A Book of Myths
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far-back, of lives in many stars.
O beauty lone and like a candle clear
In this dark country of the world! Thou art
My woe, my early light, my music dying."
Stephen Phillips.
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?
"Yet I, being human, human sorrow miss."
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 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:
"But if I live with Idas, then we two
On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand
In odours of the open field, and live
In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch
The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun.
And he shall give me passionate children, not
Some radiant god that will despise me quite,
But clambering limbs and little hearts that err.
... So shall we live,
And though the first sweet sting of love be past,
The sweet that almost venom is; though youth,
With tender and extravagant delight,
The first and secret kiss by twilight hedge,
The insane farewell repeated o'er and o'er,
Pass off; there shall succeed a faithful peace;
Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind,
Durable from the daily dust of life."
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:
"And thou beautiful god, in that far time,
When in thy setting sweet thou gazest down
On his grey head, wilt thou remember then
That once I pleased thee, that I once was young?"
So did her voice cease, and on the earth fell sudden darkness. For to
Apollo had come the shame of love 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.
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
"Have glimpse of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
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 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 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.
"The Earth seemed to love her
And Heaven smiled above her."
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 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 beloved!"
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 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.
"And now from their fountains
In Enna's mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks,
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more."
Shelley.
PERSEUS THE HERO
"We call such a man a hero in English to this day, and
call it a 'heroic' thing to suffer pain and grief, that
we may do good to our fellow-men."
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. Danae 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 Danae 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 Danae was placed, to drag out her weary days.