A Book of Myths
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 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 meme! C'est la lutte eternelle de la
force brutale contre l'intelligence douce et sublime inspiree 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.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Kingsley.
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 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 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 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.
"I espouse thee for my tree:
Be thou the prize of honour and renown;
The deathless poet, and the poem, crown;
Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,
And, after poets, be by victors worn."
Ovid (_Dryden's translation_).
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 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
"Straight he rose from earth and down the wind
Went glittering 'twixt the blue sky and the sea."
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 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