pour from underneath the doors and
through the cracks in the wall. Trembling she watched
the ceaseless motion of those long, dark lines, and then,
[Pg 62]
in amazement, realised that what she saw were unending
processions of ants. And as though one who loved her
directed their labours, the millions of busy little toilers
swiftly did for Psyche what she herself had failed to do.
When at length they went away, in those long dark
lines that looked like the flow of a thread-like stream,
the grains were all piled up in high heaps, and the sad
heart of Psyche knew not only thankful relief, but had
a thrill of gladness.

“Eros sent them to me:” she thought. “Even
yet his love for me is not dead.”

And what she thought was true.

Amazed and angry, Aphrodite looked at the task
she had deemed impossible, well and swiftly performed.
That Psyche should possess such magic skill only incensed
her more, and next day she said to her new
slave:

“Behold, on the other side of that glittering stream,
my golden-fleeced sheep crop the sweet flowers of the
meadow. To-day must thou cross the river and bring
me back by evening a sample of wool pulled from each
one of their shining fleeces.”

Then did Psyche go down to the brink of the river,
and even as her white feet splashed into the water, she
heard a whisper of warning from the reeds that bowed
their heads by the stream.

“Beware! O Psyche,” they said. “Stay on the
shore and rest until the golden-fleeced sheep lie under
the shade of the trees in the evening and the murmur
of the river has lulled them to sleep.”

[Pg 63]
But Psyche said, “Alas, I must do the bidding of the
goddess. It will take me many a weary hour to pluck
the wool that she requires.”

And again the reeds murmured, “Beware! for the
golden-fleeced sheep, with their great horns, are evil
creatures that lust for the lives of mortals, and will slay
thee even as thy feet reach the other bank. Only when
the sun goes down does their vice depart from them,
and while they sleep thou canst gather of their wool
from the bushes and from the trunks of the trees.”

And again the heart of Psyche felt a thrill of happiness,
because she knew that she was loved and cared for
still. All day she rested in the wood by the river and
dreamt pleasant day-dreams, and when the sun had set
she waded to the further shore and gathered the golden
wool in the way that the reeds had told her. When in
the evening she came to the goddess, bearing her shining
load, the brow of Aphrodite grew dark.

“If thou art so skilled in magic that no danger is
danger to thee, yet another task shall I give thee that is
worthy of thy skill,” she said, and laid upon Psyche her
fresh commands.

Sick with dread, Psyche set out next morning to seek
the black stream out of which Aphrodite had commanded
her to fill a ewer. Part of its waters flowed into the
Styx, part into the Cocytus, and well did Psyche know
that a hideous death from the loathly creatures that
protected the fountain must be the fate of those who
risked so proud an attempt. Yet because she knew
that she must “dree her weird,” as Pan had said, she
[Pg 64]
plodded onward, towards that dark mountain from
whose side gushed the black water that she sought.
And then, once again, there came to her a message of
love. A whirring of wings she heard, and

And, yet once again, the stricken heart of Psyche was
gladdened, and when at nightfall she came with her
ewer full of water from the dread stream and gave
it to Aphrodite, although she knew that a yet more
arduous task was sure to follow, her fear had all passed
away.

With beautiful, sullen eyes, Aphrodite received her
when she brought the water. And, with black brow,
she said: “If thou art so skilled in magic that no
danger is known to thee, I shall now give thee a task
all worthy of thy skill.”

Thereon she told her that she must seek that dark
valley where no silver nor golden light ever strikes on
the black waters of Cocytus and of the Styx; and where
Pluto reigns in gloomy majesty over the restless shades.
From Proserpine she was to crave for Aphrodite the
gift of a box of magical ointment, the secret of which
was known to the Queen of Darkness alone, and which
was able to bring to those who used it, beauty more
[Pg 65]
exquisite than any that the eyes of gods or of men had
as yet looked upon.

“I grow weary and careworn,” said Aphrodite, and
she looked like a rose that has budded in Paradise as she
spoke. “My son was wounded by a faithless slave in
whom, most weakly, he put his trust, and in tending
to his wound, my beauty has faded.”

And at these scornful words, the heart of Psyche
leaped within her.

“In helping his mother, I shall help him!” she
thought. And again she thought, “I shall atone.” And
so, when day was come, she took her way along the
weary road that leads to that dark place from whence
no traveller can ever hope to return, and still with
gladness in her heart. But, as she went onward, “cold
thoughts and dreadful fears” came to her.

“Better were it for me to hasten my journey to the
shades,” she thought.

And when she came to an old grey tower, that seemed
like an old man that Death has forgotten, she resolved to
throw herself down from it, and thus swiftly to find herself
at her journey’s end. But as she stood on the top of
the tower, her arms outstretched, like a white butterfly
that poises its wings for flight, a voice spoke in her ear.

“Oh, foolish one,” it said, “why dost thou strive
to stay the hope that is not dead?” And while she held
her breath, her great eyes wide open, the voice spoke on,
and told her by what means she might speedily reach
Hades and there find means to face with courage the
King of Darkness himself and his fair wife, Proserpine.

[Pg 66]
All that she was bidden to do, Psyche did, and so
at last did she come before the throne of Proserpine,
and all that Psyche endured, all that she saw, all that
through which she came with bleeding heart and yet
with unscathed soul, cannot here be written.

To her Proserpine gave the box of precious ointment
that Aphrodite described, and gladly she hastened homeward.
Good, indeed, it was to her when again she
reached the fair light of day. Yet, when she had won
there, there came to Psyche a winged thought, that
beat against the stern barriers of her mind like a little
moth against a window.

“This ointment that I carry with me,” said Psyche
to herself, “is an ointment that will bring back to those
all faded by time, or worn by suffering, a beauty greater
than any beauty that has joyed the Immortals!”
And then she thought:

“For my beauty, Eros—Love—loved me; and now
my beauty is worn and wasted and well-nigh gone.
Were I to open this box and make use of the ointment
of Proserpine, then indeed I should be fair enough to be
the bride of him who, even now, believes that he loves
me—of Eros whose love is my life!”

So it came to pass that she opened the fateful box.
And out of it there came not Beauty, but Sleep, that
put his gyves upon her limbs, and on her eyelids laid
heavy fingers. And Psyche sank down by the wayside,
the prisoner of Sleep.

But Eros, who had loved her ever, with a love that
knew the ebb and flow of no tides, rose from his bed and
[Pg 67]
went in search of her who had braved even the horrors
of Hades for his dear sake. And by the wayside he
found her, fettered by sleep. Her little oval face was white
as a snowdrop. Like violets were her heavy eyelids,
and underneath her sleeping eyes a violet shadow lay.
Once had her mouth been as the bow of Eros, painted
in carmine. Now either end of the bow was turned
downwards, and its colour was that of a faded rose-leaf.

And as Eros looked at her that he loved, pity stirred
his heart, as the wind sweeps through the sighing,
grey leaves of the willow, or sings through the bowing
reeds.

“My Belovèd!” he said, and he knew that Psyche
was indeed his beloved. It was her fair soul that he
loved, nor did it matter to him whether her body
was like a rose in June or as a wind-scourged tree in
December. And as his lips met hers, Psyche awoke,
and heard his soft whisper:

Lewis Morris.

Then did there spring from the fair white shoulders
of Psyche, wings of silver and of gold, and, hand in
hand with Eros, she winged her way to Olympus.

And there all the deathless gods were assembled,
and Aphrodite no longer looked upon her who had
once been her slave with darkened brows, but smiled
upon her as the sun smiles upon a new-born flower. And
when into the hand of Psyche there was placed a cup
[Pg 68]
of gold, the voice of the great Father and King of
Olympus rang out loud and clear:

William Morris.

In this wise did Psyche, a human soul, attain by bitter
suffering to the perfect happiness of purified love.

And still do we watch the butterfly, which is her
emblem, bursting from its ugly tomb in the dark soil,
and spreading joyous white and gold-powdered wings
in the caressing sunshine, amidst the radiance and the
fragrance of the summer flowers. Still, too, do we sadly
watch her sister, the white moth, heedlessly rushing
into pangs unutterable, thoughtlessly seeking the anguish
that brings her a cruel death.

[Pg 69]

THE CALYDONIAN HUNT

Œneus and Althæa were king and queen of Calydon, and
to them was born a son who was his mother’s joy and
yet her bitterest sorrow. Meleager was his name, and
ere his birth his mother dreamed a dream that the child
that she bore was a burning firebrand. But when the
baby came he was a royal child indeed, a little fearless
king from the first moment that his eyes, like unseeing
violets, gazed steadily up at his mother. To the chamber
where he lay by his mother’s side came the three Fates,
spinning, ceaselessly spinning.

“He shall be strong,” said one, as she span her
thread. “He shall be fortunate and brave,” said the
second. But the third laid a billet of wood on the
flames, and while her withered fingers held the fatal
threads, she looked with old, old, sad eyes at the new-born
child.

“To thee, O New-Born,” she said, “and to this wood
that burns, do we give the same span of days to
live.”

From her bed sprang Althæa, and, heedless of the
flames, she seized the burning wood, trod on it with her
fair white feet, and poured on it water that swiftly
quenched its red glow. “Thou shalt live forever, O
Beloved,” she said, “for never again shall fire char the
brand that I have plucked from the burning.”

[Pg 70]
And the baby laughed.

The years sped on, and from fearless and beautiful
babyhood, Meleager grew into gallant boyhood, and
then into magnificent youth. When Jason and his
heroes sailed away into a distant land to win the Golden
Fleece, Meleager was one of the noble band. From all
men living he won great praise for his brave deeds, and
when the tribes of the north and west made war upon
Ætolia, he fought against their army and scattered it as
a wind in autumn drives the fallen leaves before it.

But his victory brought evil upon him. When his father
Œneus, at the end of a fruitful year, offered sacrifices to
the gods, he omitted to honour the goddess Diana by
sacrificing to her, and to punish his neglect, she had sent
this destroying army. When Meleager was victor, her
wrath against his father grew yet more hot, and she
sent a wild boar, large as the bulls of Epirus, and fierce
and savage to kill and to devour, that it might ravage
and lay waste the land of Calydon. The fields of corn
were trampled under foot, the vineyards laid waste, and
the olive groves wrecked as by a winter hurricane.
Flocks and herds were slaughtered by it, or driven
hither and thither in wild panic, working havoc as they
fled. Many went out to slay it, but went only to find
a hideous death. Then did Meleager resolve that he
would rid the land of this monster, and called on all his
[Pg 71]
friends, the heroes of Greece, to come to his aid. Theseus
and his friend Pirithous came; Jason; Peleus, afterwards
father of Achilles; Telamon, the father of Ajax;
Nestor, then but a youth; Castor and Pollux, and Toxeus
and Plexippus, the brothers of Althæa, the fair queen-mother.
But there came none more fearless nor more
ready to fight the monster boar of Calydon than Atalanta,
the daughter of the king of Arcadia. When
Atalanta was born, her father heard of her birth with
anger. He desired no daughter, but only sturdy sons
who might fight for him, and in the furious rage of bitter
disappointment he had the baby princess left on the
Parthenian Hill that she might perish there. A she-bear
heard the baby’s piteous cries, and carried it off
to its lair, where she suckled it along with her young,
and there the little Atalanta tumbled about and played
with her furry companions and grew strong and vigorous
as any other wild young creature of the forest.

Some hunters came one day to raid the den and kill
the foster-mother, and found, amazed, a fearless, white-skinned
thing with rosy cheeks and brave eyes, who
fought for her life and bit them as did her fierce foster-brothers,
and then cried human tears of rage and sorrow
when she saw the bear who had been her mother lying
bloody and dead. Under the care of the hunters
Atalanta grew into a maiden, with all the beauty of a
maid and all the strength and the courage of a man.
She ran as swiftly as Zephyrus runs when he rushes up
from the west and drives the white clouds before him
like a flock of timid fawns that a hound is pursuing.
[Pg 72]
The shafts that her strong arm sped from her bow smote
straight to the heart of the beast that she chased, and
almost as swift as her arrow was she there to drive her
spear into her quarry. When at length her father
the king learned that the beautiful huntress, of whom
all men spoke as of one only a little lower than Diana,
was none other than his daughter, he was not slow to
own her as his child. So proud was he of her beauty
and grace, and of her marvellous swiftness of foot and skill
in the chase, that he would fain have married her to one
of the great ones of Greece, but Atalanta had consulted
an oracle. “Marry not,” said the oracle. “To thee
marriage must bring woe.”

So, with untouched heart, and with the daring and
the courage of a young lad, Atalanta came along with the
heroes to the Calydonian Hunt. She was so radiantly
lovely, so young, so strong, so courageous, that straightway
Meleager loved her, and all the heroes gazed at her
with eyes that adored her beauty. And Diana, looking
down at her, also loved the maiden whom from childhood
she had held in her protection—a gallant, fearless virgin
dear to her heart.

The grey mist rose from the marshes as the hunt
began, and the hunters of the boar had gone but a
little way when they came upon traces of the hated
boar. Disembowelled beasts marked its track. Here,
in a flowery meadow, had it wallowed. There, in rich
wheat land, had it routed, and the marks of its bestial
tusks were on the gashed grey trunks of the trees that
had once lived in the peace of a fruitful olive grove.

[Pg 73]
In a marsh they found their enemy, and all the reeds
quivered as it heaved its vast bulk and hove aside the weed
in which it had wallowed, and rooted with its tusks
amongst the wounded water-lilies before it leapt with a
snort to meet and to slay the men who had come against
it. A filthy thing it was, as its pink snout rose above
the green ooze of the marshes, and it looked up lustingly,
defying the purity of the blue skies of heaven, to bring
to those who came against it a cruel, shameful death.

Upon it, first of all, Jason cast his spear. But the
sharp point only touched it, and unwounded, the boar
rushed on, its gross, bristly head down, to disembowel,
if it could, the gallant Nestor. In the branches of a tree
Nestor found safety, and Telamon rushed on to destroy
the filthy thing that would have made carrion of the sons
of the gods. A straggling cypress root caught his fleeting
foot and laid him prone, a helpless prey for the rooting
brute. His hounds fell before it, but ere it could reach
him, Atalanta, full of vengeful rage—the pure angered
against the filthy and cruel—let draw her bow, with a
prayer to Diana to guide her shaft aright. Into the
boar’s smoking flank sped the arrow.

Swinburne.

More than ever terrible was the monster now that
it was wounded. One after the other the hunters
fell before its mad rage, and were sent to the shades
by a bloody and merciless death.

Before its furious charge even the heart of a hero
might have been stricken. Yet Meleager, like a mighty
oak of the forest that will not sway even a little before
the rush of a storm, stood full in its way and met its
onslaught.

Great was the shout that rose from those who still
lived when that grim hunt thus came to an end. And
when, with his keen blade, Meleager struck off the head,
even as the quivering throat drew its last agonised
breath, louder still shouted the men of Greece. But
not for himself did Meleager despoil the body of his foe.
He laid the ugly thing at the feet of Atalanta.

“This is thy spoil, not mine,” he said. “The
wounding shaft was sped by thee. To thee belongs the
praise.”

And Atalanta blushed rosily, and laughed low and
[Pg 75]
gladly, not only because Diana had heard her prayer
and helped her slay the beast, but for happiness that
Meleager was so noble in his giving.

At that the brows of the heroes grew dark, and
angrily one cried:

Like a spark that kindles the dry grass, their kindling
anger spread, and they rushed against Atalanta, seized
the trophy she had been given, and smote her as though
she were but a shameless wanton and not the noble
daughter of a king.

And because the heart of Meleager was given very
wholly to the fair huntress, and because those whom he
deemed his friends had not only dishonoured her, but had
done him a very grievous wrong, a great rage seized him.
Right and left he smote, and they who had been most
bitter in their jealousy of Atalanta, the two brothers of
his own mother, were laid low in death.

Tidings of the slaying of the boar had been brought
to Althæa by swift messengers, and she was on her way
to the temples bearing gifts to the gods for the victory
of her son, when she beheld the slow-footed procession
of those who bore the bodies of the dead. And when
she saw the still faces of her two dear brothers, quickly
was her joy turned into mourning. Terrible was her
grief and anger when she learned by whose hand they
were slain, and her mother’s love and pride dried up in
her heart like the clear water of a fountain before the
[Pg 76]
scorching of a devouring fire. No sacrifices to the gods
would she offer, but her dead brothers should have the
greatest sacrifice that mother could make to atone for
the guilt of her son. Back to the palace she went, and
from its safe hiding-place drew out the brand that she
had rescued from the flames when Meleager the hero
was but a babe that made his mother’s heart sing for
joy. She commanded a fire to be prepared, and four
times, as its flames blazed aloft, she tried to lay the brand
upon the pile. Yet four times she drew back, and then
at last she threw into the reddest of the ashes the charred
brand that for a little she held so close to her breast
that it seemed as though she fondled her child.

A wreath of leaves as sign of victory was being
placed on Atalanta’s beautiful head by the adoring
hands of Meleager when his mother gave him his doom.
Through his body there rushed a pang of mortal agony.
His blood turned to fire, and the hand of Death that
smote him was as a hand of molten lead. In torture his
gallant spirit passed away, uncomplaining, loving through
his pain the maid for whose dear sake he had brought
woe upon himself. As the last white ashes in the fire
crumbled and fell away into nothingness, the soul of
Meleager departed. Swiftly through the dark valley his
mother’s shade followed him, for she fell upon a sword
and so perished. And Diana, looking down on the grief-stricken
sisters of Meleager and on the bitter sorrow of
his father, had compassion on them and turned them
into birds.

So ended the Calydonian Hunt, and Atalanta
[Pg 77]
returned to Arcadia, heavy at heart for the evil she had
wrought unwittingly. And still the Three Fates span
on, and the winds caught up the cold wood ashes and
blew them across the ravaged land that Meleager had
saved and that quickly grew fertile again.

[Pg 78]

ATALANTA

Atalanta, daughter of the king of Arcadia, returned
sad at heart to her own land. Only as comrades, as
those against whose skill in the chase she was wont to pit
her own skill, had she looked upon men. But Meleager,
the hero who loved her and her fair honour more than
life itself, and whose love had made him haste in all his
gallant strength and youthful beauty to the land of the
Shades, was one to touch her as never before had she
been touched. Her father, proud of her triumph in
Calydon, again besought her to marry one of her many
noble suitors.

“If indeed they love me as thou sayest,” said
Atalanta to her father, “then must they be ready to
face for my sake even the loss of dear life itself. I shall
be the prize of him who outruns me in a foot-race. But
he who tries and fails, must pay to Death his penalty.”

Thereafter, for many days, a strange sight was to be
seen in Arcadia. For one after another the suitors came
to race with the maiden whose face had bewitched them,
though truly the race was no more fair to him who
ran than would be a race with Death. No mortal man
was as fleet as Atalanta, who had first raced with the
wild things of the mountains and the forests, and who
had dared at last to race with the winds and leave even
[Pg 79]
them behind. To her it was all a glorious game. Her
conquest was always sure, and if the youths who entered
in the contest cared to risk their lives, why should they
blame her? So each day they started, throbbing hope
and fierce determination to win her in the heart of him
who ran—fading hope and despairing anger as he saw
her skimming ahead of him like a gay-hued butterfly
that a tired child pursues in vain. And each day, as the
race ended, another man paid the price of his defeat.

Daily, amongst those who looked on, stood her
cousin Milanion. He would fain have hated Atalanta
for her ruthlessness and her joyousness as he saw his
friends die for her sake, yet daily her beauty, her purity,
and her gallant unconsciousness took a firmer hold upon
his heart. To himself he vowed that he would win
Atalanta, but not without help from the gods was this
possible. Therefore he sought Aphrodite herself and
asked her aid.

Milanion was a beautiful youth, and to Aphrodite, who
loved beauty, he pled his cause as he told her how Atalanta
had become to him more than life, so that he had
ceased to pity the youths, his friends, who had died for
love of her. The goddess smiled upon him with gentle
sympathy.

In the garden of her temple grew a tree with branches
and twigs of gold, and leaves as yellow as the little leaves
of the silver birch when the autumn sun kisses them as
it sets. On this tree grew golden apples, and Aphrodite
plucked three of them and gave them to the youth who
had not feared to ask her to aid him to win the maid he
[Pg 80]
loved. How he was to use the apples she then told
him, and, well content, Milanion returned home.

Next day he spoke to Atalanta.

“So far has victory been thine, Fairest on earth,”
he said, “but so far have thy little winged white feet had
only the heavy-footed laggards to outrun. Wilt have me
run a race with thee? for assuredly I shall win thee for
my own.”

And Milanion looked into the eyes of Atalanta with
a smile as gay and fearless as that with which a hero is
wont to look in the eyes of his fellow.

Look for look did the virgin huntress give him.

Then her cheeks grew red, as though the rosy-fingered
dawn had touched them, and the dawning of
love came into her heart.

Even Meleager was not quite so goodly a youth as
this. Not even Meleager had been so wholly fearless.

“Thou art tempted by the deathless gods,” she
said, but her long lashes drooped on her cheek as she
spoke. “I pity you, Milanion, for when thou dost race
with me, the goal is assuredly the meadows of asphodel
near where sit Pluto and Persephone on their gloomy
thrones.”

But Milanion said, “I am ready, Atalanta. Wilt
race with me now?” And steadily he looked in her
eyes until again they fell as though at last they had
found a conqueror.

Like two swallows that skim across a sunny sea,
filled with the joyousness of the coming of spring,
Atalanta and Milanion started. Scarcely did their feet
[Pg 81]
seem to touch the solid earth, and all those who stood
by vowed that now, at length, was a race indeed, a race
worthy for the gods to behold.

SHE STOPPED, AND PICKED UP THE TREASURE

But as they ran, almost abreast, so that none could
tell which was the gainer, Milanion obeyed the bidding
of Aphrodite and let fall one of the golden apples. Never
before had Atalanta dreamed of such a thing—an apple
of glistening gold! She stopped, poised on one foot as a
flying bird poises for a moment on the wing, and picked
up the treasure. But Milanion had sped several paces
ahead ere she was again abreast of him, and even as she
gained on him, he dropped the second apple. Again
Atalanta was tempted. Again she stopped, and again
Milanion shot ahead of her. Her breath came short
and fast, as once more she gained the ground that she
had lost. But, yet a third time, Milanion threw in her
way one of the golden illusions of the gods. And, yet
again, Atalanta stooped to pick up the apple of gold.

Then a mighty shout from those who watched rent
the air, and Atalanta, half fearful, half ashamed, yet
wholly happy, found herself running, vanquished, into
the arms of him who was indeed her conqueror. For
not only had Milanion won the race, but he had won
the heart of the virgin huntress, a heart once as cold
and remote as the winter snow on the peak of Mount
Olympus.

[Pg 82]

ARACHNE

The hay that so short a time ago was long, lush grass,
with fragrant meadow-sweet and gold-eyed marguerites
growing amongst it in the green meadow-land by the
river, is now dry hay—fragrant still, though dead, and
hidden from the sun’s warm rays underneath the dark
wooden rafters of the barn. Occasionally a cat on a
hunting foray comes into the barn to look for mice, or
to nestle cosily down into purring slumber. Now and
then a hen comes furtively tip-toeing through the open
door and makes for itself a secret nest in which to lay
the eggs which it subsequently heralds with such loud
clucks of proud rejoicing as to completely undo all its
previous precautions. Sometimes children come in, pursuing
cat or hen, or merely to tumble each other over
amongst the soft hay which they leave in chaotic confusion,
and when they have gone away, a little more of
the sky can be seen through the little window in the roof,
and through the wooden bars of the window lower down.
Yet, whatever other living creatures may come or go, by
those windows of the barn, and high up on its dark
rafters, there is always a living creature working, ceaselessly
working. When, through the skylight, the sun-god
drives a golden sunbeam, and a long shaft of dancing
dust-atoms passes from the window to what was once a
[Pg 83]
part of the early summer’s glory, the work of the unresting
toiler is also to be seen, for the window is hung
with shimmering grey tapestries made by Arachne, the
spider, and from rafter to rafter her threads are suspended
with inimitable skill.

She was a nymph once, they say—the daughter of
Idmon the dyer, of Colophon, a city of Lydia. In all
Lydia there was none who could weave as wove the
beautiful Arachne. To watch her card the wool of the
white-fleeced sheep until in her fingers it grew like the
soft clouds that hang round the hill tops, was pleasure
enough to draw nymphs from the golden river Pactolus
and from the vineyards of Tymolus. And when she
drove her swift shuttle hither and thither, still it was
joy to watch her wondrous skill. Magical was the
growth of the web, fine of woof, that her darting fingers
span, and yet more magical the exquisite devices that
she then wrought upon it. For birds and flowers and
butterflies and pictures of all the beautiful things on
earth were limned by Arachne, and old tales grew alive
again under her creative needle.

To Pallas Athené, goddess of craftsmen, came tidings
that at Colophon in Lydia lived a nymph whose skill
rivalled that of the goddess herself, and she, ever jealous
for her own honour, took on herself the form of a woman
bent with age, and, leaning on her staff, joined the little
crowd that hung round Arachne as she plied her busy
needle. With white arms twined round each other the
eager nymphs watched the flowers spring up under her
fingers, even as flowers spring from the ground on the
[Pg 84]
coming of Demeter, and Athené was fain to admire, while
she marvelled at the magic skill of the fair Arachne.

Gently she spoke to Arachne, and, with the persuasive
words of a wise old woman, warned her that she
must not let her ambition soar too high. Greater than
all skilled craftswomen was the great goddess Athené,
and were Arachne, in impious vanity, to dream that one
day she might equal her, that were indeed a crime for
any god to punish.

Glancing up for a moment from the picture whose
perfect colours grew fast under her slim fingers, Arachne
fixed scornful eyes on the old woman and gave a merry
laugh.

“Didst say equal Athené? old mother,” she said.
“In good sooth thy dwelling must be with the goat-herds
in the far-off hills and thou art not a dweller in our
city. Else hadst thou not spoken to Arachne of equalling
the work of Athené; excelling were the better
word.”

In anger Pallas Athené made answer.

“Impious one!” she said, “to those who would
make themselves higher than the gods must ever come
woe unutterable. Take heed what thou sayest, for
punishment will assuredly be thine.”

Laughing still, Arachne made reply:

“I fear not, Athené, nor does my heart shake
at the gloomy warning of a foolish old crone.” And
turning to the nymphs who, half afraid, listened to
her daring words, she said: “Fair nymphs who watch
me day by day, well do ye know that I make no idle
[Pg 85]
boast. My skill is as great as that of Athené, and greater
still it shall be. Let Athené try a contest with me if she
dare! Well do I know who will be the victor.”

Then Athené cast off her disguise, and before the
frightened nymphs and the bold Arachne stood the
radiant goddess with eyes that blazed with anger and
insulted pride.

“Lo, Athené is come!” she said, and nymphs and
women fell on their knees before her, humbly adoring.
Arachne alone was unabashed. Her cheeks showed how
fast her heart was beating. From rosy red to white
went the colour in them, yet, in firm, low voice she
spoke.

“I have spoken truth,” she said. “Not woman,
nor goddess, can do work such as mine. Ready am I to
abide by what I have said, and if I did boast, by my
boast I stand. If thou wilt deign, great goddess, to try
thy skill against the skill of the dyer’s daughter and dost
prove the victor, behold me gladly willing to pay the
penalty.”

The eyes of Athené, the grey-eyed goddess, grew dark
as the sea when a thunder-cloud hangs over it and a
mighty storm is coming. Not for one moment did she
delay, but took her place by the side of Arachne. On
the loom they stretched out two webs with a fine warp,
and made them fast on the beam.

Ovid.

Their canvases wrought, then did Athené and Arachne
hasten to cover them with pictures such as no skilled
worker of tapestry has ever since dreamed of accomplishing.
Under the fingers of Athené grew up pictures
so real and so perfect that the watchers knew not whether
the goddess was indeed creating life. And each picture
was one that told of the omnipotence of the gods and of
the doom that came upon those mortals who had dared
in their blasphemous presumption to struggle as equals
with the immortal dwellers in Olympus. Arachne glanced
up from her web and looked with eyes that glowed with
the love of beautiful things at the creations of Athené.
Yet, undaunted, her fingers still sped on, and the goddess
saw, with brow that grew yet more clouded, how the
daughter of Idmon the dyer had chosen for subjects
the tales that showed the weaknesses of the gods. One
after another the living pictures grew beneath her hand,
and the nymphs held their breath in mingled fear and
ecstasy at Arachne’s godlike skill and most arrogant
daring. Between goddess and mortal none could have
chosen, for the colour and form and exquisite fancy of
the pictures of the daughter of Zeus were equalled,
though not excelled, by those of the daughter of the
dyer of Colophon.

[Pg 87]
Darker and yet more dark grew the eyes of Athené
as they looked on the magical beauty of the pictures,
each one of which was an insult to the gods. What
picture had skilful hand ever drawn to compare with
that of Europa who,

Moschus.

Then at last did the storm break, and with her
shuttle the enraged goddess smote the web of Arachne,
and the fair pictures were rent into motley rags and
ribbons. Furiously, too, with her shuttle of boxwood
she smote Arachne. Before her rage, the nymphs
fled back to their golden river and to the vineyards of
Tymolus, and the women of Colophon in blind terror
rushed away. And Arachne, shamed to the dust, knew
that life for her was no longer worth possessing. She
had aspired, in the pride of her splendid genius, to a
contest with a god, and knew now that such a contest
must ever be vain. A cord hung from the weaver’s
beam, and swiftly she seized it, knotted it round her
white neck, and would have hanged herself. But ere
the life had passed out of her, Athené grasped the cord,
loosened it, and spoke Arachne’s doom:

“Live!” she said, “O guilty and shameless one!
For evermore shalt thou live and hang as now, thou and
thy descendants, that men may never forget the punishment
of the blasphemous one who dared to rival a god.”

[Pg 88]
Even as she spoke, Arachne’s fair form dried up and
withered. Her straight limbs grew grey and crooked
and wiry, and her white arms were no more. And from
the beam where the beautiful weaver of Lydia had been
suspended, there hung from a fine grey thread the
creature from which, to this day, there are but few who
do not turn with loathing. Yet still Arachne spins, and
still is without a compeer.

Spenser.

Thus, perhaps, does Arachne have her compensations,
and in days that followed long after the twilight of the
gods, did she not gain eternal honour in the heart of
every Scot by the tale of how she saved a national hero?
Kindly, too, are her labours for men as she slays their
mortal enemies, the household flies, and when the
peasant—practical, if not favoured by Æsculapius and
Hygeia—runs to raid the loom of Arachne in order to
staunch the quick-flowing blood from the cut hand of
her little child, much more dear to her heart is Arachne
the spider than the unknown Athené.

Bartholomew.

[Pg 89]
The sun has not long enough shown his face to dry up
the dew in the garden, and behold on the little clipped
tree of boxwood, a great marvel! For in and out, and
all over its twigs and leaves, Arachne has woven her
web, and on the web the dew has dropped a million
diamond drops. And, suddenly, all the colours in the
sky are mirrored dazzlingly on the grey tapestry of her
making. Arachne has come to her own again.

[Pg 90]

IDAS AND MARPESSA

By day, while the sun-god drove his chariot in the high
heavens and turned the blue-green Ægean Sea into the
semblance of a blazing shield of brass, Idas and Marpessa
sat together in the trees’ soft shades, or walked in
shadowy valleys where violets and wild parsley grew,
and where Apollo rarely deigned to come. At eventide,
when, in royal splendour of purple and crimson and
gold, Apollo sought his rest in the western sky, Idas and
Marpessa wandered by the seashore watching the little
wavelets softly kissing the pebbles on the beach, or
climbed to the mountain side from whence they could
see the first glimpse of Diana’s silver crescent and the
twinkling lights of the Pleiades breaking through the
blue canopy of the sky. While Apollo sought in heaven
and on earth the best means to gratify his imperial whims,
Idas, for whom all joys had come to mean but one,
sought ever to be by the side of Marpessa. Shadowy
valley, murmuring sea, lonely mountain side, or garden
where grew the purple amaranth and where roses of pink
and amber-yellow and deepest crimson dropped their
radiant petals on the snowy marble paths, all were the
same to Idas—Paradise for him, were Marpessa by his
side; without her, dreary desert.

More beautiful than any flower that grew in the
[Pg 91]
garden was Marpessa. No music that Apollo’s lute
could make was as sweet in the ears of Idas as her dear
voice. Its music was ever new to him—a melody to
make his heart more quickly throb. New, too, ever was
her beauty. For him it was always the first time that
they met, always the same fresh ravishment to look in
her eyes. And when to Idas came the knowledge that Marpessa
gave him love for love, he had indeed won happiness
so great as to draw upon him the envy of the gods.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,”
and, like many and many another father since his day,
Evenos, the father of Marpessa, was bitterly opposed to
a match where the bridegroom was rich only in youth,
in health, and in love. His beautiful daughter naturally
seemed to him worthy of something much more high.
Thus it was an unhappy day for Marpessa when, as she
sat alone by the fountain which dripped slowly down on
the marble basin, and dreamed of her lover, Idas, Apollo
himself, led by caprice, noiselessly walked through the
rose bushes, whose warm petals dropped at his feet as
he passed, and beheld a maiden more fair than the
fairest flower that grew. The hum of bees, the drip,
drip of the fountain, these lulled her mind and heart
and soothed her day-dreams, and Marpessa’s red lips,
curved like the bow of Eros, smiled as she thought of
Idas, the man she loved. Silently Apollo watched her.
This queen of all the roses was not fit to be the bride of
mortal man—Marpessa must be his.

To Evenos Apollo quickly imparted his desire. He
was not used to having his imperial wishes denied, nor
[Pg 92]
was Evenos anxious to do so. Here, indeed, was a
match for his daughter. No insignificant mortal, but
the radiant sun-god himself! And to Marpessa he
told what Apollo wished, and Marpessa shyly looked
at her reflection in the pool of the fountain, and wondered
if she were indeed beautiful enough to win the love of
a god.

“Am I in truth so wondrous fair?” she asked her
father.

“Fair enough to mate with Apollo himself!”
proudly answered Evenos.

And joyously Marpessa replied, “Ah, then am I
happy indeed! I would be beautiful for my Idas’ sake!”

An angry man was her father. There was to be no
more pleasant dallying with Idas in the shadowy wood
or by the seashore. In the rose garden Apollo took his
place and charmed Marpessa’s ears with his music,
while her eyes could not but be charmed by his beauty.
The god had no doubts or fears. Only a little time he
would give her, for a very little only would he wait, and
then undoubtedly this mortal maiden would be his, her
heart conquered as assuredly as the rays from his chariot
conquered the roses, whose warm crimson petals they
strewed at his feet. Yet as Marpessa looked and listened,
her thoughts were often far away and always her heart
was with Idas. When Apollo played most exquisitely
to her it seemed that he put her love for Idas into music.
When he spoke to her of his love she thought, “Thus,
and thus did Idas speak,” and a sudden memory of the
human lad’s halting words brought to her heart a little
[Pg 93]
gush of tenderness, and made her eyes sparkle so that
Apollo gladly thought, “Soon she will be mine.”

MARPESSA SAT ALONE BY THE FOUNTAIN

And all this while Idas schemed and plotted and
planned a way in which he could save his dear one
from her obdurate father, and from the passion of a god.
He went to Neptune, told his tale, and begged him to
lend him a winged chariot in which he could fly away
with Marpessa. Neptune good-naturedly consented, and
when Idas flew up from the seashore one day, like a
great bird that the tempests have blown inland, Marpessa
joyously sprang up beside her lover, and swiftly
they took flight for a land where in peace they might
live and love together. No sooner did Evenos realise
that his daughter was gone, than, in furious anger
against her and her lover, he gave chase. One has
watched a hawk in pursuit of a pigeon or a bird of the
moors and seen it, a little dark speck at first, gradually
growing larger and more large until at length it dominated
and conquered its prey, swooping down from
above, like an arrow from a bow, to bring with it sudden
death.

So at first it seemed that Evenos must conquer Idas
and Marpessa in the winged chariot of Neptune’s lending.
But onwards Idas drove the chariot, ever faster and
faster, until before the eyes of Marpessa the trees of the
forest grew into blurs of blue and brown, and the streams
and rivers as they flew past them were streaks of silver.
Not until he had reached the river Lycormas did the
angry father own that his pursuit had been in vain.
Over the swift-flowing stream flew the chariot driven
[Pg 94]
by Idas, but Evenos knew that his horses, flecked with
white foam, pumping each breath from hearts that were
strained to breaking-point, no longer could go on with
the chase. The passage of that deep stream would
destroy them. The fierce water would sweep the wearied
beasts down in its impelling current, and he with them.
A shamed man would he be forever. Not for a moment
did he hesitate, but drew his sharp sword from his belt
and plunged it into the breast of one steed and then of
the other who had been so willing and who yet had
failed him in the end. And then, as they, still in their
traces, neighed shrilly aloud, and then fell over and died
where they lay, Evenos, with a great cry, leaped into the
river. Over his head closed the eddies of the peat-brown
water. Once only did he throw up his arms to ask the
gods for mercy; then did his body drift down with the
stream, and his soul hastened downwards to the Shades.
And from that day the river Lycormas no more was
known by that name, but was called the river Evenos
forever.

Onwards, triumphantly, drove Idas, but soon he
knew that a greater than Evenos had entered in the
chase, and that the jealous sun-god’s chariot was in
pursuit of the winged car of Neptune. Quickly it gained
on him—soon it would have swept down on him—a
hawk indeed, this time, striking surely its helpless prey—but
even as Apollo saw the white face of Marpessa and
knew that he was the victor, a mighty thunderbolt that
made the mountains shake, and rolled its echoes through
the lonely fastnesses of a thousand hills, was sent to
[Pg 95]
earth by Jupiter. While the echoes still re-echoed, there
came from Olympus the voice of Zeus himself.

“Let her decide!” he said.

Apollo, like a white flame blown backward by the
wind, withheld his hands that would have seized from
Idas the woman who was his heart’s desire.

And then he spoke, and while his burning gaze was
fixed upon her, and his face, in beautiful fury, was more
perfect than any exquisite picture of her dreams, his
voice was as the voice of the sea as it calls to the shore
in the moonlit hours, as the bird that sings in the darkness
of a tropic night to its longing mate.

“Marpessa!” he cried, “Marpessa! wilt thou not
come to me? No woe nor trouble, never any pain can
touch me. Yet woe indeed was mine when first I saw thy
fairest face. For even now dost thou hasten to sorrow,
to darkness, to the dark-shadowed tomb. Thou art but
mortal! thy beauty is short-lived. Thy love for mortal
man shall quickly fade and die. Come to me, Marpessa,
and my kisses on your lips shall make thee immortal!
Together we shall bring the sunbeams to a cold, dark
land! Together shall we coax the spring flowers from the
still, dead earth! Together we shall bring to men the
golden harvest, and deck the trees of autumn in our liveries
of red and gold. I love thee, Marpessa—not as mere mortal
loves do I love thee. Come to me, Marpessa—my Love—my
Desire!”

When his voice was silent, it seemed as if the very
earth itself with all its thousand echoes still breathed his
words: “Marpessa—my Love—my Desire.”

[Pg 96]
Abashed before the god’s entreaties stood Idas. And
the heart of Marpessa was torn as she heard the burning
words of the beautiful Apollo still ringing through her
head, and saw her mortal lover, silent, white-lipped,
gazing first at the god and then into her own pale face.
At length he spoke:

Stephen Phillips.

[Pg 97]
Then Idas, in the humility that comes from perfect
love, drooped low his head, and was silent. In silence
for a minute stood the three—a god, a man, and a
woman. And from on high the watching stars looked
down and marvelled, and Diana stayed for a moment
the course of her silver car to watch, as she thought, the
triumph of her own invincible brother.

From man to god passed the eyes of Marpessa, and
back from god to man. And the stars forgot to twinkle,
and Diana’s silver-maned horses pawed the blue floor of
the sky, impatient at the firm hand of the mistress on the
reins that checked their eager course.

Marpessa spoke at last, in low words that seemed to
come “remembered from other worlds.”

For all the joys he offered her she thanked Apollo.
What grander fate for mortal woman than to rule the
sunbeams—to bring bliss to the earth and to the sons of
men? What more could mortal woman crave than the
gift of immortality shared with one whose power ruled
the vast universe, and who still had stooped to lay the
red roses of his passionate love at her little, human feet?
And yet—and yet—in that sorrow-free existence that
he promised, might there not still be something awanting
to one who had once known tears?

Then were he indeed to give her the gift of immortal
life, what value were life to one whose beauty had
withered as the leaves in autumn, whose heart was tired
and dead? What uglier fate than this, to endure an
[Pg 98]
endless existence in which no life was, yoked to one whose
youth was immortal, whose beauty was everlasting?

Then did she turn to Idas, who stood as one who
awaits the judgment of the judge in whose hands lies the
power of meting out life or death. Thus she spoke:

The sun-god frowned as her words fell from her lips.
Even now, as she looked at him, he held out his arms.
Surely she only played with this poor mortal youth.
To him she must come, this rose who could own no lesser
god than the sun-god himself.

But Marpessa spoke on:

So did her voice cease, and on the earth fell sudden
darkness. For to Apollo had come the shame of love
[Pg 99]
rejected, and there were those who said that to the earth
that night there came no sunset, only the sullen darkness
that told of the flight of an angry god. Yet, later, the
silver moonbeams of Diana seemed to greet the dark earth
with a smile, and, in the winged car of Neptune, Idas and
Marpessa sped on, greater than the gods, in a perfect
harmony of human love that feared nor time, nor pain,
nor Death himself.

[Pg 100]

ARETHUSA

“We have victualled and watered,” wrote Nelson from
Syracuse in 1798, “and surely, watering at the fountain
of Arethusa, we must have victory. We shall sail with
the first breeze; and be assured I will return either
crowned with laurel or covered with cypress.” Three
days later, he won the Battle of the Nile, one of the
greatest sea-fights of history.

Here in our own land the tales of the Greek gods
seem very remote. Like the colours in an old, old portrait,
the humanity of the stories seems to have faded.
But in Sicily they grow vivid at once. Almost, as we
stand above Syracuse, that long yellow town by the sea—a
blue-green sea, with deep purple shadows where the
clouds above it grow dark, and little white-sailed boats,
like white butterflies, wing their way across to the far
horizon—can we

Here, to this day, one of the myths most impossible
of acceptance to the scientific modern mind lives on,
and Arethusa is not yet forgotten. “In Ortygia,” says
Cicero, “is a fountain of sweet water, the name of which
is Arethusa, of incredible flow, very full of fish, which
would be entirely overwhelmed by the sea, were its
[Pg 101]
waters not protected from the waves by a rampart and
a wall of stone.” White marble walls have taken the
place of the protecting barrier, but the spring bubbles up
to this day, and Ortygia (Quail Island) is the name still
given to that part of Syracuse. Fluffy-headed, long,
green stalks of papyrus grow in the fountain, and red and
golden fish dart through its clear water. Beyond lie
the low shores of Plemmgrium, the fens of Lysimeleia,
the hills above the Anapus, and above all towers Etna,
in snowy and magnificent serenity and indifference
to the changes wrought by the centuries to gods and to
men. Yet here the present is completely overshadowed
by the past, and even the story of Arethusa knocks loudly
at the well-barricaded doors of twentieth-century incredulity.

The beautiful Arethusa was a nymph in Diana’s train,
and many a time in the chase did she thread her way
through the dim woodland, as a stream flows down
through the forest from the mountains to the sea. But
to her, at last, there came a day when she was no longer
the huntress but the hunted.

The flaming wheels of the chariot of Apollo had made
the whole land scintillate with heat, and the nymph
sought the kind shelter of a wood where she might bathe
in the exquisite coolness of the river that still was chilled
by the snows of the mountain. On the branch of a tree
that bent over the stream she hung her garments, and
joyously stepped into the limpid water. A ray of the
sun glanced through the leaves above her and made the
soft sand in the river’s bed gleam like gold and the
[Pg 102]
beautiful limbs of the nymph seem as though carved from
pure white marble by the hand of Pygmalion himself.
There was no sound there but the gentle sound of the
stream that murmured caressingly to her as it slowly
moved on through the solitude, and so gently it flowed
that almost it seemed to stand still, as though regretful
to leave for the unknown forest so beautiful a thing as
Arethusa.

But suddenly the stillness of the stream was ruffled.
Waves, like the newly-born brothers of the billows of
the sea, swept both down-stream and up-stream upon
her, and the river no longer murmured gently, but spoke
to her in a voice that thrilled with passionate longing.
Alpheus, god of the river, had beheld her, and, beholding
her, had loved her once and forever. An uncouth
creature of the forest was he, unversed in all the arts of
love-making. So not as a supplicant did he come to her,
but as one who demanded fiercely love for love. Terror
came upon Arethusa as she listened, and hastily she
sprang from the water that had brought fear upon her,
and hastened to find shelter in the woodlands. Then
the murmur, as of the murmur of a river before a mighty
flood comes to seize it and hold it for its own, took form
in a voice that pled with her, in tones that made her
tremble as she heard.

“Hear me, Arethusa!” it said. “I am Alpheus, god
of the river that now thou hast made sacred. I am the
god of the rushing streams—the god of the thundering
[Pg 103]
cataracts. Where the mountain streams crash over the
rocks and echo through the shadowy hollows of the hills,
I hold my kingship. Down from Etna I come, and the
fire of Etna is in my veins. I love thee! I love but
thee, and thou shalt be mine, and I thine forever.”

Then Arethusa, in blind panic, fled before the god
who loved her. Through the shadowy forest she sped,
while he swiftly gained upon her. The asphodel bent
under her flying feet, and the golden flowers of the Fiori
Maggio were swept aside as she fled. Yet ever Alpheus
gained upon her, until at length she felt that the chase
was ended, and cried to Diana to save her. Then a
cloud, grey and thick and blinding as the mist that
wraps the mountain tops, suddenly descended and
enfolded her, and Alpheus groped for her in vain.

“Arethusa!” she heard him cry, in a voice of
piteous longing—“Arethusa!—my belovèd!”

Patiently he waited, with the love that makes uncouth
things beautiful, until at length a little breath
from Zephyrus blew aside the soft grey veil that hid his
beloved from his sight, and he saw that the nymph had
been transformed into a fountain. Not for a moment
did Alpheus delay, but, turning himself into a torrent
in flood, he rushed on in pursuit of Arethusa. Then did
Diana, to save her votary, cleave a way for her through
the dark earth even into the gloomy realm of Pluto
himself, and the nymph rushed onward, onward still,
and then upward, until at length she emerged again to
the freedom of the blue sky and green trees, and beheld
the golden orange groves and the grey olives, the burning
[Pg 104]
red geranium flowers and the great snow-capped
mountain of Sicily.

But Alpheus had a love for her that cast out all
fear. Through the terrible blackness of the Cocytus
valley he followed Arethusa, and found a means of
bursting through the encumbering earth and joining her
again. And in a spring that rises out of the sea near
the shore he was able at last to mingle his waters with
those of the one for whom he had lost his godship.

Shelley.

[Pg 105]

PERSEUS THE HERO

Charles Kingsley.

In the pleasant land of Argos, now a place of unwholesome
marshes, once upon a time there reigned a king
called Acrisius, the father of one fair daughter. Danaë
was her name, and she was very dear to the king until a
day when he longed to know what lay hid for him in the
lap of the gods, and consulted an oracle. With hanging
head he returned from the temple, for the oracle had told
him that when his daughter Danaë had borne a son, by
the hand of that son death must surely come upon him.
And because the fear of death was in him more strong
than the love of his daughter, Acrisius resolved that by
sacrificing her he would baffle the gods and frustrate
Death itself. A great tower of brass was speedily built
at his command, and in this prison Danaë was placed,
to drag out her weary days.

But who can escape the designs of the gods? From
Olympus great Zeus himself looked down and saw the
air princess sighing away her youth. And, full of pity
and of love, he himself entered the brazen tower in a
golden shower, and Danaë became the bride of Zeus and
happily passed with him the time of her imprisonment.

To her at length was born a son, a beautiful and
[Pg 106]
kingly child, and great was the wrath of her father when
he had tidings of the birth. Did the gods in the high
heavens laugh at him? The laugh should yet be on his
side. Down to the seashore he hurried Danaë and her
newly-born babe, the little Perseus, put them in a great
chest, and set them adrift to be a plaything for winds and
waves and a prey for the cruel and hungry sea.

Simonides of Keos.

For days and nights the mother and child were
tossed on the billows, but yet no harm came near them,
and one morning the chest grounded on the rocky beach
of Seriphos, an island in the Ægean Sea. Here a fisherman
came on this strange flotsam and jetsam of the
waves and took the mother and child to Polydectes, the
king, and the years that followed were peaceful years
for Danaë and for Perseus. But as Perseus grew up,
growing each day more goodly to look upon, more fearless,
more ready to gaze with serene courage into the
eyes of gods and of men, an evil thing befell his mother.
She was but a girl when he was born, and as the years
passed she grew ever more fair. And the crafty eyes of
[Pg 107]
old Polydectes, the king, ever watched her more eagerly,
always more hotly desired her for his wife. But Danaë,
the beloved of Zeus himself, had no wish to wed the old
king of the Cyclades, and proudly she scorned his suit.
Behind her, as she knew well, was the stout arm of her
son Perseus, and while Perseus was there, the king could
do her no harm. But Perseus, unwitting of the danger
his mother daily had to face, sailed the seas unfearingly,
and felt that peace and safety surrounded him on every
side. At Samos one day, while his ship was lading,
Perseus lay down under the shade of a great tree, and
soon his eyelids grew heavy with sleep, and there came
to him, like butterflies that flit over the flowers in a sunlit
garden, pleasant, light-winged dreams. But yet another
dream followed close on the merry heels of those that
went before. And before Perseus there stood one whose
grey eyes were as the fathomless sea on the dawn of a
summer day. Her long robes were blue as the hyacinths
in spring, and the spear that she held in her hand was of
a polished brightness, as the dart with which the gods
smite the heart of a man, with joy inexpressible, with
sorrow that is scarcely to be borne. To Perseus she
spoke winged words.

“I am Pallas Athené,” she said, “and to me the
souls of men are known. Those whose fat hearts are as
those of the beasts that perish do I know. They live at
ease. No bitter sorrow is theirs, nor any fierce joy that
lifts their feet free from the cumbering clay. But dear
to my heart are the souls of those whose tears are tears
of blood, whose joy is as the joy of the Immortals. Pain
[Pg 108]
is theirs, and sorrow. Disappointment is theirs, and
grief. Yet their love is as the love of those who dwell on
Olympus. Patient they are and long-suffering, and
ever they hope, ever do they trust. Ever they fight,
fearless and unashamed, and when the sum of their days
on earth is accomplished, wings, of whose existence they
have never had knowledge, bear them upwards, out of
the mist and din and strife of life, to the life that has no
ending.”

Then she laid her hand on the hand of Perseus.
“Perseus,” she said, “art thou of those whose dull souls
forever dwell in pleasant ease, or wouldst thou be as one
of the Immortals?”

And in his dream Perseus answered without hesitation:

“Rather let me die, a youth, living my life to the
full, fighting ever, suffering ever,” he said, “than live
at ease like a beast that feeds on flowery pastures and
knows no fiery gladness, no heart-bleeding pain.”

Then Pallas Athené, laughing for joy, because she
loved so well a hero’s soul, showed him a picture that
made even his brave heart sick for dread, and told him
a terrible story.

In the dim, cold, far west, she said, there lived three
sisters. One of them, Medusa, had been one of her
priestesses, golden-haired and most beautiful, but when
Athené found that she was as wicked as she was lovely,
swiftly had she meted out a punishment. Every lock
of her golden hair had been changed into a venomous
snake. Her eyes, that had once been the cradles of love,
[Pg 109]
were turned into love’s stony tombs. Her rosy cheeks
were now of Death’s own livid hue. Her smile, which
drew the hearts of lovers from their bosoms, had become
a hideous thing. A grinning mask looked on the
world, and to the world her gaping mouth and protruding
tongue meant a horror before which the world
stood terrified, dumb. There are some sadnesses too
terrible for human hearts to bear, so it came to pass
that in the dark cavern in which she dwelt, and in the
shadowy woods around it, all living things that had met
the awful gaze of her hopeless eyes were turned into
stone. Then Pallas Athené showed Perseus, mirrored
in a brazen shield, the face of one of the tragic things of
the world. And as Perseus looked, his soul grew chill
within him. But when Athené, in low voice, asked
him:

“Perseus, wilt even end the sorrow of this piteous
sinful one?” he answered, “Even that will I do—the
gods helping me.”

And Pallas Athené, smiling again in glad content,
left him to dream, and Perseus awoke, in sudden fear,
and found that in truth he had but dreamed, yet held
his dream as a holy thing in the secret treasure-house of
his heart.

Back to Seriphos he sailed, and found that his mother
walked in fear of Polydectes the king. She told her
son—a strong man now, though young in years—the
story of his cruel persecution. Perseus saw red blood,
and gladly would he have driven his keen blade
far home in the heart of Polydectes. But his vengeance
[Pg 110]
was to be a great vengeance, and the vengeance was
delayed.

The king gave a feast, and on that day every one in
the land brought offerings of their best and most costly
to do him honour. Perseus alone came empty-handed,
and as he stood in the king’s court as though he were a
beggar, the other youths mocked at him of whom they
had ever been jealous.

“Thou sayest that thy father is one of the gods!”
they said. “Where is thy godlike gift, O Perseus!”

And Polydectes, glad to humble the lad who was
keeper of his mother’s honour, echoed their foolish
taunt.

“Where is the gift of the gods that the noble son of
the gods has brought me?” he asked, and his fat
cheeks and loose mouth quivered with ugly merriment.

Then Perseus, his head thrown back, gazed in the
bold eyes of Polydectes.

Son of Zeus he was indeed, as he looked with royal
scorn at those whom he despised.

“A godlike gift thou shalt have, in truth, O king,” he
said, and his voice rang out as a trumpet-call before the
battle. “The gift of the gods shall be thine. The gods
helping me, thou shalt have the head of Medusa.”

A laugh, half-born, died in the throats of Polydectes
and of those who listened, and Perseus strode out of the
palace, a glow in his heart, for he knew that Pallas
Athené had lit the fire that burned in him now, and that
though he should shed the last drop of his life’s blood
[Pg 111]
to win what he sought, right would triumph, and wrong
must be worsted.

Still quivering with anger, Perseus went down to the
blue sea that gently whispered its secrets to the shore on
which he stood.

“If Pallas Athené would but come,” he thought—“if
only my dreams might come true.”

For, like many a boy before and since, Perseus had
dreamed of gallant, fearless deeds. Like many a boy
before and since, he had been the hero of a great adventure.

So he prayed, “Come to me! I pray you, Pallas
Athené, come! and let me dream true.”

His prayer was answered.

Into the sky there came a little silver cloud that grew
and grew, and ever it grew nearer, and then, as in his
dream, Pallas Athené came to him and smiled on him as
the sun smiles on the water in spring. Nor was she
alone. Beside her stood Hermes of the winged shoes,
and Perseus knelt before the two in worship. Then, very
gently, Pallas Athené gave him counsel, and more than
counsel she gave.

In his hand she placed a polished shield, than which
no mirror shone more brightly.

“Do not look at Medusa herself; look only on her
image here reflected—then strike home hard and swiftly.
And when her head is severed, wrap it in the goatskin
on which the shield hangs. So wilt thou return in safety
and in honour.”

“But how, then, shall I cross the wet grey fields of
[Pg 112]
this watery way?” asked Perseus. “Would that I
were a white-winged bird that skims across the waves.”

And, with the smile of a loving comrade, Hermes laid
his hand on the shoulder of Perseus.

“My winged shoes shall be thine,” he said, “and the
white-winged sea-birds shalt thou leave far, far behind.”

“Yet another gift is thine,” said Athené. “Gird
on, as gift from the gods, this sword that is immortal.”

For a moment Perseus lingered. “May I not bid
farewell to my mother?” he asked. “May I not offer
burnt-offerings to thee and to Hermes, and to my father
Zeus himself?”

But Athené said Nay, at his mother’s weeping his
heart might relent, and the offering that the Olympians
desired was the head of Medusa.

Then, like a fearless young golden eagle, Perseus
spread out his arms, and the winged shoes carried him
across the seas to the cold northern lands whither
Athené had directed him.

Each day his shoes took him a seven days’ journey,
and ever the air through which he passed grew more
chill, till at length he reached the land of everlasting
snow, where the black ice never knows the conquering
warmth of spring, and where the white surf of the moaning
waves freezes solid even as it touches the shore.

It was a dark grim place to which he came, and in a
gloomy cavern by the sea lived the Graeæ, the three grey
sisters that Athené had told him he must seek. Old and
grey and horrible they were, with but one tooth amongst
them, and but one eye. From hand to hand they passed
[Pg 113]
the eye, and muttered and shivered in the blackness and
the cold.

THEY WHIMPERED AND BEGGED OF HIM

Boldly Perseus spoke to them and asked them to
guide him to the place where Medusa and her sisters
the Gorgons dwelt.

“No others know where they dwell,” he said. “Tell
me, I pray thee, the way that I may find them.”

But the Grey Women were kin to the Gorgons, and
hated all the children of men, and ugly was their evil
mirth as they mocked at Perseus and refused to tell him
where Medusa might be found.

But Perseus grew wily in his desire not to fail, and
as the eye passed from one withered, clutching hand to
another, he held out his own strong young palm, and in
her blindness one of the three placed the eye within it.

Then the Grey Women gave a piteous cry, fierce and
angry as the cry of old grey wolves that have been robbed
of their prey, and gnashed upon him with their toothless
jaws.

And Perseus said: “Wicked ye are and cruel at
heart, and blind shall ye remain forever unless ye tell
me where I may find the Gorgons. But tell me that, and
I give back the eye.”

Then they whimpered and begged of him, and when
they found that all their beseeching was in vain, at
length they told him.

“Go south,” they said, “so far south that at length
thou comest to the uttermost limits of the sea, to the
place where the day and night meet. There is the
Garden of the Hesperides, and of them must thou ask
[Pg 114]
the way.” And “Give us back our eye!” they wailed
again most piteously, and Perseus gave back the eye
into a greedy trembling old hand, and flew south like a
swallow that is glad to leave the gloomy frozen lands
behind.

To the garden of the Hesperides he came at last, and
amongst the myrtles and roses and sunny fountains he
came on the nymphs who there guard the golden fruit,
and begged them to tell him whither he must wing his
way in order to find the Gorgons. But the nymphs
could not tell.

“We must ask Atlas,” they said, “the giant who sits
high up on the mountain and with his strong shoulders
keeps the heavens and earth apart.”

And with the nymphs Perseus went up the mountain
and asked the patient giant to guide him to the place of
his quest.

“Far away I can see them,” said Atlas, “on an
island in the great ocean. But unless thou wert to wear
the helmet of Pluto himself, thy going must be in vain.”

“What is this helmet?” asked Perseus, “and how
can I gain it?”

“Didst thou wear the helmet of the ruler of Dark
Places, thou wouldst be as invisible as a shadow in the
blackness of night,” answered Atlas; “but no mortal
can obtain it, for only the Immortals can brave the
terrors of the Shadowy Land and yet return; yet if thou
wilt promise me one thing, the helmet shall be thine.”

“What wouldst thou?” asked Perseus.

And Atlas said, “For many a long year have I
[Pg 115]
borne this earth, and I grow aweary of my burden.
When thou hast slain Medusa, let me gaze upon her
face, that I may be turned into stone and suffer no
more forever.”

And Perseus promised, and at the bidding of Atlas
one of the nymphs sped down to the land of the Shades,
and for seven days Perseus and her sisters awaited her
return. Her face was as the face of a white lily and her
eyes were dark with sadness when she came, but with
her she bore the helmet of Pluto, and when she and her
sisters had kissed Perseus and bidden him a sorrowful
farewell, he put on the helmet and vanished away.

Soon the gentle light of day had gone, and he found
himself in a place where clammy fog blotted out all
things, and where the sea was black as the water of that
stream that runs through the Cocytus valley. And in
that silent land where there is “neither night nor day,
nor cloud nor breeze nor storm,” he found the cave of
horrors in which the Gorgons dwelt.

Two of them, like monstrous swine, lay asleep,

William Morris.

In the shield of Pallas Athené the picture was mirrored,
and as Perseus gazed on it his soul grew heavy for
[Pg 116]
the beauty and the horror of Medusa. And “Oh that it
had been her foul sisters that I must slay!” he thought
at first, but then—“To slay her will be kind indeed,” he
said. “Her beauty has become corruption, and all the
joy of life for her has passed into the agony of remembrance,
the torture of unending remorse.”

And when he saw her brazen claws that still were
greedy and lustful to strike and to slay, his face grew
stern, and he paused no longer, but with his sword he
smote her neck with all his might and main. And to
the rocky floor the body of Medusa fell with brazen
clang, but her head he wrapped in the goatskin, while
he turned his eyes away. Aloft then he sprang, and
flew swifter than an arrow from the bow of Diana.

With hideous outcry the two other Gorgons found
the body of Medusa, and, like foul vultures that hunt a
little song-bird, they flew in pursuit of Perseus. For
many a league they kept up the chase, and their howling
was grim to hear. Across the seas they flew, and over
the yellow sand of the Libyan desert, and as Perseus
flew before them, some blood-drops fell from the severed
head of Medusa, and from them bred the vipers that are
found in the desert to this day. But bravely did the
winged shoes of Hermes bear Perseus on, and by nightfall
the Gorgon sisters had passed from sight, and Perseus
found himself once more in the garden of the Hesperides.
Ere he sought the nymphs, he knelt by the sea to cleanse
from his hands Medusa’s blood, and still does the seaweed
that we find on sea-beaches after a storm bear the
crimson stains.

[Pg 117]
And when Perseus had received glad welcome from
the fair dwellers in the garden of the Hesperides, he
sought Atlas, that to him he might fulfil his promise;
and eagerly Atlas beheld him, for he was aweary of his
long toil.

So Perseus uncovered the face of Medusa and held it
up for the Titan to gaze upon.

And when Atlas looked upon her whose beauty had
once been pure and living as that of a flower in spring,
and saw only anguish and cruelty, foul wickedness, and
hideous despair, his heart grew like stone within him.
To stone, too, turned his great, patient face, and into
stone grew his vast limbs and strong, crouching back.
So did Atlas the Titan become Atlas the Mountain, and
still his head, white-crowned with snow, and his great
shoulder far up in misty clouds, would seem to hold
apart the earth and the sky.

Then Perseus again took flight, and in his flight he
passed over many lands and suffered weariness and
want, and sometimes felt his faith growing low. Yet
ever he sped on, hoping ever, enduring ever. In Egypt
he had rest and was fed and honoured by the people of
the land, who were fain to keep him to be one of their
gods. And in a place called Chemmis they built a
statue of him when he had gone, and for many hundreds
of years it stood there. And the Egyptians said that
ever and again Perseus returned, and that when he came
the Nile rose high and the season was fruitful because
he had blessed their land.

Far down below him as he flew one day he saw
[Pg 118]
something white on a purple rock in the sea. It seemed
too large to be a snowy-plumaged bird, and he darted
swiftly downward that he might see more clearly. The
spray lashed against the steep rocks of the desolate
island, and showered itself upon a figure that at first he
took to be a statue of white marble. The figure was but
that of a girl, slight and very youthful, yet more fair
even than any of the nymphs of the Hesperides. Invisible
in his Helmet of Darkness, Perseus drew near,
and saw that the fragile white figure was shaken by
shivering sobs. The waves, every few moments, lapped
up on her little cold white feet, and he saw that heavy
chains held her imprisoned to that chilly rock in the
sea. A great anger stirred the heart of Perseus, and
swiftly he took the helmet from his head and stood
beside her. The maid gave a cry of terror, but there
was no evil thing in the face of Perseus. Naught but
strength and kindness and purity shone out of his
steady eyes.

Thus when, very gently, he asked her what was the
meaning of her cruel imprisonment, she told him the
piteous story, as a little child tells the story of its grief
to the mother who comforts it. Her mother was queen
of Ethiopia, she said, and very, very beautiful. But
when the queen had boasted that no nymph who played
amongst the snow-crested billows of the sea was as fair
as she, a terrible punishment was sent to her. All along
the coast of her father’s kingdom a loathsome sea-monster
came to hold its sway, and hideous were its
ravages. Men and women, children and animals, all
[Pg 119]
were equally desirable food for its insatiate maw, and
the whole land of Ethiopia lay in mourning because of
it. At last her father, the king, had consulted an oracle
that he might find help to rid the land of the monster.
And the oracle had told him that only when his fair
daughter, Andromeda, had been sacrificed to the creature
that scourged the sea-coast would the country go free.
Thus had she been brought there by her parents that
one life might be given for many, and that her mother’s
broken heart might expiate her sin of vanity. Even
as Andromeda spoke, the sea was broken by the track
of a creature that cleft the water as does the forerunning
gale of a mighty storm. And Andromeda gave
a piteous cry.

“Lo! he comes!” she cried. “Save me! ah,
save me! I am so young to die.”

Then Perseus darted high above her and for an
instant hung poised like a hawk that is about to strike.
Then, like the hawk that cannot miss its prey, swiftly
did he swoop down and smote with his sword the devouring
monster of the ocean. Not once, but again and
again he smote, until all the water round the rock was
churned into slime and blood-stained froth, and until
his loathsome combatant floated on its back, mere
carrion for the scavengers of the sea.

Then Perseus hewed off the chains that held Andromeda,
and in his arms he held her tenderly as he flew
with her to her father’s land.

Who so grateful then as the king and queen of
Ethiopia? and who so happy as Andromeda? for Perseus,
[Pg 120]
her deliverer, dearest and greatest hero to her in all the
world, not only had given her her freedom, but had
given her his heart.

Willingly and joyfully her father agreed to give her
to Perseus for his wife. No marriage feast so splendid
had ever been held in Ethiopia in the memory of man,
but as it went on, an angry man with a band of sullen-faced
followers strode into the banqueting-hall. It was
Phineus, he who had been betrothed to Andromeda, yet
who had not dared to strike a blow for her rescue.
Straight at Perseus they rushed, and fierce was the fight
that then began. But of a sudden, from the goatskin
where it lay hid, Perseus drew forth the head of Medusa,
and Phineus and his warriors were turned into stone.

For seven days the marriage feast lasted, but on the
eighth night Pallas Athené came to Perseus in a dream.

“Nobly and well hast thou played the hero, O son of
Zeus!” she said; “but now that thy toil is near an end
and thy sorrows have ended in joy, I come to claim the
shoes of Hermes, the helmet of Pluto, the sword, and the
shield that is mine own. Yet the head of the Gorgon
must thou yet guard awhile, for I would have it laid in
my temple at Seriphos that I may wear it on my shield
for evermore.”

As she ceased to speak, Perseus awoke, and lo, the
shield and helmet and the sword and winged shoes were
gone, so that he knew that his dream was no false vision.

Then did Perseus and Andromeda, in a red-prowed
galley made by cunning craftsmen from Phœnicia, sail
away westward, until at length they came to the blue
[Pg 121]
water of the Ægean Sea, and saw rising out of the waves
before them the rocks of Seriphos. And when the
rowers rested on their long oars, and the red-prowed
ship ground on the pebbles of the beach, Perseus and his
bride sought Danaë, the fair mother of Perseus.

Black grew the brow of the son of Danaë when she
told him what cruel things she had suffered in his absence
from the hands of Polydectes the king. Straight to the
palace Perseus strode, and there found the king and his
friends at their revels. For seven years had Perseus
been away, and now it was no longer a stripling who stood
in the palace hall, but a man in stature and bearing like
one of the gods. Polydectes alone knew him, and from
his wine he looked up with mocking gaze.

“So thou hast returned? oh nameless son of a deathless
god,” he said. “Thou didst boast, but methinks
thy boast was an empty one!”

But even as he spoke, the jeering smile froze on his
face, and the faces of those who sat with him stiffened
in horror.

“O king,” Perseus said, “I swore that, the gods helping
me, thou shouldst have the head of Medusa. The
gods have helped me. Behold the Gorgon’s head.”

Wild horror in their eyes, Polydectes and his friends
gazed on the unspeakable thing, and as they gazed they
turned into stone—a ring of grey stones that still sit on
a hillside of Seriphos.

With his wife and his mother, Perseus then sailed
away, for he had a great longing to take Danaë back to
the land of her birth and to see if her father, Acrisius,
[Pg 122]
still lived and might not now repent of his cruelty to her
and to his grandson. But there he found that the sins
of Acrisius had been punished and that he had been
driven from his throne and his own land by a usurper.
Not for long did the sword of Perseus dwell in its scabbard,
and speedily was the usurper cast forth, and all the
men of Argos acclaimed Perseus as their glorious king.
But Perseus would not be their king.

“I go to seek Acrisius,” he said. “My mother’s
father is your king.”

Again his galley sailed away, and at last, up the long
Eubœan Sea they came to the town of Larissa, where
the old king now dwelt.

A feast and sports were going on when they got there,
and beside the king of the land sat Acrisius, an aged
man, yet a kingly one indeed.

And Perseus thought, “If I, a stranger, take part in
the sports and carry away prizes from the men of Larissa,
surely the heart of Acrisius must soften towards me.”

Thus did he take off his helmet and cuirass, and
stood unclothed beside the youths of Larissa, and so
godlike was he that they all said, amazed, “Surely this
stranger comes from Olympus and is one of the Immortals.”

In his hand he took a discus, and full five fathoms
beyond those of the others he cast it, and a great shout
arose from those who watched, and Acrisius cried out as
loudly as all the rest.

“Further still!” they cried. “Further still canst
thou hurl! thou art a hero indeed!”

[Pg 123]
And Perseus, putting forth all his strength, hurled once
again, and the discus flew from his hand like a bolt from
the hand of Zeus. The watchers held their breath and
made ready for a shout of delight as they saw it speed
on, further than mortal man had ever hurled before.
But joy died in their hearts when a gust of wind caught
the discus as it sped and hurled it against Acrisius,
the king. And with a sigh like the sigh that passes
through the leaves of a tree as the woodman fells it and
it crashes to the earth, so did Acrisius fall and lie prone.
To his side rushed Perseus, and lifted him tenderly in
his arms. But the spirit of Acrisius had fled. And with
a great cry of sorrow Perseus called to the people:

“Behold me! I am Perseus, grandson of the man I
have slain! Who can avoid the decree of the gods?”

For many a year thereafter Perseus reigned as king,
and to him and to his fair wife were born four sons and
three daughters. Wisely and well he reigned, and
when, at a good old age, Death took him and the wife
of his heart, the gods, who had always held him dear,
took him up among the stars to live for ever and ever.
And there still, on clear and starry nights, we may see
him holding the Gorgon’s head. Near him are the father
and mother of Andromeda—Cepheus and Cassiopeia,
and close beside him stands Andromeda with her white
arms spread out across the blue sky as in the days when
she stood chained to the rock. And those who sail the
watery ways look up for guidance to one whose voyaging
is done and whose warfare is accomplished, and take
their bearings from the constellation of Cassiopeia.

[Pg 124]

NIOBE

Shakespeare.

The quotation is an overworked quotation, like many
another of those from Hamlet; yet, have half of those
whose lips utter it more than the vaguest acquaintance
with the story of Niobe and the cause of her tears? The
noble group—attributed to Praxiteles—of Niobe and her
last remaining child, in the Uffizi Palace at Florence, has
been so often reproduced that it also has helped to
make the anguished figure of the Theban queen a
familiar one in pictorial tragedy, so that as long as the
works of those Titans of art, Shakespeare and Praxiteles,
endure, no other monument is wanted for the memory
of Niobe.

Like many of the tales of mythology, her tragedy is
a story of vengeance wreaked upon a mortal by an
angry god. She was the daughter of Tantalus, and her
husband was Amphion, King of Thebes, himself a son of
Zeus. To her were born seven fair daughters and seven
beautiful and gallant sons, and it was not because of her
own beauty, nor her husband’s fame, nor their proud
descent and the greatness of their kingdom, that the
Queen of Thebes was arrogant in her pride. Very sure
she was that no woman had ever borne children like her
own children, whose peers were not to be found on earth
[Pg 125]
nor in heaven. Even in our own day there are mortal
mothers who feel as Niobe felt.

But amongst the Immortals there was also a mother
with children whom she counted as peerless. Latona,
mother of Apollo and Diana, was magnificently certain
that in all time, nor in eternity to come, could there be
a son and daughter so perfect in beauty, in wisdom, and
in power as the two that were her own. Loudly did she
proclaim her proud belief, and when Niobe heard it she
laughed in scorn.

“The goddess has a son and a daughter,” she said.
“Beautiful and wise and powerful they may be, but I
have borne seven daughters and seven sons, and each
son is more than the peer of Apollo, each daughter more
than the equal of Diana, the moon-goddess!”

And to her boastful words Latona gave ear, and
anger began to grow in her heart.

Each year the people of Thebes were wont to hold a
great festival in honour of Latona and her son and
daughter, and it was an evil day for Niobe when she
came upon the adoring crowd that, laurel-crowned, bore
frankincense to lay before the altars of the gods whose
glories they had assembled together to celebrate.

“Oh foolish ones!” she said, and her voice was
full of scorn, “am I not greater than Latona? I am
the daughter of a goddess, my husband, the king, the
son of a god. Am I not fair? am I not queenly as
Latona herself? And, of a surety, I am richer by far
than the goddess who has but one daughter and one son.
Look on my seven noble sons! behold the beauty of my
[Pg 126]
seven daughters, and see if they in beauty and all else
do not equal the dwellers in Olympus!”

And when the people looked, and shouted aloud,
for in truth Niobe and her children were like unto gods,
their queen said, “Do not waste thy worship, my
people. Rather make the prayers to thy king and to
me and to my children who buttress us round and make
our strength so great, that fearlessly we can despise
the gods.”

In her home on the Cynthian mountain top, Latona
heard the arrogant words of the queen of Thebes, and
even as a gust of wind blows smouldering ashes into
a consuming fire, her growing anger flamed into rage.
She called Apollo and Diana to her, and commanded
them to avenge the blasphemous insult which had been
given to them and to their mother. And the twin gods
listened with burning hearts.

“Truly shalt thou be avenged!” cried Apollo.
“The shameless one shall learn that not unscathed goes
she who profanes the honour of the mother of the deathless
gods!”

And with their silver bows in their hands, Apollo,
the smiter from afar, and Diana, the virgin huntress,
hasted to Thebes. There they found all the noble
youths of the kingdom pursuing their sports. Some
rode, some were having chariot-races, and excelling in
all things were the seven sons of Niobe.

Apollo lost no time. A shaft from his quiver flew,
as flies a bolt from the hand of Zeus, and the first-born
of Niobe fell, like a young pine broken by
[Pg 127]
the wind, on the floor of his winning chariot. His
brother, who followed him, went on the heels of his
comrade swiftly down to the Shades. Two of the other
sons of Niobe were wrestling together, their great muscles
moving under the skin of white satin that covered their
perfect bodies, and as they gripped each other, yet
another shaft was driven from the bow of Apollo, and
both lads fell, joined by one arrow, on the earth, and
there breathed their lives away.

Their elder brother ran to their aid, and to him,
too, came death, swift and sure. The two youngest,
even as they cried for mercy to an unknown god, were
hurried after them by the unerring arrows of Apollo.
The cries of those who watched this terrible slaying
were not long in bringing Niobe to the place where
her sons lay dead. Yet, even then, her pride was unconquered,
and she defied the gods, and Latona, to
whose jealousy she ascribed the fate of her “seven
spears.”

“Not yet hast thou conquered, Latona!” she cried.
“My seven sons lie dead, yet to me still remain the
seven perfect lovelinesses that I have borne. Try to
match them, if thou canst, with the beauty of thy two!
Still am I richer than thou, O cruel and envious mother
of one daughter and one son!”

But even as she spoke, Diana had drawn her bow,
and as the scythe of a mower quickly cuts down, one
after the other, the tall white blossoms in the meadow,
so did her arrows slay the daughters of Niobe. When
one only remained, the pride of Niobe was broken.
[Pg 128]
With her arms round the little slender frame of her
golden-haired youngest born, she looked up to heaven,
and cried upon all the gods for mercy.

“She is so little!” she wailed. “So young—so
dear! Ah, spare me one,” she said, “only one out of
so many!”

But the gods laughed. Like a harsh note of music
sounded the twang of Diana’s bow. Pierced by a
silver arrow, the little girl lay dead. The dignity of
Latona was avenged.

Overwhelmed by despair, King Amphion killed himself,
and Niobe was left alone to gaze on the ruin
around her. For nine days she sat, a Greek Rachel,
weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,
because they were not. On the tenth day, the sight
was too much even for the superhuman hearts of the
gods to endure. They turned the bodies into stone and
themselves buried them. And when they looked on the
face of Niobe and saw on it a bleeding anguish that no
human hand could stay nor the word of any god
comfort, the gods were merciful. Her grief was immortalised,
for Niobe, at their will, became a stone, and
was carried by a wailing tempest to the summit of
Mount Sipylus, in Lydia, where a spring of Argos bore
her name. Yet although a rock was Niobe, from her
blind eyes of stone the tears still flowed, a clear stream
of running water, symbol of a mother’s anguish and
never-ending grief.

[Pg 129]

HYACINTHUS

Keats.

“Whom the gods love die young”—truly it would
seem so, as we read the old tales of men and of women
beloved of the gods. To those men who were deemed
worthy of being companions of the gods, seemingly no
good fortune came. Yet, after all, if even in a brief
span of life they had tasted god-given happiness, was
their fate one to be pitied? Rather let us keep our
tears for those who, in a colourless grey world, have seen
the dull days go past laden with trifling duties, unnecessary
cares and ever-narrowing ideals, and have
reached old age and the grave—no narrower than their
lives—without ever having known a fulness of happiness,
such as the Olympians knew, or ever having dared
to reach upwards and to hold fellowship with the
Immortals.

Hyacinthus was a Spartan youth, son of Clio, one
of the Muses, and of the mortal with whom she
had mated, and from mother, or father, or from the
gods themselves, he had received the gift of beauty.
It chanced one day that as Apollo drove his chariot on
[Pg 130]
its all-conquering round, he saw the boy. Hyacinthus
was as fair to look upon as the fairest of women, yet he
was not only full of grace, but was muscular, and strong
as a straight young pine on Mount Olympus that fears
not the blind rage of the North Wind nor the angry
tempests of the South.

When Apollo had spoken with him he found that
the face of Hyacinthus did not belie the heart within
him, and gladly the god felt that at last he had found
the perfect companion, the ever courageous and joyous
young mate, whose mood was always ready to meet
his own. Did Apollo desire to hunt, with merry shout
Hyacinthus called the hounds. Did the great god
deign to fish, Hyacinthus was ready to fetch the nets
and to throw himself, whole-souled, into the great affair
of chasing and of landing the silvery fishes. When
Apollo wished to climb the mountains, to heights so
lonely that not even the moving of an eagle’s wing
broke the everlasting stillness, Hyacinthus—his strong
limbs too perfect for the chisel of any sculptor worthily
to reproduce—was ready and eager for the climb. And
when, on the mountain top, Apollo gazed in silence over
illimitable space, and watched the silver car of his
sister Diana rising slowly into the deep blue of the
sky, silvering land and water as she passed, it was
never Hyacinthus who was the first to speak—with
words to break the spell of Nature’s perfect beauty,
shared in perfect companionship. There were times,
too, when Apollo would play his lyre, and when naught
but the music of his own making could fulfil his longing.
[Pg 131]
And when those times came, Hyacinthus would lie at
the feet of his friend—of the friend who was a god—and
would listen, with eyes of rapturous joy, to the
music that his master made. A very perfect friend was
this friend of the sun-god.

Nor was it Apollo alone who desired the friendship
of Hyacinthus. Zephyrus, god of the South
Wind, had known him before Apollo crossed his path
and had eagerly desired him for a friend. But who
could stand against Apollo? Sulkily Zephyrus marked
their ever-ripening friendship, and in his heart jealousy
grew into hatred, and hatred whispered to him of
revenge. Hyacinthus excelled at all sports, and when
he played quoits it was sheer joy for Apollo, who
loved all things beautiful, to watch him as he stood
to throw the disc, his taut muscles making him look
like Hermes, ready to spurn the cumbering earth from
off his feet. Further even than the god, his friend,
could Hyacinthus throw, and always his merry laugh
when he succeeded made the god feel that nor man nor
god could ever grow old. And so there came that day,
fore-ordained by the Fates, when Apollo and Hyacinthus
played a match together. Hyacinthus made a
valiant throw, and Apollo took his place, and cast the
discus high and far. Hyacinthus ran forward eager to
measure the distance, shouting with excitement over a
throw that had indeed been worthy of a god. Thus did
Zephyrus gain his opportunity. Swiftly through the
tree-tops ran the murmuring South Wind, and smote
the discus of Apollo with a cruel hand. Against the
[Pg 132]
forehead of Hyacinthus it dashed, smiting the locks that
lay upon it, crashing through skin and flesh and bone,
felling him to the earth. Apollo ran towards him and
raised him in his arms. But the head of Hyacinthus fell
over on the god’s shoulder, like the head of a lily whose
stem is broken. The red blood gushed to the ground,
an unquenchable stream, and darkness fell on the eyes
of Hyacinthus, and, with the flow of his life’s blood,
his gallant young soul passed away.

“Would that I could die for thee, Hyacinthus!”
cried the god, his god’s heart near breaking. “I have
robbed thee of thy youth. Thine is the suffering, mine
the crime. I shall sing thee ever—oh perfect friend!
And evermore shalt thou live as a flower that will speak
to the hearts of men of spring, of everlasting youth—of
life that lives forever.”

As he spoke, there sprang from the blood-drops at
his feet a cluster of flowers, blue as the sky in spring,
yet hanging their heads as if in sorrow.[4]

DARKNESS FELL ON THE EYES OF HYACINTHUS

And still, when winter is ended, and the song of
birds tell us of the promise of spring, if we go to the
woods, we find traces of the vow of the sun-god. The
trees are budding in buds of rosy hue, the willow branches
are decked with silvery catkins powdered with gold.
The larches, like slender dryads, wear a feathery garb of
tender green, and under the trees of the woods the
primroses look up, like fallen stars. Along the woodland
path we go, treading on fragrant pine-needles and
[Pg 133]
on the beech leaves of last year that have not yet lost
their radiant amber. And, at a turn of the way, the
sun-god suddenly shines through the great dark branches
of the giants of the forest, and before us lies a patch of
exquisite blue, as though a god had robbed the sky
and torn from it a precious fragment that seems alive
and moving, between the sun and the shadow.

And, as we look, the sun caresses it, and the South
Wind gently moves the little bell-shaped flowers of the
wild hyacinth as it softly sweeps across them. So does
Hyacinthus live on; so do Apollo and Zephyrus still
love and mourn their friend.

[Pg 134]

KING MIDAS OF THE GOLDEN TOUCH

In the plays of Shakespeare we have three distinct
divisions—three separate volumes. One deals with Tragedy,
another with Comedy, a third with History; and
a mistake made by the young in their aspect of
life is that they do the same thing, and keep tragedy
and comedy severely apart, relegating them to separate
volumes that, so they think, have nothing to do with
each other. But those who have passed many milestones
on the road know that “History” is the only
right label for the Book of Life’s many parts, and
that the actors in the great play are in truth tragic
comedians.

This is the story of Midas, one of the chief tragic
comedians of mythology.

Once upon a time the kingdom of Phrygia lacked a
king, and in much perplexity, the people sought help
from an oracle. The answer was very definite:

“The first man who enters your city riding in a
car shall be your king.”

That day there came slowly jogging into the city in
their heavy, wooden-wheeled wain, the peasant Gordias
and his wife and son, whose destination was the marketplace,
and whose business was to sell the produce of their
little farm and vineyard—fowls, a goat or two, and a
[Pg 135]
couple of skinsful of strong, purple-red wine. An eager
crowd awaited their entry, and a loud shout of welcome
greeted them. And their eyes grew round and their
mouths fell open in amaze when they were hailed as
King and Queen and Prince of Phrygia.

The gods had indeed bestowed upon Gordias, the low-born
peasant, a surprising gift, but he showed his gratitude
by dedicating his wagon to the deity of the oracle and
tying it up in its place with the wiliest knot that his
simple wisdom knew, pulled as tight as his brawny arms
and strong rough hands could pull. Nor could anyone
untie the famous Gordian knot, and therefore become,
as the oracle promised, lord of all Asia, until centuries
had passed, and Alexander the Great came to Phrygia and
sliced through the knot with his all-conquering sword.

In time Midas, the son of Gordias, came to inherit
the throne and crown of Phrygia. Like many another
not born and bred to the purple, his honours sat heavily
upon him. From the day that his father’s wain had
entered the city amidst the acclamations of the people,
he had learned the value of power, and therefore, from
his boyhood onward, power, always more power, was
what he coveted. Also his peasant father had taught
him that gold could buy power, and so Midas ever
longed for more gold, that could buy him a place in the
world that no descendant of a long race of kings should
be able to contest. And from Olympus the gods looked
down and smiled, and vowed that Midas should have
the chance of realising his heart’s desire.

Therefore one day when he and his court were sitting
[Pg 136]
in the solemn state that Midas required, there rode
into their midst, tipsily swaying on the back of a gentle
full-fed old grey ass, ivy-crowned, jovial and foolish,
the satyr Silenus, guardian of the young god Bacchus.

With all the deference due to the friend of a god
Midas treated this disreputable old pedagogue, and for
ten days and nights on end he feasted him royally. On
the eleventh day Bacchus came in search of his preceptor,
and in deep gratitude bade Midas demand of him
what he would, because he had done Silenus honour
when to dishonour him lay in his power.

Not even for a moment did Midas ponder.

“I would have gold,” he said hastily—“much gold.
I would have that touch by which all common and
valueless things become golden treasures.”

And Bacchus, knowing that here spoke the son of
peasants who many times had gone empty to bed after
a day of toilful striving on the rocky uplands of Phrygia,
looked a little sadly in the eager face of Midas, and
answered: “Be it as thou wilt. Thine shall be the
golden touch.”

Then Bacchus and Silenus went away, a rout of
singing revellers at their heels, and Midas quickly put
to proof the words of Bacchus.

An olive tree grew near where he stood, and from it
he picked a little twig decked with leaves of softest grey,
and lo, it grew heavy as he held it, and glittered like a
piece of his crown. He stooped to touch the green turf
on which some fragrant violets grew, and turf grew into
cloth of gold, and violets lost their fragrance and
[Pg 137]
became hard, solid, golden things. He touched an
apple whose cheek grew rosy in the sun, and at once it
became like the golden fruit in the Garden of the Hesperides.
The stone pillars of his palace as he brushed
past them on entering, blazed like a sunset sky. The
gods had not deceived him. Midas had the Golden
Touch. Joyously he strode into the palace and commanded
a feast to be prepared—a feast worthy of an
occasion so magnificent.

But when Midas, with the healthy appetite of the
peasant-born, would have eaten largely of the savoury
food that his cooks prepared, he found that his teeth
only touched roast kid to turn it into a slab of gold,
that garlic lost its flavour and became gritty as he
chewed, that rice turned into golden grains, and curdled
milk became a dower fit for a princess, entirely unnegotiable
for the digestion of man. Baffled and miserable,
Midas seized his cup of wine, but the red wine had
become one with the golden vessel that held it; nor could
he quench his thirst, for even the limpid water from the
fountain was melted gold when it touched his dry lips.
Only for a very few days was Midas able to bear the
affliction of his wealth. There was nothing now for
him to live for. He could buy the whole earth if he
pleased, but even children shrank in terror from his
touch, and hungry and thirsty and sick at heart he
wearily dragged along his weighty robes of gold. Gold
was power, he knew well, yet of what worth was gold
while he starved? Gold could not buy him life and
health and happiness.

[Pg 138]
In despair, at length he cried to the god who had
given him the gift that he hated.

“Save me, O Bacchus!” he said. “A witless one
am I, and the folly of my desire has been my undoing.
Take away from me the accursed Golden Touch, and
faithfully and well shall I serve thee forever.”

Then Bacchus, very pitiful for him, told Midas to go to
Sardis, the chief city of his worshippers, and to trace to its
source the river upon which it was built. And in that
pool, when he found it, he was to plunge his head, and so
he would, for evermore, be freed from the Golden Touch.

It was a long journey that Midas then took, and a
weary and a starving man was he when at length he
reached the spring where the river Pactolus had its
source. He crawled forward, and timidly plunged in his
head and shoulders. Almost he expected to feel the
harsh grit of golden water, but instead there was the joy
he had known as a peasant boy when he laved his face
and drank at a cool spring when his day’s toil was ended.
And when he raised his face from the pool, he knew that
his hateful power had passed from him, but under the
water he saw grains of gold glittering in the sand, and from
that time forth the river Pactolus was noted for its gold.

One lesson the peasant king had learnt by paying in
suffering for a mistake, but there was yet more suffering
in store for the tragic comedian.

He had now no wish for golden riches, nor even for
power. He wished to lead the simple life and to listen
to the pipings of Pan along with the goat-herds on the
mountains or the wild creatures in the woods. Thus
[Pg 139]
it befell that he was present one day at a contest between
Pan and Apollo himself. It was a day of merry-making
for nymphs and fauns and dryads, and all those who
lived in the lonely solitudes of Phrygia came to listen to
the music of the god who ruled them. For as Pan sat
in the shade of a forest one night and piped on his reeds
until the very shadows danced, and the water of the
stream by which he sat leapt high over the mossy stones
it passed, and laughed aloud in its glee, the god had so
gloried in his own power that he cried:

“Who speaks of Apollo and his lyre? Some of the
gods may be well pleased with his music, and mayhap
a bloodless man or two. But my music strikes to the
heart of the earth itself. It stirs with rapture the very
sap of the trees, and awakes to life and joy the innermost
soul of all things mortal.”

Apollo heard his boast, and heard it angrily.

“Oh, thou whose soul is the soul of the untilled
ground!” he said, “wouldst thou place thy music, that
is like the wind in the reeds, beside my music, which is
as the music of the spheres?”

And Pan, splashing with his goat’s feet amongst the
water-lilies of the stream on the bank of which he sat,
laughed loudly and cried:

“Yea, would I, Apollo! Willingly would I play thee
a match—thou on thy golden lyre—I on my reeds from
the river.”

Thus did it come to pass that Apollo and Pan
matched against each other their music, and King Midas
was one of the judges.

[Pg 140]
First of all Pan took his fragile reeds, and as he
played, the leaves on the trees shivered, and the sleeping
lilies raised their heads, and the birds ceased their song
to listen and then flew straight to their mates. And all
the beauty of the world grew more beautiful, and all
its terror grew yet more grim, and still Pan piped
on, and laughed to see the nymphs and the fauns first
dance in joyousness and then tremble in fear, and the
buds to blossom, and the stags to bellow in their lordship
of the hills. When he ceased, it was as though
a tensely-drawn string had broken, and all the earth
lay breathless and mute. And Pan turned proudly
to the golden-haired god who had listened as he had
spoken through the hearts of reeds to the hearts of
men.

“Canst, then, make music like unto my music,
Apollo?” he said.

Then Apollo, his purple robes barely hiding the
perfection of his limbs, a wreath of laurel crowning his
yellow curls, looked down at Pan from his godlike
height and smiled in silence. For a moment his hand
silently played over the golden strings of his lyre, and
then his finger-tips gently touched them. And every
creature there who had a soul, felt that that soul had
wings, and the wings sped them straight to Olympus.
Far away from all earth-bound creatures they flew,
and dwelt in magnificent serenity amongst the Immortals.
No longer was there strife, or any dispeace. No
more was there fierce warring between the actual and
the unknown. The green fields and thick woods had
[Pg 141]
faded into nothingness, and their creatures, and the
fair nymphs and dryads, and the wild fauns and centaurs
longed and fought no more, and man had ceased to
desire the impossible. Throbbing nature and passionately
desiring life faded into dust before the melody
that Apollo called forth, and when his strings had
ceased to quiver and only the faintly remembered echo
of his music remained, it was as though the earth had
passed away and all things had become new.

For the space of many seconds all was silence.

Then, in low voice, Apollo asked:

“Ye who listen—who is the victor?”

And earth and sea and sky, and all the creatures of
earth and sky, and of the deep, replied as one:

“The victory is thine, Divine Apollo.”

Yet was there one dissentient voice.

Midas, sorely puzzled, utterly un-understanding, was
relieved when the music of Apollo ceased. “If only
Pan would play again,” he murmured to himself. “I
wish to live, and Pan’s music gives me life. I love the
woolly vine-buds and the fragrant pine-leaves, and the
scent of the violets in the spring. The smell of the fresh-ploughed
earth is dear to me, the breath of the kine
that have grazed in the meadows of wild parsley and of
asphodel. I want to drink red wine and to eat and
love and fight and work and be joyous and sad, fierce and
strong, and very weary, and to sleep the dead sleep of
men who live only as weak mortals do.”

Therefore he raised his voice, and called very loud:
“Pan’s music is sweeter and truer and greater than the
[Pg 142]
music of Apollo. Pan is the victor, and I, King Midas,
give him the victor’s crown!”

With scorn ineffable the sun-god turned upon Midas,
his peasant’s face transfigured by his proud decision.
For a little he gazed at him in silence, and his look
might have turned a sunbeam to an icicle.

Then he spoke:

“The ears of an ass have heard my music,” he said.
“Henceforth shall Midas have ass’s ears.”

And when Midas, in terror, clapped his hands to his
crisp black hair, he found growing far beyond it, the
long, pointed ears of an ass. Perhaps what hurt him
most, as he fled away, was the shout of merriment that
came from Pan. And fauns and nymphs and satyrs
echoed that shout most joyously.

Willingly would he have hidden in the woods, but
there he found no hiding-place. The trees and shrubs
and flowering things seemed to shake in cruel mockery.
Back to his court he went and sent for the court hairdresser,
that he might bribe him to devise a covering
for these long, peaked, hairy symbols of his folly.
Gladly the hairdresser accepted many and many oboli,
many and many golden gifts, and all Phrygia wondered,
while it copied, the strange headdress of the king.

But although much gold had bought his silence, the
court barber was unquiet of heart. All day and all
through the night he was tormented by his weighty
secret. And then, at length, silence was to him a
torture too great to be borne; he sought a lonely place,
there dug a deep hole, and, kneeling by it, softly
[Pg 143]
whispered to the damp earth: “King Midas has ass’s
ears.”

Greatly relieved, he hastened home, and was well
content until, on the spot where his secret lay buried,
rushes grew up. And when the winds blew through
them, the rushes whispered for all those who passed
by to hear: “King Midas has ass’s ears! King Midas
has ass’s ears!” Those who listen very carefully to
what the green rushes in marshy places whisper as the
wind passes through them, may hear the same thing to
this day. And those who hear the whisper of the rushes
may, perhaps, give a pitying thought to Midas—the
tragic comedian of mythology.

[Pg 144]

CEYX AND HALCYONE

King Henry VI, i. 2, 131.

“Halcyon days”—how often is the expression made
use of, how seldom do its users realise from whence
they have borrowed it.

“These were halcyon days,” says the old man, and
his memory wanders back to a time when for him

Yet the story of Halcyone is one best to be understood
by the heavy-hearted woman who wanders along the
bleak sea-beach and strains her weary eyes for the brown
sail of the fishing-boat that will never more return.

Over the kingdom of Thessaly, in the days of long
ago, there reigned a king whose name was Ceyx, son of
Hesperus, the Day Star, and almost as radiant in grace
and beauty as was his father. His wife was the fair
Halcyone, daughter of Æolus, ruler of the winds, and
most perfectly did this king and queen love one another.
Their happiness was unmarred until there came a day
when Ceyx had to mourn for the loss of a brother.
Following close on the heels of this disaster came direful
[Pg 145]
prodigies which led Ceyx to fear that in some way he
must have incurred the hostility of the gods. To him
there was no way in which to discover wherein lay his
fault, and to make atonement for it, but by going to
consult the oracle of Apollo at Claros, in Ionia. When
he told Halcyone what he must do, she knew well that
she must not try to turn him from his solemn purpose,
yet there hung over her heart a black shadow of fear
and of evil foreboding that no loving words of assurance
could drive away. Most piteously she begged him
to take her with him, but the king knew too well the
dangers of the treacherous Ægean Sea to risk on it the
life of the woman that he loved so well.

“I promise,” he said, “by the rays of my Father
the Day Star, that if fate permits I will return before the
moon shall have twice rounded her orb.”

Down by the shore the sailors of King Ceyx awaited
his coming, and when with passionately tender love he
and Halcyone had taken farewell of each other, the
rowers sat down on the benches and dipped their long
oars into the water.

With rhythmic swing they drove the great ship over
the grey sea, while Ceyx stood on deck and gazed back at
his wife until his eyes could no longer distinguish her
from the rocks on the shore, nor could she any longer
see the white sails of the ship as it crested the restless
waves. Heavier still was her heart when she turned
away from the shore, and yet more heavy it grew as the
day wore on and dark night descended. For the air was
full of the clamorous wailings of the fierce winds whose
[Pg 146]
joy it is to lash the waves into rage and to strew with
dead men and broken timber the angry, surf-beaten shore.

“My King,” she sighed to herself. “My King! my
Own!” And through the weary hours she prayed to
the gods to bring him safely back to her, and many
times she offered fragrant incense to Juno, protectress of
women, that she might have pity on a woman whose
husband and true lover was out in the storm, a plaything
for ruthless winds and waves.

A helpless plaything was the king of Thessaly. Long
ere the dim evening light had made of the shore of
his own land a faint, grey line, the white-maned horses
of Poseidon, king of the seas, began to rear their
heads, and as night fell, a black curtain, blotting out
every landmark, and all home-like things, the East
Wind rushed across the Ægean Sea, smiting the sea-horses
into madness, seizing the sails with cruel grasp
and casting them in tatters before it, snapping the
mast as though it were but a dry reed by the river.
Before so mighty a tempest no oars could be of any
avail, and for a little time only the winds and waves
gambolled like a half-sated wolf-pack over their helpless
prey. With hungry roar the great weight of black
water stove in the deck and swept the sailors out of the
ship to choke them in its icy depths; and ever it would
lift the wounded thing high up on its foaming white
crests, as though to toss it to the dark sky, and ever
again would suck it down into the blackness, while the
shrieking winds drove it onward with howling taunts
and mocking laughter. While life stayed in him, Ceyx
[Pg 147]
thought only of Halcyone. He had no fear, only the fear
of the grief his death must bring to her who loved him
as he loved her, his peerless queen, his Halcyone. His
prayers to the gods were prayers for her. For himself
he asked one thing only—that the waves might bear
his body to her sight, so that her gentle hands might lay
him in his tomb. With shout of triumph that they
had slain a king, winds and waves seized him even as
he prayed, and the Day Star that was hidden behind
the black pall of the sky knew that his son, a brave king
and a faithful lover, had gone down to the Shades.

When Dawn, the rosy-fingered, had come to Thessaly,
Halcyone, white-faced and tired-eyed, anxiously watched
the sea, that still was tossing in half-savage mood.
Eagerly she gazed at the place where last the white sail
had been seen. Was it not possible that Ceyx, having
weathered the gale, might for the present have foregone
his voyage to Ionia, and was returning to her to bring
peace to her heart? But the sea-beach was strewn with
wrack and the winds still blew bits of tattered surf along
the shore, and for her there was only the heavy labour
of waiting, of waiting and of watching for the ship that
never came. The incense from her altars blew out, in
heavy sweetness, to meet the bitter-sweet tang of the
seaweed that was carried in by the tide, for Halcyone
prayed on, fearful, yet hoping that her prayers might
still keep safe her man—her king—her lover. She busied
herself in laying out the garments he would wear on his
return, and in choosing the clothes in which she might
be fairest in his eyes. This robe, as blue as the sky in
[Pg 148]
spring—silver-bordered, as the sea in kind mood is
bordered with a feathery silver fringe. She could recall
just how Ceyx looked when first he saw her wear it.
She could hear his very tones as he told her that of all
queens she was the peeress, of all women the most
beautiful, of all wives the most dear. Almost she forgot
the horrors of the night, so certain did it seem that his
dear voice must soon again tell her the words that have
been love’s litany since ever time began.

In the ears of Juno those petitions for him whose
dead body was even then being tossed hither and
thither by the restless waves, his murderers, came at
last to be more than even she could bear. She gave
command to her handmaiden Iris to go to the palace
of Somnus, god of Sleep and brother of Death, and to
bid him send to Halcyone a vision, in the form of Ceyx,
to tell her that all her weary waiting was in vain.

In a valley among the black Cimmerian mountains
the death-god Somnus had his abode. In her rainbow-hued
robes, Iris darted through the sky at her mistress’s
bidding, tingeing, as she sped through them, the clouds
that she passed. It was a silent valley that she reached
at last. Here the sun never came, nor was there ever
any sound to break the silence. From the ground the
noiseless grey clouds, whose work it is to hide the sun
and moon, rose softly and rolled away up to the mountain
tops and down to the lowest valleys, to work the
will of the gods. All around the cave lurked the long
dark shadows that bring fear to the heart of children,
and that, at nightfall, hasten the steps of the timid
[Pg 149]
wayfarer. No noise was there, but from far down the
valley there came a murmur so faint and so infinitely
soothing that it was less a sound than of a lullaby
remembered in dreams. For past the valley of Sleep
flow the waters of Lethe, the river of Forgetfulness.
Close up to the door of the cave where dwelt the twin
brothers, Sleep and Death, blood-red poppies grew, and
at the door itself stood shadowy forms, their fingers on
their lips, enjoining silence on all those who would enter
in, amaranth-crowned, and softly waving sheaves of
poppies that bring dreams from which there is no
awakening. There was there no gate with hinges to
creak or bars to clang, and into the stilly darkness Iris
walked unhindered. From outer cave to inner cave she
went, and each cave she left behind was less dark than
the one that she entered. In the innermost room of all,
on an ebony couch draped with sable curtains, the god
of sleep lay drowsing. His garments were black, strewn
with golden stars. A wreath of half-opened poppies
crowned his sleepy head, and he leaned on the strong
shoulder of Morpheus, his favourite son. All round his
bed hovered pleasant dreams, gently stooping over him
to whisper their messages, like a field of wheat swayed
by the breeze, or willows that bow their silver heads and
murmur to each other the secrets that no one ever knows.
Brushing the idle dreams aside, as a ray of sunshine brushes
away the grey wisps of mist that hang to the hillside,
Iris walked up to the couch where Somnus lay. The
light from her rainbow-hued robe lit up the darkness of
the cave, yet Somnus lazily only half-opened his eyes,
[Pg 150]
moved his head so that it rested more easily, and in a
sleepy voice asked of her what might be her errand.
“Somnus,” she said, “gentlest of gods, tranquilliser of
minds and soother of careworn hearts, Juno sends you
her commands that you despatch a dream to Halcyone
in the city of Trachine, representing her lost husband
and all the events of the wreck.”

Her message delivered, Iris hastened away, for it
seemed to her that already her eyelids grew heavy, and
that there were creeping upon her limbs, throwing silver
dust in her eyes, lulling into peaceful slumber her mind,
those sprites born of the blood-red poppies that bring
to weary mortals rest and sweet forgetfulness.

Only rousing himself sufficiently to give his orders,
Somnus entrusted to Morpheus the task imposed upon
him by Juno, and then, with a yawn, turned over on his
downy pillow, and gave himself up to exquisite slumber.

When he had winged his way to Trachine, Morpheus
took upon himself the form of Ceyx and sought the room
where Halcyone slept. She had watched the far horizon
many hours that day. For many an hour had she
vainly burned incense to the gods. Tired in heart and
soul, in body and in mind, she laid herself down on
her couch at last, hoping for the gift of sleep. Not
long had she slept, in the dead-still sleep that weariness
and a stricken heart bring with them, when Morpheus
came and stood by her side. He was only a dream,
yet his face was the face of Ceyx. Not the radiant,
beautiful son of the Day Star was the Ceyx who stood
by her now and gazed on her with piteous, pitying dead
[Pg 151]
eyes. His clothing dripped sea-water; in his hair was
tangled the weed of the sea, uprooted by the storm.
Pale, pale was his face, and his white hands gripped the
stones and sand that had failed him in his dying agony.

Halcyone whimpered in her sleep as she looked on
him, and Morpheus stooped over her and spoke the
words that he had been told to say.

“I am thy husband, Ceyx, Halcyone. No more do
prayers and the blue-curling smoke of incense avail me.
Dead am I, slain by the storm and the waves. On my
dead, white face the skies look down and the restless sea
tosses my chill body that still seeks thee, seeking a haven
in thy dear arms, seeking rest on thy warm, loving heart.”

With a cry Halcyone started up, but Morpheus had
fled, and there were no wet footprints nor drops of sea-water
on the floor, marking, as she had hoped, the way
that her lord had taken. Not again did Sleep visit her
that night.

A grey, cold morning dawned and found her on the
seashore. As ever, her eyes sought the far horizon,
but no white sail, a messenger of hope, was there to
greet her. Yet surely she saw something—a black
speck, like a ship driven on by the long oars of mariners
who knew well the path to home through the watery
ways. From far away in the grey it hasted towards
her, and then there came to Halcyone the knowledge
that no ship was this thing, but a lifeless body, swept
onwards by the hurrying waves. Nearer and nearer it
came, until at length she could recognise the form of this
flotsam and jetsam of the sea. With heart that broke
[Pg 152]
as she uttered the words, she stretched out her arms and
cried aloud: “O Ceyx! my Beloved! is it thus that
thou returnest to me?”

To break the fierce assaults of sea and of storm there
had been built out from the shore a mole, and on to this
barrier leapt the distraught Halcyone. She ran along
it, and when the dead, white body of the man she loved
was still out of reach, she prayed her last prayer—a
wordless prayer of anguish to the gods.

“Only let me get near him,” she breathed. “Grant
only that I nestle close against his dear breast. Let me
show him that, living or dead, I am his, and he mine
forever.”

And to Halcyone a great miracle was then vouchsafed,
for from out of her snowy shoulders grew snow-white
pinions, and with them she skimmed over the
waves until she reached the rigid body of Ceyx, drifting,
a helpless burden for the conquering waves, in with the
swift-flowing tide. As she flew, she uttered cries of
love and of longing, but only strange raucous cries came
from the throat that had once only made music. And
when she reached the body of Ceyx and would fain have
kissed his marble lips, Halcyone found that no longer
were her own lips like the petals of a fair red rose
warmed by the sun. For the gods had heard her prayer,
and her horny beak seemed to the watchers on the shore
to be fiercely tearing at the face of him who had been
king of Thessaly.

A GREY COLD MORNING FOUND HER ON THE SEASHORE

Yet the gods were not merciless—or, perhaps, the
love of Halcyone was an all-conquering love. For as
[Pg 153]
the soul of Halcyone had passed into the body of a
white-winged sea-bird, so also passed the soul of her
husband the king. And for evermore Halcyone and
her mate, known as the Halcyon birds, defied the storm
and tempest, and proudly breasted, side by side, the
angriest waves of the raging seas.

To them, too, did the gods grant a boon: that, for
seven days before the shortest day of the year, and for
seven days after it, there should reign over the sea a
great calm in which Halcyone, in her floating nest,
should hatch her young. And to those days of calm
and sunshine, the name of the Halcyon Days was given.

And still, as a storm approaches, the white-winged
birds come flying inland with shrill cries of warning to
the mariners whose ships they pass in their flight.

“Ceyx!” they cry. “Remember Ceyx!”

And hastily the fishermen fill their sails, and the
smacks drive homeward to the haven where the blue
smoke curls upwards from the chimneys of their homesteads,
and where the red poppies are nodding sleepily
amongst the yellow corn.

[Pg 154]

ARISTÆUS THE BEE-KEEPER

Tennyson.

In the fragrance of the blossom of the limes the bees
are gleaning a luscious harvest. Their busy humming
sounds like the surf on a reef heard from very far away,
and would almost lull to sleep those who lazily, drowsily
spend the sunny summer afternoon in the shadow of
the trees. That line of bee-hives by the sweet-pea hedge
shows where they store their treasure that men may
rob them of it, but out on the uplands where the heather
is purple, the wild bees hum in and out of the honey-laden
bells and carry home their spoils to their own
free fastnesses, from which none can drive them unless
there comes a foray against them from the brown men
of the moors.

How many of us who watch their ardent labours
know the story of Aristæus—he who first brought the
art of bee-keeping to perfection in his own dear land of
Greece, and whose followers are those men in veils of
blue and green, that motley throng who beat fire-irons
and create a hideous clamour in order that the queen
bee and her excited followers may be checked in their
[Pg 155]
perilous voyagings and beguiled to swarm in the sanctuary
of a hive.

Aristæus was a shepherd, the son of Cyrene, a water
nymph, and to him there had come one day, as he listened
to the wild bees humming amongst the wild thyme, the
great thought that he might conquer these busy workers
and make their toil his gain. He knew that hollow trees
or a hole in a rock were used as the storage houses of
their treasure, and so the wily shepherd lad provided
for them the homes he knew that they would covet, and
near them placed all the food that they most desired.
Soon Aristæus became noted as a tamer of bees, and even
in Olympus they spoke of his honey as a thing that was
food for the gods. All might have gone well with Aristæus
had there not come for him the fateful day when
he saw the beautiful Eurydice and to her lost his heart.
She fled before the fiery protestations of his love, and
trod upon the serpent whose bite brought her down to
the Shades. The gods were angry with Aristæus, and
as punishment they slew his bees. His hives stood
empty and silent, and no more did “the murmuring of
innumerable bees” drowse the ears of the herds who
watched their flocks cropping the red clover and the
asphodel of the meadows.

Underneath the swift-flowing water of a deep river,
the nymph who was the mother of Aristæus sat on her
throne. Fishes darted round her white feet, and beside
her sat her attendants, spinning the fine strong green
cords that twine themselves round the throats of those
who perish when their arms can no longer fight against
[Pg 156]
the force of the rushing current. A nymph sang as she
worked, an old, old song, that told one of the old, old
tales of man’s weakness and the power of the creatures
of water, but above her song those who listened heard
a man’s voice, calling loudly and pitifully.

The voice was that of Aristæus, calling aloud for his
mother. Then his mother gave command, and the
waters of the river rolled asunder and let Aristæus pass
down far below to where the fountains of the great
rivers lie. A mighty roar of many waters dinned in his
ears as the rivers started on the race that was to bring
them all at last to their restless haven, the Ocean. To
Cyrene he came at length, and to her told his sorrowful
tale:

“To men who live their little lives and work and
die as I myself—though son of a nymph and of a god—must
do,” he said, “I have brought two great gifts,
oh my mother. I have taught them that from the grey
olives they can reap a priceless harvest, and from me
they have learned that the little brown bees that hum
in and out of the flowers may be made slaves that bring
to them the sweetest riches of which Nature may be
robbed.”

“This do I already know, my son,” said Cyrene, and
smiled upon Aristæus.

“Yet dost thou not know,” said Aristæus, “the
doom that has overtaken my army of busy workers.
No longer does there come from my city of bees the
boom of many wings and many busy little feet as they
fly, swift and strong, hither and thither, to bring back
[Pg 157]
to the hives their honeyed treasure. The comb is empty.
The bees are all dead—or, if not dead, they have forsaken
me forever.”

Then spoke Cyrene. “Hast heard, my son,” she
said, “of Proteus? It is he who herds the flocks of
the boundless sea. On days when the South Wind and
the North Wind wrestle together, and when the Wind
from the East smites the West Wind in shame before
him, thou mayst see him raise his snowy head and long
white beard above the grey-green waves of the sea,
and lash the white-maned, unbridled, fierce sea-horses
into fury before him. Proteus only—none but Proteus—can
tell thee by what art thou canst win thy bees
back once more.”

Then Aristæus with eagerness questioned his mother
how he might find Proteus and gain from him the
knowledge that he sought, and Cyrene answered: “No
matter how piteously thou dost entreat him, never,
save by force, wilt thou gain his secret from Proteus.
Only if thou canst chain him by guile as he sleeps and
hold fast the chains, undaunted by the shapes into which
he has the power to change himself, wilt thou win his
knowledge from him.”

Then Cyrene sprinkled her son with the nectar of
the deathless gods, and in his heart there was born a
noble courage and through him a new life seemed to run.

“Lead me now to Proteus, oh my mother!” he
said, and Cyrene left her throne and led him to the
cave where Proteus, herdsman of the seas, had his
dwelling. Behind the seaweed-covered rocks Aristæus
[Pg 158]
concealed himself, while the nymph used the fleecy clouds
for her covering. And when Apollo drove his chariot
across the high heavens at noon, and all land and all sea
were hot as molten gold, Proteus with his flocks returned
to the shade of his great cave by the sobbing sea, and on
its sandy floor he stretched himself, and soon lay, his
limbs all lax and restful, in the exquisite joy of a dreamless
sleep. From behind the rocks Aristæus watched
him, and when, at length, he saw that Proteus slept too
soundly to wake gently he stepped forward, and on the
sleep-drowsed limbs of Proteus fixed the fetters that
made him his captive. Then, in joy and pride at having
been the undoing of the shepherd of the seas, Aristæus
shouted aloud. And Proteus, awaking, swiftly turned
himself into a wild boar with white tusks that lusted
to thrust themselves into the thighs of Aristæus. But
Aristæus, unflinching, kept his firm hold of the chain.
Next did he become a tiger, tawny and velvet black,
and fierce to devour. And still Aristæus held the chain,
and never let his eye fall before the glare of the
beast that sought to devour him. A scaly dragon came
next, breathing out flames, and yet Aristæus held him.
Then came a lion, its yellow pelt scented with the lust
of killing, and while Aristæus yet strove against him
there came to terrify his listening ears the sound of fire
that lapped up and thirstily devoured all things that
would stand against it. And ere the crackle of the
flames and their great sigh of fierce desire had ceased,
there came in his ears the sound of many waters, the
booming rush of an angry river in furious flood, the
[Pg 159]
irresistible command of the almighty waves of the sea. Yet
still Aristæus held the chains, and at last Proteus took
his own shape again, and with a sigh like the sigh of
winds and waves on the desolate places where ships become
wrecks, and men perish and there is never a human soul
to save or to pity them, he spoke to Aristæus.

“Puny one!” he said, “and puny are thy wishes!
Because thou didst by thy foolish wooing send the
beautiful Eurydice swiftly down to the Shades and
break the heart of Orpheus, whose music is the music of
the Immortals, the bees that thou hast treasured have
left their hives empty and silent. So little are the bees!
so great, O Aristæus, the bliss or woe of Orpheus and
Eurydice! Yet, because by guile thou hast won the
power to gain from me the knowledge that thou dost
seek, hearken to me now, Aristæus! Four bulls must
thou find—four cows of equal beauty. Then must thou
build in a leafy grove four altars, and to Orpheus and
Eurydice pay such funeral honours as may allay their
resentment. At the end of nine days, when thou hast
fulfilled thy pious task, return and see what the gods
have sent thee.”

“This will I do most faithfully, O Proteus,” said
Aristæus, and gravely loosened the chains and returned
to where his mother awaited him, and thence travelled
to his own sunny land of Greece.

Most faithfully, as he had said, did Aristæus perform
his vow. And when, on the ninth day, he returned to
the grove of sacrifice, a sound greeted him which made
his heart stop and then go on beating and throbbing as
[Pg 160]
the heart of a man who has striven valiantly in a great
fight and to whom the battle is assured.

For, from the carcase of one of the animals offered
for sacrifice, and whose clean white bones now gleamed
in the rays of the sun that forced its way through the
thick shade of the grove of grey olives, there came the
“murmuring of innumerable bees.”

“Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong
came forth sweetness.”

And Aristæus, a Samson of the old Greek days,
rejoiced exceedingly, knowing that his thoughtless sin
was pardoned, and that for evermore to him belonged
the pride of giving to all men the power of taming bees,
the glory of mastering the little brown creatures that
pillage from the fragrant, bright-hued flowers their
most precious treasure.

[Pg 161]

PROSERPINE

Shelley.

The story of Persephone—of Proserpine—is a story of
spring. When the sun is warming the bare brown earth,
and the pale primroses look up through the snowy blackthorns
at a kind, blue sky, almost can we hear the soft
wind murmur a name as it gently sways the daffodils
and breathes through the honey sweetness of the gold-powdered
catkins on the grey willows by the river—“Persephone!
Persephone!”

Now once there was a time when there was no spring,
neither summer nor autumn, nor chilly winter with
its black frosts and cruel gales and brief, dark days.
Always was there sunshine and warmth, ever were there
flowers and corn and fruit, and nowhere did the flowers
[Pg 162]
grow with more dazzling colours and more fragrant perfume
than in the fair garden of Sicily.

To Demeter, the Earth Mother, was born a daughter
more fair than any flower that grew, and ever more dear
to her became her child, the lovely Proserpine. By the
blue sea, in the Sicilian meadows, Proserpine and the fair
nymphs who were her companions spent their happy days.
Too short were the days for all their joy, and Demeter
made the earth yet fairer than it was that she might
bring more gladness to her daughter Proserpine. Each
day the blossoms that the nymphs twined into garlands
grew more perfect in form and in hue, but from the
anemones of royal purple and crimson, and the riotous
red of geraniums, Proserpine turned one morning with
a cry of gladness, for there stood before her beside
a little stream, on one erect, slim stem, a wonderful
narcissus, with a hundred blossoms. Her eager hand
was stretched out to pluck it, when a sudden black cloud
overshadowed the land, and the nymphs, with shrieks of
fear, fled swiftly away. And as the cloud descended,
there was heard a terrible sound, as of the rushing of
many waters or the roll of the heavy wheels of the
chariot of one who comes to slay. Then was the earth
cleft open, and from it there arose the four coal-black
horses of Pluto, neighing aloud in their eagerness, while
the dark-browed god urged them on, standing erect in his
car of gold.

In cold, strong arms Pluto seized her—in that mighty
grasp that will not be denied, and Proserpine wept
childish tears as she shivered at his icy touch, and
sobbed because she had dropped the flowers she had
picked, and had never picked the flower she most desired.
While still she saw the fair light of day, the little
oddly-shaped rocky hills, the vineyards and olive groves
and flowery meadows of Sicily, she did not lose hope.
Surely the King of Terrors could not steal one so young,
so happy, and so fair. She had only tasted the joy of
living, and fain she would drink deeper in the coming
years. Her mother must surely save her—her mother
who had never yet failed her—her mother, and the gods.

But ruthless as the mower whose scythe cuts down
the seeded grass and the half-opened flower and lays
them in swathes on the meadow, Pluto drove on. His
iron-coloured reins were loose on the black manes of his
horses, and he urged them forward by name till the
froth flew from their mouths like the foam that the
furious surf of the sea drives before it in a storm. Across
the bay and along the bank of the river Anapus they
galloped, until, at the river head, they came to the pool
of Cyane. He smote the water with his trident, and
downward into the blackness of darkness his horses
passed, and Proserpine knew no more the pleasant
light of day.

So, to the great Earth Mother came the pangs that
have drawn tears of blood from many a mortal mother’s
heart for a child borne off to the Shades.

The cry is borne down through the ages, to echo and re-echo
so long as mothers love and Death is still unchained.

Over land and sea, from where Dawn, the rosy-fingered,
rises in the East, to where Apollo cools the
fiery wheels of his chariot in the waters of far western
seas, the goddess sought her daughter. With a black
robe over her head and carrying a flaming torch in either
hand, for nine dreary days she sought her loved one.
And yet, for nine more weary days and nine sleepless
nights the goddess, racked by human sorrow, sat in
hopeless misery. The hot sun beat upon her by day.
By night the silver rays from Diana’s car smote her more
gently, and the dew drenched her hair and her black
garments and mingled with the saltness of her bitter
tears. At the grey dawning of the tenth day her elder
daughter, Hecate, stood beside her. Queen of ghosts and
shades was she, and to her all dark places of the earth
were known.

“Let us go to the Sun God,” said Hecate. “Surely
[Pg 165]
he hath seen the god who stole away the little Proserpine.
Soon his chariot will drive across the heavens.
Come, let us ask him to guide us to the place where she
is hidden.”

Thus did they come to the chariot of the glorious
Apollo, and standing by the heads of his horses like
two grey clouds that bar the passage of the sun, they
begged him to tell them the name of him who had stolen
fair Proserpine.

“No less a thief was he,” said Apollo, “than Pluto,
King of Darkness and robber of Life itself. Mourn
not, Demeter. Thy daughter is safe in his keeping.
The little nymph who played in the meadows is now
Queen of the Shades. Nor does Pluto love her vainly.
She is now in love with Death.”

No comfort did the words of the Sun God bring to
the longing soul of Demeter. And her wounded heart
grew bitter. Because she suffered, others must suffer
as well. Because she mourned, all the world must
mourn. The fragrant flowers spoke to her only of
Persephone, the purple grapes reminded her of a vintage
when the white fingers of her child had plucked the
fruit. The waving golden grain told her that Persephone
was as an ear of wheat that is reaped before its time.

Then upon the earth did there come dearth and
drought and barrenness.

Lewis Morris.

[Pg 166]
Gods and men alike suffered from the sorrow of
Demeter. To her, in pity for the barren earth, Zeus
sent an embassy, but in vain it came. Merciless was the
great Earth Mother, who had been robbed of what she
held most dear.

“Give me back my child!” she said. “Gladly I
watch the sufferings of men, for no sorrow is as my
sorrow. Give me back my child, and the earth shall
grow fertile once more.”

Unwillingly Zeus granted the request of Demeter.

“She shall come back,” he said at last, “and with
thee dwell on earth forever. Yet only on one condition
do I grant thy fond request. Persephone must eat no
food through all the time of her sojourn in the realm
of Pluto, else must thy beseeching be all in vain.”

Then did Demeter gladly leave Olympus and hasten
down to the darkness of the shadowy land that once
again she might hold, in her strong mother’s arms, her
who had once been her little clinging child.

But in the dark kingdom of Pluto a strange thing
had happened. No longer had the pale-faced god, with
dark locks, and eyes like the sunless pools of a mountain
stream, any terrors for Proserpine. He was strong,
and cruel had she thought him, yet now she knew that
the touch of his strong, cold hands was a touch of infinite
tenderness. When, knowing the fiat of the ruler
of Olympus, Pluto gave to his stolen bride a pomegranate,
red in heart as the heart of a man, she had
taken it from his hand, and, because he willed it, had eaten
of the sweet seeds. Then, in truth, it was too late for
[Pg 167]
Demeter to save her child. She “had eaten of Love’s
seed” and “changed into another.”

Ingelow.

Dark, dark was the kingdom of Pluto. Its rivers
never mirrored a sunbeam, and ever moaned low as an
earthly river moans before a coming flood, and the feet
that trod the gloomy Cocytus valley were the feet of
those who never again would tread on the soft grass and
flowers of an earthly meadow. Yet when Demeter had
braved all the shadows of Hades, only in part was her
end accomplished. In part only was Proserpine now
her child, for while half her heart was in the sunshine,
rejoicing in the beauties of earth, the other half was
with the god who had taken her down to the Land of
Darkness and there had won her for his own. Back to
the flowery island of Sicily her mother brought her, and
the peach trees and the almonds blossomed snowily
as she passed. The olives decked themselves with their
soft grey leaves, the corn sprang up, green and lush and
strong. The lemon and orange groves grew golden with
luscious fruit, and all the land was carpeted with flowers.
For six months of the year she stayed, and gods and
men rejoiced at the bringing back of Proserpine. For
six months she left her green and pleasant land for the
dark kingdom of him whom she loved, and through
[Pg 168]
those months the trees were bare, and the earth chill
and brown, and under the earth the flowers hid themselves
in fear and awaited the return of the fair daughter
of Demeter.

And evermore has she come and gone, and seedtime
and harvest have never failed, and the cold, sleeping
world has awaked and rejoiced, and heralded with
the song of birds, and the bursting of green buds and
the blooming of flowers, the resurrection from the dead—the
coming of spring.

Lewis Morris.

[Pg 169]

LATONA AND THE RUSTICS

Through the tropic nights their sonorous, bell-like
booming can be heard coming up from the marshes, and
when they are unseen, the song of the bull-frogs would
suggest creatures full of solemn dignity. The croak of
their lesser brethren is less impressive, yet there is no
escape from it on those evenings when the dragon-flies’
iridescent wings are folded in sleep, and the birds in the
branches are still, when the lilies on the pond have
closed their golden hearts, and even the late-feeding
trout have ceased to plop and to make eddies in the
quiet water. “Krroak! krroak! krroak!” they go—“krroak!
krroak! krroak!”

It is unceasing, unending. It goes on like the whirr
of the wheels of a great clock that can never run down—a
melancholy complaint against the hardships of destiny—a
raucous protest against things as they are.

This is the story of the frogs that have helped to
point the gibes of Aristophanes, the morals of Æsop, and
which have always been, more or less, regarded as the
low comedians of the animal world.

Latona, or Leto, was the goddess of dark nights,
and upon her the mighty Zeus bestowed the doubtful
favour of his errant love. Great was the wrath of Hera,
his queen, when she found that she was no longer the
[Pg 170]
dearest wife of her omnipotent lord, and with furious
upbraidings she banished her rival to earth. And when
Latona had reached the place of her exile she found that
the vengeful goddess had sworn that she would place her
everlasting ban upon anyone, mortal or immortal, who
dared to show any kindness or pity to her whose only
fault had been that Zeus loved her. From place to place
she wandered, an outcast even among men, until, at
length, she came to Lycia.

One evening, as the darkness of which she was goddess
had just begun to fall, she reached a green and pleasant
valley. The soft, cool grass was a delight to her tired
feet, and when she saw the silvery gleam of water she
rejoiced, for her throat was parched and her lips dry and
she was very weary. By the side of this still pond,
where the lilies floated, there grew lithe grey willows and
fresh green osiers, and these were being cut by a crowd of
chattering rustics.

Humbly, for many a rude word and harsh rebuff had
the dictum of Hera brought her during her wanderings,
Latona went to the edge of the pond, and, kneeling
down, was most thankfully about to drink, when the
peasants espied her. Roughly and rudely they told
her to begone, nor dare to drink unbidden of the clear
water beside which their willows grew. Very pitifully
Latona looked up in their churlish faces, and her eyes
were as the eyes of a doe that the hunters have pressed
very hard.

“Surely, good people,” she said, and her voice was
sad and low, “water is free to all. Very far have I
[Pg 171]
travelled, and I am aweary almost to death. Only grant
that I dip my lips in the water for one deep draught.
Of thy pity grant me this boon, for I perish of thirst.”

Harsh and coarse were the mocking voices that made
answer. Coarser still were the jests that they made.
Then one, bolder than his fellows, spurned her kneeling
figure with his foot, while another brushed before her
and stepping into the pond, defiled its clarity by churning
up the mud that lay below with his great splay
feet.

Loudly the peasants laughed at this merry jest, and
they quickly followed his lead, as brainless sheep will
follow the one that scrambles through a gap. Soon they
were all joyously stamping and dancing in what had
so lately been a pellucid pool. The water-lilies and
blue forget-me-nots were trodden down, the fish that
had their homes under the mossy stones in terror fled
away. Only the mud came up, filthy, defiling, and the
rustics laughed in loud and foolish laughter to see the
havoc they had wrought.

The goddess Latona rose from her knees. No
longer did she seem a mere woman, very weary, hungry
and athirst, travelled over far. In their surprised eyes
she grew to a stature that was as that of the deathless
gods. And her eyes were dark as an angry sea at even.

“Shameless ones!” she said, in a voice as the
voice of a storm that sweeps destroyingly over forest and
mountain. “Ah! shameless ones! Is it thus that
thou wouldst defy one who has dwelt on Olympus?
Behold from henceforth shalt thou have thy dwelling
[Pg 172]
in the mud of the green-scummed pools, thy homes in
the water that thy flat feet have defiled.”

As she spoke, a change, strange and terrible, passed
over the forms of the trampling peasants. Their stature
shrank. They grew squat and fat. Their hands and
feet were webbed, and their grinning mouths became
great, sad, gaping openings by which to swallow worms
and flies. Green and yellow and brown were their skins,
and when they would fain have cried aloud for mercy,
from their throats there would come only the “Krroak!
krroak! krroak!” that we know so well.

And when, that night, the goddess of darkness was
wrapped in peace in the black, silver star bespangled
robe that none could take from her, there arose from the
pond over which the grey willows hung, weeping, the
clamour of a great lamentation. Yet no piteous words
were there, only the incessant, harsh complaint of the
frogs that we hear in the marshes.

From that time the world went well with Latona.
Down to the seashore she came, and when she held
out her arms in longing appeal to the Ægean islands
that lay like purple flowers strewn, far apart, on a
soft carpet of limpid blue, Zeus heard her prayer. He
asked Poseidon to send a dolphin to carry the woman
he loved to the floating island of Delos, and when she
had been borne there in safety, he chained the island
with chains of adamant to the golden-sanded floor of
the sea.

And on this sanctuary there were born to Latona
twin children, thereafter to be amongst the most famed
[Pg 173]
of the deathless gods—the god and goddess, Apollo and
Diana.

Milton.

Yet are there times, as we look at the squat, bronze
bodies of the frogs—green-bronze, dark brown spotted,
and all flecked with gold, the turned-down corners of
their wistful mouths, their very exquisite black velvety
eyes with golden rims—when the piteous croaks that
come forth from their throats of pale daffodil colour do
indeed awake a sympathy with their appeal against the
inexorable decrees of destiny.

“We did not know! We did not understand! Pity
us! Ah, pity us! Krroak! krroak! krroak!”

[Pg 174]

ECHO AND NARCISSUS

In the solitudes of the hills we find her, and yet we may
come on her unawares in the din of a noisy city. She
will answer us where the waves are lashing themselves
against the rugged cliffs of our own British coast, or we
may find her where the great yellow pillars of fallen
temples lie hot in the sun close to the vivid blue water
of the African sea. At nightfall, on the lonely northern
moors, she mimics the cry of a wailing bird that calls for
its mate, but it is she who prolongs the roll of the great
organ in a vast cathedral, she who repeats the rattle
and crack and boom of the guns, no matter in what
land the war may be raging. In the desolate Australian
bush she makes the crash of the falling limb of a dead
gum tree go on and on, and tortures the human being
who is lost, hopelessly lost, and facing a cruel death, by
repeating his despairing calls for help. Through the
night, in old country-houses, she sports at will and gives
new life to sad old tales of the restless dead who restlessly
walk. But she echoes the children’s voices as they
play by the seashore or pick primroses in the woods in
spring, and when they greet her with laughter, she
laughs in merry response. They may fear her when
the sun has gone down, and when they are left all alone
they begin to dread her mockery. Yet the nymph who
[Pg 175]
sought for love and failed to gain what she sought
must surely find some comfort on those bright days of
summer and of spring when she gives the little children
happiness and they give her their love.

When all the world was young, and nymphs and
fauns and dryads dwelt in the forests, there was no
nymph more lovely and more gay than she whose
name was Echo. Diana would smile on her for her
fleetness of foot when she followed her in the chase,
and those whom she met in the leafy pathways of the
dim, green woods, would pass on smiling at the remembrance
of her merry chatter and her tricksy humour.

It was an evil day for Echo when she crossed the path
of Hera, queen of the gods. The jealous goddess sought
her errant husband, who was amusing himself with some
nymphs, and Echo, full of mischievous glee, kept her in
talk until the nymphs had fled to safety. Hera was
furious indeed when she found out that a frolicsome
nymph had dared to play on her such a trick, and ruthlessly
she spoke fair Echo’s doom.

“Henceforth,” she said, “the tongue with which
thou hast cheated me shall be in bonds. No longer
wilt thou have the power to speak in greeting. To the
tongues of others shall thy tongue be slave, and from
this day until time shall cease thou shalt speak only to
repeat the last words that have fallen on thine ears.”

A maimed nymph indeed was Echo then, yet whole
in all that matters most, in that her merry heart was
still her own. But only for a little while did this endure.

Narcissus, the beautiful son of a nymph and a river
[Pg 176]
god, was hunting in a lonely forest one day when Echo
saw him pass. To her he seemed more fair than god or
man, and once she had seen him she knew that she must
gain his love or die. From that day on, she haunted
him like his shadow, gliding from tree to tree, nestling
down amongst thick fern and undergrowth, motionless
as one who stalks a wild thing, watching him afar off
while he rested, gladdening her eyes with his beauty.
So did she feed her hungering heart, and sought to find
contentment by looking on his face each day.

To her at length came a perfect moment when Narcissus
was separated from his companions in the chase
and, stopping suddenly where the evening sun chequered
the pathway of the forest with black and gold, heard the
nymph’s soft footfall on the rustling leaves.

“Who’s here?” he called.

“Here!” answered Echo.

Narcissus, peering amongst the trees’ long shadows
and seeing no one, called “Come!”

And “Come!” called the glad voice of Echo, while
the nymph, with fast-beating heart, felt that her day of
happiness had come indeed.

“Why do you shun me?” then called Narcissus.

“Why do you shun me?” Echo repeated.

“Let us join one another,” said the lad, and the
simple words seemed turned into song when Echo said
them over.

“Let us join one another!” she said, and not Eos
herself, as with rosy fingers she turns aside the dark
clouds of night, could be fairer than was the nymph as
[Pg 177]
she pushed aside the leaves of the trackless wood, and
ran forward with white arms outstretched to him who
was lord of her life.

SHE HAUNTED HIM LIKE HIS SHADOW

With cold eyes and colder heart the one she loved
beheld her.

“Away!” he cried, shrinking back as if from something
that he hated. “Away! I would rather die than
that you should have me!”

“Have me!” cried Echo pitifully, but she pled in
vain. Narcissus had no love to give her, and his scorn
filled her with shame. Thenceforth in the forest revels
she never more was seen, and the nymphs danced gaily
as ever, with never a care for her who had faded and gone
away as completely as though she were a blossom in
the passing of spring. In the solitude of mountain
cliffs and caves and rocky places, and in the loneliest
depths of the forest, Echo hid her grief, and when the
winds blew through the dark branches of the trees at
night, moaning and sighing, they could hear far below
them the voice of Echo repeating their lamentations.
For her, long nights followed hopeless days, and nights
and days only told her that her love was all in vain.
Then came a night when the winds no longer saw the
figure of the nymph, white and frail as a broken flower,
crouching close to the rocks they passed over. Grief
had slain the body of Echo. Only her voice was left
to repeat their mocking laughter, their wistful sighs—only
her voice that lives on still though all the old gods
are gone, and but few there are who know her story.

Heartwhole and happy, Narcissus, slayer of happiness,
[Pg 178]
went on his way, and other nymphs besides fair Echo
suffered from loving him in vain. One nymph, less
gentle than Echo, poured the tale of her love that was
scorned into the sympathetic ears of the goddess of Love,
and implored her to punish Narcissus.

Hot and tired from the chase, Narcissus sought one
day a lonely pool in the woods, there to rest and to quench
his thirst.

As he stooped down to drink, a face looked at his
through the crystal clear water, and a pair of beautiful
eyes met his own. His surprise and joy at the sight of
what he felt sure must be the most beautiful creature
on earth, was evidently shared by the nymph of the
pool, who gazed fearlessly up at him.

Round her head she had a nimbus of curls than which
that of Adonis—nay, of the sun-god himself, was not
more perfect, while her eyes were like the brown pools
of water in a rippling mountain stream, flecked with
sunshine, yet with depths untold. When Narcissus
smiled at her in rapture, her red lips also parted in a
smile. He stretched out his arms towards her, and her
arms were stretched to him. Almost trembling in his
delight, he slowly stooped to kiss her. Nearer she drew
to him, nearer still, but when his mouth would have
[Pg 179]
given itself to that other mouth that was formed like the
bow of Eros—a thing to slay hearts—only the chilly
water of the pool touched his lips, and the thing of his
delight vanished away. In passionate disappointment
Narcissus waited for her to return, and as soon as the
water of the pool grew still, once more he saw her exquisite
face gazing wistfully up into his. Passionately
he pled with the beautiful creature—spoke of his love—besought
her to have pity on him, but although the face
in the pool reflected his every look of adoration and of
longing, time and again he vainly tried to clasp in his
arms what was but the mirrored likeness of himself.

In full measure had the avenging goddess meted out
to Narcissus the restless longing of unsatisfied love.
By day and by night he haunted the forest pool, and ere
long the face that looked back at his was pale as a lily
in the dawn. When the moonbeams came straying
down through the branches and all the night was still,
they found him kneeling by the pool, and the white face
that the water mirrored had the eyes of one of the things
of the woods to which a huntsman has given a mortal
wound. Mortally wounded he truly was, slain, like
many another since his day, by a hopeless love for what
was in truth but an image, and that an image of his own
creation. Even when his shade passed across the dark
Stygian river, it stooped over the side of the boat that
it might try to catch a glimpse of the beloved one in the
inky waters.

Echo and the other nymphs were avenged, yet when
they looked on the beautiful dead Narcissus, they were
[Pg 180]
filled with sorrow, and when they filled the air with
their lamentations, most piteously did the voice of Echo
repeat each mournful cry. Even the gods were pitiful,
and when the nymphs would have burned the body
on a funeral pyre which their own fair hands had built
for him, they sought it in vain. For the Olympians
had turned Narcissus into a white flower, the flower
that still bears his name and keeps his memory sweet.

Keats.

[Pg 181]

ICARUS

Fourteen years only have passed since our twentieth
century began. In those fourteen years how many a
father’s and mother’s heart has bled for the death of
gallant sons, greatly-promising, greatly-daring, who
have sought to rule the skies? With wings not well
enough tried, they have soared dauntlessly aloft, only
to add more names to the tragic list of those whose lives
have been sacrificed in order that the groping hands of
science may become sure, so that in time the sons of men
may sail through the heavens as fearlessly as their
fathers sailed through the seas.

High overhead we watch the monoplane, the great,
swooping thing, like a monster black-winged bird, and
our minds travel back to the story of Icarus, who died
so many years ago that there are those who say that his
story is but a foolish fable, an idle myth.

Dædalus, grandson of a king of Athens, was the
greatest artificer of his day. Not only as an architect
was he great, but as a sculptor he had the creative
power, not only to make men and women and animals
that looked alive, but to cause them to move and to be,
to all appearances, endowed with life. To him the
artificers who followed him owed the invention of the
axe, the wedge, the wimble, and the carpenter’s level,
[Pg 182]
and his restless mind was ever busy with new inventions.
To his nephew, Talus, or Perdrix, he taught all that
he himself knew of all the mechanical arts. Soon it
seemed that the nephew, though he might not excel his
uncle, equalled Dædalus in his inventive power. As
he walked by the seashore, the lad picked up the spine
of a fish, and, having pondered its possibilities, he took
it home, imitated it in iron, and so invented the saw.
A still greater invention followed this. While those
who had always thought that there could be none greater
than Dædalus were still acclaiming the lad, there came
to him the idea of putting two pieces of iron together,
connecting them at one end with a rivet, and sharpening
both ends, and a pair of compasses was made.
Louder still were the acclamations of the people. Surely
greater than Dædalus was here. Too much was this
for the artist’s jealous spirit.

One day they stood together on the top of the Acropolis,
and Dædalus, murder that comes from jealousy in
his heart, threw his nephew down. Down, down he fell,
knowing well that he was going to meet a cruel death,
but Pallas Athené, protectress of all clever craftsmen,
came to his rescue. By her Perdrix was turned into the
bird that still bears his name, and Dædalus beheld Perdrix,
the partridge, rapidly winging his way to the far-off
fields. Since then, no partridge has ever built or roosted
in a high place, but has nestled in the hedge-roots and
amongst the standing corn, and as we mark it we can
see that its flight is always low.

For his crime Dædalus was banished from Athens,
and in the court of Minos, king of Crete, he found
[Pg 183]
a refuge. He put all his mighty powers at the
service of Minos, and for him designed an intricate
labyrinth which, like the river Meander, had neither
beginning nor ending, but ever returned on itself in hopeless
intricacy. Soon he stood high in the favour of the
king, but, ever greedy for power, he incurred, by one of
his daring inventions, the wrath of Minos. The angry
monarch threw him into prison, and imprisoned along
with him his son, Icarus. But prison bars and
locks did not exist that were strong enough to
baffle this master craftsman, and from the tower in
which they were shut, Dædalus and his son were not
long in making their escape. To escape from Crete
was a less easy matter. There were many places in
that wild island where it was easy for the father and
son to hide, but the subjects of Minos were mostly
mariners, and Dædalus knew well that all along the shore
they kept watch lest he should make him a boat, hoist
on it one of the sails of which he was part inventor, and
speed away to safety like a sea-bird driven before the
gale. Then did there come to Dædalus, the pioneer
of inventions, the great idea that by his skill he might
make a way for himself and his son through another
element than water. And he laughed aloud in his
hiding place amongst the cypresses on the hillside at
the thought of how he would baffle the simple sailormen
who watched each creek and beach down on the shore.
Mockingly, too, did he think of King Minos, who had
dared to pit his power against the wits and skill of
Dædalus, the mighty craftsman.

Many a Cretan bird was sacrificed before the task
[Pg 184]
which the inventor had set himself was accomplished.
In a shady forest on the mountains he fashioned light
wooden frames and decked them with feathers, until at
length they looked like the pinions of a great eagle, or of
a swan that flaps its majestic way from lake to river.
Each feather was bound on with wax, and the mechanism
of the wings was so perfect a reproduction of that of the
wings from which the feathers had been plucked, that on
the first day that he fastened them to his back and spread
them out, Dædalus found that he could fly even as the
bird flew. Two pairs he made; having tested one pair, a
second pair was made for Icarus, and, circling round him
like a mother bird that teaches her nestlings how to
fly, Dædalus, his heart big with the pride of invention,
showed Icarus how he might best soar upwards to the
sun or dive down to the blue sea far below, and how he
might conquer the winds and the air currents of the sky
and make them his servants.

That was a joyous day for father and son, for the
father had never before drunk deeper of the intoxicating
wine of the gods—Success—and for the lad it was all
pure joy. Never before had he known freedom and
power so utterly glorious. As a little child he had
watched the birds fly far away over the blue hills to
where the sun was setting, and had longed for wings
that he might follow them in their flight. At times,
in his dreams, he had known the power, and in his
dreaming fancy had risen from the cumbering earth
and soared high above the trees and fields on strong
pinions that bore him away to the fair land of heart’s
desire—to the Islands of the Blessed. But when Sleep
[Pg 185]
left him and the dreams silently slipped out before the
coming of the light of day, and the boy sprang from
his couch and eagerly spread his arms as, in his dreams,
he had done, he could no longer fly. Disappointment
and unsatisfied longing ever came with his waking hours.
Now all that had come to an end, and Dædalus was
glad and proud as well to watch his son’s joy and his fearless
daring. One word of counsel only did he give him.

“Beware, dear son of my heart,” he said, “lest in
thy new-found power thou seekest to soar even to the
gates of Olympus. For as surely as the scorching rays
from the burnished wheels of the chariot of Apollo
smite thy wings, the wax that binds on thy feathers
will melt, and then will come upon thee and on me woe
unutterable.”

In his dreams that night Icarus flew, and when he
awoke, fearing to find only the haunting remembrance
of a dream, he found his father standing by the side of
his bed of soft leaves under the shadowy cypresses,
ready to bind on his willing shoulders the great pinions
that he had made.

Gentle Dawn, the rosy-fingered, was slowly making
her way up from the East when Dædalus and Icarus
began their flight. Slowly they went at first, and the
goat-herds who tended their flocks on the slopes of
Mount Ida looked up in fear when they saw the
dark shadows of their wings and marked the monster
birds making their way out to sea. From the river
beds the waterfowl arose from the reeds, and with great
outcry flew with all their swiftness to escape them.
And down by the seashore the mariners’ hearts sank
[Pg 186]
within them as they watched, believing that a sight so
strange must be a portent of disaster. Homewards they
went in haste to offer sacrifices on the altars of Poseidon,
ruler of the deep.

Samos and Delos were passed on the left and
Lebynthos on the right, long ere the sun-god had
started on his daily course, and as the mighty wings
of Icarus cleft the cold air, the boy’s slim body grew
chilled, and he longed for the sun’s rays to turn the
waters of the Ægean Sea over which he flew from green-grey
into limpid sapphire and emerald and burning gold.
Towards Sicily he and his father bent their course, and
when they saw the beautiful island afar off lying like
a gem in the sea, Apollo made the waves in which it lay,
for it a fitting setting. With a cry of joy Icarus marked
the sun’s rays paint the chill water, and Apollo looked
down at the great white-winged bird, a snowy swan
with the face and form of a beautiful boy, who sped
exulting onwards, while a clumsier thing, with wings of
darker hue, followed less quickly, in the same line of
flight. As the god looked, the warmth that radiated
from his chariot touched the icy limbs of Icarus as with
the caressing touch of gentle, life-giving hands. Not
long before, his flight had lagged a little, but now it
seemed as if new life was his. Like a bird that wheels
and soars and dives as if for lightness of heart, so did
Icarus, until each feather of his plumage had a sheen of
silver and of gold. Down, down, he darted, so near
the water that almost the white-tipped waves caught
at his wings as he skimmed over them. Then up, up,
up he soared, ever higher, higher still, and when he saw
[Pg 187]
the radiant sun-god smiling down on him, the warning
of Dædalus was forgotten. As he had excelled other
lads in foot races, now did Icarus wish to excel the
birds themselves. Dædalus he left far behind, and still
upwards he mounted. So strong he felt, so fearless
was he, that to him it seemed that he could storm
Olympus, that he could call to Apollo as he swept past
him in his flight, and dare him to race for a wager from
the Ægean Sea to where the sun-god’s horses took their
nightly rest by the trackless seas of the unknown West.

In terror his father watched him, and as he called
to him in a voice of anguished warning that was drowned
by the whistling rush of the air currents through the
wings of Icarus and the moist whisper of the clouds as
through them he cleft a way for himself, there befell
the dreaded thing. It seemed as though the strong
wings had begun to lose their power. Like a wounded
bird Icarus fluttered, lunged sidewise from the straight,
clean line of his flight, recovered himself, and fluttered
again. And then, like the bird into whose soft breast
the sure hand of a mighty archer has driven an arrow,
downwards he fell, turning over and yet turning again,
downwards, ever downwards, until he fell with a plunge
into the sea that still was radiant in shining emerald and
translucent blue.

Then did the car of Apollo drive on. His rays had
slain one who was too greatly daring, and now they
fondled the little white feathers that had fallen from
the broken wings and floated on the water like the
petals of a torn flower.

On the dead, still face of Icarus they shone, and they
[Pg 188]
spangled as if with diamonds the wet plumage that still,
widespread, bore him up on the waves.

Stricken at heart was Dædalus, but there was no
time to lament his son’s untimely end, for even now
the black-prowed ships of Minos might be in pursuit.
Onward he flew to safety, and in Sicily built a temple to
Apollo, and there hung up his wings as a propitiatory
offering to the god who had slain his son.

And when grey night came down on that part of the
sea that bears the name of Icarus to this day, still there
floated the body of the boy whose dreams had come
true. For only a little while had he known the exquisite
realisation of dreamed-of potentialities, for only
a few hours tasted the sweetness of perfect pleasure,
and then, by an over-daring flight, had lost it all for ever.

The sorrowing Nereids sang a dirge over him as he
was swayed gently hither and thither by the tide, and
when the silver stars came out from the dark firmament
of heaven and were reflected in the blackness of
the sea at night, it was as though a velvet pall, silver-decked
in his honour, was spread around the slim white
body with its outstretched snowy wings.

So much had he dared—so little accomplished.

Is it not the oft-told tale of those who have followed
Icarus? Yet who can say that gallant youth has lived
in vain when, as Icarus did, he has breasted the very skies,
has flown with fearless heart and soul to the provinces of
the deathless gods?—when, even for the space of a few
of the heart-beats of Time, he has tasted supreme power—the
ecstasy of illimitable happiness?

[Pg 189]

CLYTIE

The sunbeams are basking on the high walls of the old
garden—smiling on the fruit that grows red and golden
in their warmth. The bees are humming round the
bed of purple heliotrope, and drowsily murmuring in
the shelter of the soft petals of the blush roses whose
sweetness brings back the fragrance of days that are
gone. On the old grey sundial the white-winged pigeons
sleepily croon as they preen their snowy plumage, and
the Madonna lilies hang their heads like a procession
of white-robed nuns who dare not look up from telling
their beads until the triumphal procession of an all-conquering
warrior has gone by. What can they think of
that long line of tall yellow flowers by the garden wall,
who turn their faces sunwards with an arrogant assurance,
and give stare for stare to golden-haired Apollo as
he drives his blazing car triumphant through the high
heavens?

“Sunflowers” is the name by which we know
those flamboyant blossoms which somehow fail so
wholly to suggest the story of Clytie, the nymph whose
destruction came from a faithful, unrequited love.
She was a water-nymph, a timid, gentle being who frequented
lonely streams, and bathed where the blue dragon-flies
dart across the white water-lilies in pellucid lakes.
In the shade of the tall poplar trees and the silvery
[Pg 190]
willows she took her midday rest, and feared the hours
when the flowers drooped their heads and the rippling
water lost its coolness before the fierce glare of the sun.

But there came a day when, into the dark pool
by which she sat, Apollo the Conqueror looked down
and mirrored his face. And nevermore did she hide
from the golden-haired god who, from the moment
when she had seen in the water the picture of his radiant
beauty, became the lord and master of her heart and
soul. All night she awaited his coming, and the Dawn
saw her looking eastward for the first golden gleams
from the wheels of his chariot. All day she followed
him with her longing gaze, nor did she ever cease to
feast her eyes upon his beauty until the last reflection of
his radiance had faded from the western sky.

Such devotion might have touched the heart of the
sun-god, but he had no wish to own a love for which he
had not sought. The nymph’s adoration irked him, nor
did pity come as Love’s pale substitute when he marked
how, day by day, her face grew whiter and more white,
and her lovely form wasted away. For nine days,
without food or drink, she kept her shamed vigil. Only
one word of love did she crave. Unexacting in the
humility of her devotion, she would gratefully have
nourished her hungry heart upon one kindly glance.
But Apollo, full of scorn and anger, lashed up his fiery
steeds as he each day drove past her, nor deigned for her
a glance more gentle than that which he threw on the
satyrs as they hid in the dense green foliage of the
shadowy woods.

[Pg 191]
Half-mocking, Diana said, “In truth the fair nymph
who throws her heart’s treasures at the feet of my
golden-locked brother that he may trample on them, is
coming to look like a faded flower!” And, as she spoke,
the hearts of the other immortal dwellers in Olympus
were stirred with pity.

“A flower she shall be!” they said, “and for all
time shall she live, in life that is renewed each year when
the earth stirs with the quickening of spring. The long
summer days shall she spend forever in fearless worship
of the god of her love!”

And, as they willed, the nymph passed out of her
human form, and took the form of a flower, and evermore—the
emblem of constancy—does she gaze with
fearless ardour on the face of her love.

Some there are who say that not into the bold-faced
sunflower did her metamorphosis take place, but into
that purple heliotrope that gives an exquisite offering
of fragrance to the sun-god when his warm rays touch
it. And in the old walled garden, while the bees
drowsily hum, and the white pigeons croon, and the
dashing sunflower gives Apollo gaze for gaze, and the
scent of the mignonette mingles with that of clove pinks
and blush roses, the fragrance of the heliotrope is, above
all, worthy incense to be offered upon his altar by the
devout lover of a god.

[Pg 192]

THE CRANES OF IBYCUS

Shakespeare.

Ibycus, the poet friend of Apollo, was a happy man as
he journeyed on foot through the country where the
wild flowers grew thick and the trees were laden with
blossom towards the city of Corinth. His tuneful voice
sang snatches of song of his own making, and ever and
again he would try how his words and music sounded on
his lyre. He was light of heart, because ever had he
thought of good, and not evil, and had always sung only
of great and noble deeds and of those things that helped
his fellow-men. And now he went to Corinth for the
great chariot-races, and for the great contest of musicians
where every true poet and musician in Greece was sure to
be found.

It was the time of the return to earth of Adonis and
of Proserpine, and as he was reverently about to enter
the sacred grove of Poseidon, where the trees grew
thick, and saw, crowning the height before him, the
glittering towers of Corinth, he heard, overhead, the
harsh cries of some other returned exiles. Ibycus
smiled, as he looked up and beheld the great flock of
grey birds, with their long legs and strong, outstretched
wings, come back from their winter sojourn on the golden
[Pg 193]
sands of Egypt, to dance and beck and bow to each
other by the marshes of his homeland.

“Welcome back, little brothers!” he cried. “May
you and I both meet with naught but kindness from the
people of this land!”

And when the cranes again harshly cried, as if in
answer to his greeting, the poet walked gaily on, further
into the shadow of that dark wood out of which he was
never to pass as living man. Joyous, and fearing no
evil, he had been struck and cast to the ground by cruel
and murderous hands ere ever he knew that two robbers
were hidden in a narrow pass where the brushwood grew
thick. With all his strength he fought, but his arms
were those of a musician and not of a warrior, and very
soon he was overpowered by those who assailed him.
He cried in vain to gods and to men for help, and in his
final agony he heard once more the harsh voices of the
migratory birds and the rush of their speeding wings.
From the ground, where he bled to death, he looked up
to them.

“Take up my cause, dear cranes!” he said, “since
no voice but yours answers my cry!”

And the cranes screamed hoarsely and mournfully
as if in farewell, as they flapped their way towards
Corinth and left the poet lying dead.

When his body was found, robbed and terribly
wounded, from all over Greece, where he was known
and loved, there uprose a great clamour of lamentation.

“Is it thus I find you restored to me?” said he who
had expected him in Corinth as his honoured guest;
[Pg 194]
“I who hoped to place the victor’s laurels on your head
when you triumphed in the temple of song!”

And all those whom the loving personality of Ibycus
and the charm of his music had made his friends were
alert and eager to avenge so foul a murder. But none
knew how the wicked deed had come to pass—none,
save the cranes.

Then came the day to which Ibycus had looked
forward with such joy, when thousands upon thousands
of his countrymen sat in the theatre at Cyprus and
watched a play that stirred their hearts within them.

The theatre had for roof the blue vault of heaven; the
sun served for footlights and for the lights above
the heads of those who acted. The three Furies—the
Eumenides—with their hard and cruel faces and
snaky locks, and with blood dripping from their eyes,
were represented by actors so great that the hearts of
their beholders trembled within them. In their dread
hands lay the punishment of murder, of inhospitality,
of ingratitude, and of all the cruellest and basest of
crimes. Theirs was the duty of hurrying the doomed
spirits entrusted to their merciless care over the Phlegethon,
the river of fire that flows round Hades, and
through the brazen gates that led to Torment, and their
robes were robes worn

Virgil.

In solemn cadence, while the thousands of beholders
watched and listened enthralled, the Furies walked
round the theatre and sang their song of terror:

[Pg 195]
“Woe! woe! to him whose hands are soiled with
blood! The darkness shall not hide him, nor shall his
dread secret lie hidden even in the bowels of the earth!
He shall not seek by flight to escape us, for vengeance
is ours, and swifter than a hawk that strikes its quarry
shall we strike. Unwearying we pursue, nor are our
swift feet and our avenging arms made slow by pity.
Woe! woe! to the shedder of innocent blood, for nor
peace nor rest is his until we have hurried his tormented
soul down to torture that shall endure everlastingly!”

As the listeners heard the dirge of doom, there were
none who did not think of Ibycus, the gentle-hearted
poet, so much beloved and so foully done to death, and
in the tensity of the moment when the voices ceased, a
great thrill passed over the multitudes as a voice, shrill
with amazed horror, burst from one of the uppermost
benches:

“See there! see there! behold, comrade, the cranes of
Ibycus!”

Every eye looked upwards, and, harshly crying,
there passed overhead the flock of cranes to whom the
poet had entrusted his dying message. Then, like an
electric shock, there came to all those who beheld the
knowledge that he who had cried aloud was the murderer
of Ibycus.

“Seize him! seize him!” cried in unison the
voices of thousands. “Seize the man, and him to whom
he spoke!”

Frantically the trembling wretch tried to deny his
words, but it was too late. The roar of the multitudes
[Pg 196]
was as that of an angry sea that hungers for its prey
and will not be denied. He who had spoken and him
to whom he spoke were seized by a score of eager
hands.

In white-faced terror, because the Furies had hunted
them down, they made confession of their crime and
were put to death. And the flock of grey-plumaged,
rosy-headed cranes winged their way on to the marshes,
there to beck and bow to each other, and to dance in the
golden sunset, well content because their message was
delivered, and Ibycus, the poet-musician who had given
them welcome, was avenged.

[Pg 197]

SYRINX

Fiona Macleod.

As the evening shadows lengthen, and the night wind
softly steals through the trees, touching with restless
fingers the still waters of the little lochans that would
fain have rest, there can be heard a long, long whisper,
like a sigh. There is no softer, sadder note to be heard
in all Pan’s great orchestra, nor can one marvel that it
should be so, for the whisper comes from the reeds who
gently sway their heads while the wind passes over them
as they grow by lonely lake or river.

This is the story of Syrinx, the reed, as Ovid has told
it to us.

In Arcadia there dwelt a nymph whose name was
Syrinx. So fair she was that for her dear sake fauns
and satyrs forgot to gambol, and sat in the green woods
in thoughtful stillness, that they might see her as she
passed. But for none of them had Syrinx a word of
kindness. She had no wish for love.

Lady Margaret Sackville.

[Pg 198]
To one only of the gods did she give her loyal allegiance.
She worshipped Diana, and with her followed
the chase. As she lightly sped through the forest she
might have been Diana herself, and there were those
who said they would not know nymph from goddess,
but that the goddess carried a silver bow, while that of
Syrinx was made of horn. Fearless, and without a care
or sorrow, Syrinx passed her happy days. Not for all
the gold of Midas would she have changed places with
those love-lorn nymphs who sighed their hearts out for
love of a god or of a man. Heartwhole, fancy free, gay
and happy and lithe and strong, as a young boy whose
joy it is to run and to excel in the chase, was Syrinx,
whose white arms against the greenwood trees dazzled
the eyes of the watching fauns when she drew back her
bow to speed an arrow at the stag she had hunted since
early dawn. Each morning that she awoke was the
morning of a day of joy; each night that she lay down
to rest, it was to sleep as a child who smiles in his sleep
at the remembrance of a perfect day.

But to Syrinx, who knew no fear, Fear came at last.
She was returning one evening from the shadowy hills,
untired by the chase that had lasted for many an hour,
when, face to face, she met with one whom hitherto she
had only seen from afar. Of him the other nymphs spoke
often. Who was so great as Pan?—Pan, who ruled the
woods. None could stand against Pan. Those who defied
him must ever come under his power in the end. He
was Fear; he was Youth; he was Joy; he was Love; he
was Beast; he was Power; he was Man; he was God.
[Pg 199]
He was Life itself. So did they talk, and Syrinx listened
with a smile. Not Pan himself could bring Fear to her.

Yet when he met her in the silent loneliness of a
great forest and stood in her path and gazed on her with
eyes of joyous amazement that one so fair should be in
his kingdom without his having had knowledge of it,
Syrinx felt something come to her heart that never
before had assailed it.

Pan’s head was crowned with sharp pine-leaves. His
face was young and beautiful, and yet older than the
mountains and the seas. Sadness and joy were in his
eyes at the same time, and at the same moment there
looked out from them unutterable tenderness and merciless
cruelty. For only a little space of time did he stand
and hold her eyes with his own, and then in low caressing
voice he spoke, and his words were like the song of a
bird to his mate, like the call of the earth to the sun in
spring, like the lap of the waves when they tell the rocks
of their eternal longing. Of love he spoke, of love that
demanded love, and of the nymph’s most perfect beauty.
Yet as he spoke, the unknown thing came and smote
with icy hands the heart of Syrinx.

“Ah! I have Fear! I have Fear!” she cried, and
more cruel grew the cruelty in the eyes of Pan, but his
words were still the words of passionate tenderness.
Like a bird that trembles, helpless, before the serpent
that would slay it, so did Syrinx the huntress stand, and
her face in the shade of the forest was like a white lily in
the night. But when the god would have drawn her
close to him and kissed her red lips, Fear leapt to Terror,
[Pg 200]
and Terror winged her feet. Never in the chase with
Diana had she run as now she ran. But like a rushing
storm did Pan pursue her, and when he laughed she
knew that what the nymphs had said was true—he was
Power—he was Fear—he was Beast—he was Life itself.
The darkness of the forest swiftly grew more dark. The
climbing trails of ivy and the fragrant creeping plants
caught her flying feet and made her stumble. Branches
and twigs grew alive and snatched at her and baulked
her as she passed. Trees blocked her path. All Nature
had grown cruel, and everywhere there seemed to her
to be a murmur of mocking laughter, laughter from the
creatures of Pan, echoing the merciless merriment of
their lord and master. Nearer he came, ever nearer.
Almost she could feel his breath on her neck; but
even as he stretched out his arms to seize the nymph
whose breath came with sobs like that of a young
doe spent by the chase, they reached the brink of
the river Ladon. And to her “watery sisters” the
nymphs of the river, Syrinx breathed a desperate prayer
for pity and for help, then stumbled forward, a quarry
run to the death.

With an exultant shout, Pan grasped her as she fell.
And lo, in his arms he held no exquisite body with
fiercely beating heart, but a clump of slender reeds.
Baffled he stood for a little space, and, as he stood, the
savagery of the beast faded from his eyes that were
fathomless as dark mountain tarns where the sun-rays
seldom come, and there came into them a man’s
unutterable woe. At the reeds by the river he gazed,
[Pg 201]
and sighed a great sigh, the sigh that comes from the
heart of a god who thinks of the pain of the world. Like
a gentle zephyr the sigh breathed through the reeds,
and from the reeds there came a sound as of the sobbing
sorrow of the world’s desire. Then Pan drew his sharp
knife, and with it he cut seven of the reeds that grew
by the murmuring river.

“Thus shalt thou still be mine, my Syrinx,” he said.

Deftly he bound them together, cut them into unequal
lengths, and fashioned for himself an instrument,
that to this day is called the Syrinx, or Pan’s Pipes.

So did the god make music.

And all that night he sat by the swift-flowing river,
and the music from his pipe of reeds was so sweet and
yet so passing sad, that it seemed as though the very
heart of the earth itself were telling of its sadness. Thus
Syrinx still lives—still dies:

and as the evening light comes down on silent places
and the trembling shadows fall on the water, we can
hear her mournful whisper through the swaying reeds,
brown and silvery-golden, that grow by lonely lochan
and lake and river.

[Pg 202]

THE DEATH OF ADONIS

Lewis Morris.

The ideally beautiful woman, a subject throughout the
centuries for all the greatest powers of sculptor’s and
painter’s art, is Venus, or Aphrodite, goddess of beauty
and of love. And he who shares with her an unending
supremacy of perfection of form is not one of the gods,
her equals, but a mortal lad, who was the son of a king.

As Aphrodite sported one day with Eros, the little god
of love, by accident she wounded herself with one of his
arrows. And straightway there came into her heart a
strange longing and an ache such as the mortal victims
of the bow of Eros knew well. While still the ache
remained, she heard, in a forest of Cyprus, the baying
of hounds and the shouts of those who urged them on in
the chase. For her the chase possessed no charms, and
she stood aside while the quarry burst through the
branches and thick undergrowth of the wood, and the
hounds followed in hot pursuit. But she drew her
breath sharply, and her eyes opened wide in amazed
gladness, when she looked on the perfect beauty of the
fleet-footed hunter, who was only a little less swift than
the shining spear that sped from his hand with the sureness
of a bolt from the hand of Zeus. And she knew
[Pg 203]
that this must be none other than Adonis, son of the
king of Paphos, of whose matchless beauty she had
heard not only the dwellers on earth, but the Olympians
themselves speak in wonder. While gods and men were
ready to pay homage to his marvellous loveliness, to
Adonis himself it counted for nothing. But in the
vigour of his perfect frame he rejoiced; in his fleetness
of foot, in the power of that arm that Michael Angelo
has modelled, in the quickness and sureness of his aim,
for the boy was a mighty hunter with a passion for the
chase.

Aphrodite felt that her heart was no longer her own,
and knew that the wound that the arrow of Eros had
dealt would never heal until she knew that Adonis loved
her. No longer was she to be found by the Cytherian
shores or in those places once held by her most dear,
and the other gods smiled when they beheld her vying
with Diana in the chase and following Adonis as he
pursued the roe, the wolf, and the wild boar through the
dark forest and up the mountain side. The pride of the
goddess of love must often have hung its head. For
her love was a thing that Adonis could not understand.
He held her “Something better than his dog, a little
dearer than his horse,” and wondered at her whim to
follow his hounds through brake and marsh and lonely
forest. His reckless courage was her pride and her
torture. Because he was to her so infinitely dear, his
path seemed ever bestrewn with dangers. But when
she spoke to him with anxious warning and begged him
to beware of the fierce beasts that might one day turn
[Pg 204]
on him and bring him death, the boy laughed mockingly
and with scorn.

There came at last a day when she asked him what
he did on the morrow, and Adonis told her with sparkling
eyes that had no heed for her beauty, that he had word
of a wild boar, larger, older, more fierce than any he
had ever slain, and which, before the chariot of Diana
next passed over the land of Cyprus, would be lying
dead with a spear-wound through it.

With terrible foreboding, Aphrodite tried to dissuade
him from his venture.

Shakespeare.

To all her warnings, Adonis would but give smiles.
Ill would it become him to slink abashed away before
the fierceness of an old monster of the woods, and,
laughing in the pride of a whole-hearted boy at a woman’s
idle fears, he sped homewards with his hounds.

With the gnawing dread of a mortal woman in her
soul, Aphrodite spent the next hours. Early she sought
the forest that she might again plead with Adonis, and
[Pg 205]
maybe persuade him, for love of her, to give up the
perilous chase because she loved him so.

But even as the rosy gates of the Dawn were opening,
Adonis had begun his hunt, and from afar off the goddess
could hear the baying of his hounds. Yet surely their
clamour was not that of hounds in full cry, nor was it the
triumphant noise that they so fiercely make as they pull
down their vanquished quarry, but rather was it baying,
mournful as that of the hounds of Hecate. Swift as a
great bird, Aphrodite reached the spot from whence
came the sound that made her tremble.

Amidst the trampled brake, where many a hound lay
stiff and dead, while others, disembowelled by the tusks
of the boar, howled aloud in mortal agony, lay Adonis.
As he lay, he “knew the strange, slow chill which,
stealing, tells the young that it is death.”

And as, in extremis, he thought of past things, manhood
came to Adonis and he knew something of the
meaning of the love of Aphrodite—a love stronger than
life, than time, than death itself. His hounds and his
spear seemed but playthings now. Only the eternities
remained—bright Life, and black-robed Death.

Very still he lay, as though he slept; marble-white,
and beautiful as a statue wrought by the hand of a god.
But from the cruel wound in the white thigh, ripped
open by the boar’s profaning tusk, the red blood dripped,
in rhythmic flow, crimsoning the green moss under him.
With a moan of unutterable anguish, Aphrodite threw
herself beside him, and pillowed his dear head in her
tender arms. Then, for a little while, life’s embers
[Pg 206]
flickered up, his cold lips tried to form themselves into
a smile of understanding and held themselves up to hers.
And, while they kissed, the soul of Adonis passed away.

Bion.

Passionately the god besought Zeus to give her back
her lost love, and when there was no answer to her
prayers, she cried in bitterness: “Yet shall I keep a
memorial of Adonis that shall be to all everlasting!”
And, as she spoke, her tears and his blood, mingling
together, were turned into flowers.

“A tear the Paphian sheds for each blood-drop of
Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to
flowers. The blood brings forth the roses, the tears, the
wind-flower.”

Yet, even then, the grief of Aphrodite knew no
abatement. And when Zeus, wearied with her crying,
heard her, to his amazement, beg to be allowed to go
down to the Shades that she might there endure eternal
twilight with the one of her heart, his soul was softened.

“Never can it be that the Queen of Love and of
[Pg 207]
Beauty leaves Olympus and the pleasant earth to tread
for evermore the dark Cocytus valley,” he said. “Nay,
rather shall I permit the beauteous youth of thy love to
return for half of each year from the Underworld that
thou and he may together know the joy of a love that
hath reached fruition.”

Thus did it come to pass that when dark winter’s
gloom was past, Adonis returned to the earth and to the
arms of her who loved him.