A Book of Myths
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 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.
SYRINX
"Is it because the wild-wood passion still lingers in
our hearts, because still in our minds the voice of
Syrinx lingers in melancholy music, the music of regret
and longing, that for most of us there is so potent a
spell in running waters?"
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.
"But as for Love, truly I know him not,
I have passionately turned my lips therefrom,
And from that fate the careless gods allot."
Lady Margaret Sackville.
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. 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, 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, 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:
"A note of music by its own breath slain,
Blown tenderly from the frail heart of a reed,"
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.
THE DEATH OF ADONIS
"The fairest youth that ever maiden's dream conceived."
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 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 on him and bring