help him. Endymion fulfills this prophecy, and aids in restoring Glaucus to youth, and
Scylla and all the drowned lovers to life.
[Footnote *: See Page 325.]
The following is Glaucus's account of his feelings after his "sea- change: " -
"I plunged for life or death. To interknit
One's senses with so dense a breathing stuff
Might seem a work of pain; so not enough
Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt,
And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dwelt
Whole days and days in sheer astonishment;
Forgetful utterly of self-intent,
Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow.
Then like a new-fledged bird that first doth show
His spreaded feathers to the morrow chill,
I tried in fear the pinions of my will.
'Twas freedom! and at once I visited
The ceaseless wonders of this ocean-bed," &c.
Keats.
Chapter VIII: Pygmalion, Dryope, Venus And Adonis, Apollo And
Hyacinthus
Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the
sex, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful
skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman came any where near it. It was
indeed the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be alive, and only prevented
from moving by modesty. His art was so perfect that it concealed itself and its product
looked like the workmanship of nature. Pygmalion admired his own work, and at last
fell in love with the counterfeit creation. Oftentimes he laid his hand upon it as if to
assure himself whether it were living or not, and could not even then believe that it was
only ivory. He caressed it, and gave it presents such as young girls love, - bright
shells and polished stones, little birds and flowers of various hues beads and amber.
He put raiment on its limbs, and jewels on its fingers, and a necklace about its neck.
To the ears he hung ear-rings, and strings of pearls upon the breast. Her dress
became her, and she looked not less charming than when unattired. He laid her on a
couch spread with cloths of Tyrian dye, and called her his wife, and put her head upon
a pillow of the softest feathers, as if she could enjoy their softness.
The festival of Venus was at hand, - a festival celebrated with great pomp at
Cyprus. Victims were offered, the altars smoked, and the odor of incense filled the air
When Pygmalion had performed his part in the solemnities, he stood before the altar
and timidly said, "Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, for my wife" - he
dared not say "my ivory virgin," but said instead - "one like my ivory virgin." Venus,
who was present at the festival, heard him and knew the thought he would have
uttered; and as an omen of her favor, caused the flame on the altar to shoot up thrice
in a fiery point into the air. When he returned home, he went to see his statue, and
leaning over the couch, gave a kiss to the mouth. It seemed to be warm. He pressed
its lips again, he laid his hand upon the limbs; the ivory felt soft to his touch. and
yielded to his fingers like the wax of Hymettus. While he stands astonished and glad,
though doubting, and fears he may be mistaken, again and again with a lover's ardor,
he touches the object of his hopes. It was indeed alive! The veins when pressed
yielded to the finger and again resumed their roundness. Then at last the votary of
Venus found words to thank the goddess, and pressed his lips upon lips as real as his
own. The virgin felt the kisses and blushed, and opening her timid eyes to the light,
fixed them at the same moment on her lover. Venus blessed the nuptials she had
formed, and from this union Paphos was born, from whom the city, sacred to Venus,
received its name.
Schiller, in his poem the Ideals, applies this tale of Pygmalion to the love of
nature in a youthful heart. The following translation is furnished by a friend: -
"As once with prayers in passion flowing,
Pygmalion embraced the stone,
Till from the frozen marble glowing,
The light of feeling o'er him shone,
So did I clasp with young devotion
Bright nature to a poet's heart;
Till breath and warmth and vital motion
Seemed through the statue form to dart.
"And then, in all my ardor sharing,
The silent form expression found;
Returned my kiss of youthful daring,
And understood my heart's quick sound.
Then lived for me the bright creation,
The silver rill with song was rife;
The trees, the roses shared sensation,
An echo of my boundless life."
S. G. B.
Dryope.
Dryope and Iole were sisters. The former was the wife of Andraemon, beloved
by her husband, and happy in the birth of her first child. One day the sisters strolled to
the bank of a stream that sloped gradually down to the water's edge, while the upland
was overgrown with myrtles. They were intending to gather flowers for forming garlands
for the altars of the nymphs, and Dryope carried her child at her bosom, a precious
burden, and nursed him as she walked. Near the water grew a lotus plant, full of purple
flowers. Dryope gathered some and offered them to the baby, and Iole was about to do
the same, when she perceived blood dropping from the places where her sister had
broken them off the stem. The plant was no other than the Nymph Lotis, who, running
from a base pursuer, had been changed into this form. This they learned from the
country people when it was too late.
Dryope, horror-struck when she perceived what she had done, would gladly have
hastened from the spot, but found her feet rooted to the ground. She tried to pull them
away, but moved nothing but her upper limbs. The woodiness crept upward, and by
degrees invested her body. In anguish she attempted to tear her hair, but found her
hands filled with leaves. The infant felt his mother's bosom begin to harden, and the milk
cease to flow. Iole looked on at the sad fate of her sister, and could render no
assistance. She embraced the growing trunk, as if she would hold back the advancing
wood, and would gladly have been enveloped in the same bark. At this moment,
Andraemon, the husband of Dryope, with her father, approached; and when they asked
for Dryope, Iole pointed them to the new-formed lotus. They embraced the trunk of the
yet warm tree, and showered their kisses on its leaves.
Now there was nothing left of Dryope but her face. Her tears still flowed and fell
on her leaves, and while she could she spoke. "I am not guilty. I deserve not this fate. I
have injured no one. If I speak falsely, may my foliage perish with drought and my trunk
be cut down and burned. Take this infant and give it to a nurse. Let it often be brought
and nursed under my branches, and play in my shade; and when he is old enough to
talk, let him be taught to call me mother, and to say with sadness, 'My mother lies hid
under this bark.' But bid him be careful of river banks, and beware how he plucks
flowers, remembering that every bush he sees may be a goddess in disguise. Farewell,
dear husband, and sister, and father. If you retain any love for me, let not the axe
wound me, nor the
flocks bite and tear my branches. Since I cannot stoop to you, climb
up hither and kiss me and while my lips continue to feel, lift up my child that I may kiss
him. I can speak no more, for already the bark advances up my neck, and will soon
shoot over me. You need not close my eyes, the bark will close them without your aid."
Then the lips ceased to move, and life was extinct; but the branches retained for some
time longer the vital heat.
Keats, in Endymion, alludes to Dryope, thus: -
"She took a lute from which there pulsing came
A lively prelude, fashioning the way
In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay
More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild
Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child;" &c.
Venus And Adonis.
Venus, playing one day with her boy Cupid, wounded her bosom with one of his
arrows. She pushed him away, but the wound was deeper than she thought. Before it
healed she beheld Adonis, and was captivated with him. She no longer took any interest
in her favorite resorts, - Paphos, and Cnidos, and Amathos, rich in metals. She
absented herself even from heaven, for Adonis was dearer to her than heaven. Him she
followed and bore him company. She who used to love to recline in the shade, with no
care but to cultivate her charms, now rambles through the woods and over the hills,
dressed like the huntress Diana; and calls her dogs, and chases hares and stags, or
other game that it is safe to hunt, but keeps clear of the wolves and bears, reeking with
the slaughter of the herd. She charged Adonis, too, to beware of such dangerous
animals. "Be brave towards the timid," said she; "courage against the courageous is not
safe. Beware how you expose yourself to danger, and put my happiness to risk. Attack
not the beasts that Nature has armed with weapons. I do not value your glory so high as
to consent to purchase it by such exposure. Your youth, and the beauty that charms
Venus, will not touch the hearts of lions and bristly boars. Think of their terrible claws
and prodigious strength! I hate the whole race of them. Do you ask me why?" Then she
told him the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes, who were changed into lions for their
ingratitude to her.
Having given him this warning, she mounted her chariot drawn by swans, and
drove away through the air. But Adonis was too noble to heed such counsels. The dogs
had roused a wild boar from his lair, and the youth threw his spear and wounded the
animal with a sidelong stroke. The beast drew out the weapon with his jaws, and rushed
after Adonis, who turned and ran; but the boar overtook him, and buried his tusks in his
side, and stretched him dying upon the plain.
Venus, in her swan-drawn chariot, had not yet reached Cyprus, when she heard
coming up through mid air the groans of her beloved, and turned her white-winged
coursers back to earth. As she drew near and saw from on high his lifeless body bathed
in blood, she alighted, and bending over it beat her breast and tore her hair.
Reproaching the Fates, she said, "Yet theirs shall be but a partial triumph; memorials of
my grief shall endure, and the spectacle of your death, my Adonis, and of my
lamentation shall be annually renewed. Your blood shall be changed into a flower; that
consolation none can envy me." Thus speaking, she sprinkled nectar on the blood; and
as they mingled, bubbles rose as in a pool, on which raindrops fall, and in an hour's time
there sprang up a flower of bloody hue like that of the pomegranate. But it is short-lived.
It is said the wind blows the blossoms open, and afterwards blows the petals away; so it
is called Anemone, or Wind Flower, from the cause which assists equally in its
production and its decay.
Milton alludes to the story of Venus and Adonis in his Comus. -
"Beds of hyacinth and roses
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits th' Assyrian queen;" &c.
Apollo And Hyacinthus.
Apollo was passionately fond of a youth named Hyacinthus. He accompanied
him in his sports, carried the nets when he went fishing, led the dogs when he went to
hunt, followed him in his excursions in the mountains, and neglected for him his lyre and
his arrows. One day they played a game of quoits together, and Apollo, heaving aloft
the discuss, with strength mingled with skill, sent it high and far. Hyacinthus watched it
as it flew, and excited with the sport ran forward to seize it, eager to make his throw,
when the quoit bounded from the earth and struck him in the forehead. He fainted and
fell. The god, as pale as himself, raised him and tried all his art to stanch the wound and
retain the flitting life, but all in vain; the hurt was past the power of medicine. As when
one has broken the stem of a lily in the garden it hangs its head and turns its flowers to
the earth, so the head of the dying boy, as if too heavy for his neck, fell over on his
shoulder. "Thou diest, Hyacinth," so spoke Phoebus, "robbed of thy youth by me. Thine
is the suffering, mine the crime. Would that I could die for thee! But since that may not
be, thou shalt live with me in memory and in song. My lyre shall celebrate thee, my song
shall tell thy fate, and thou shalt become 2 a flower inscribed with my regrets." While
Apollo spoke, behold the blood which had flowed on the ground and stained the
herbage, ceased to be blood; but a flower of hue more beautiful than the Tyrian sprang
up, resembling the lily, if it were not that this is purple and that silvery white. ^* And this
was not enough for Phoebus; but to confer still greater honor, he marked the petals with
his sorrow, and inscribed "Ah! ah!" upon them, as we see to this day. The flower bears
the name of Hyacinthus, and with every returning spring revives the memory of his fate.
[Footnote *: It is evidently not our modern hyacinth that is here described. It is
perhaps some species of iris, or perhaps of larkspur, or of pansy.]
It was said that Zephyrus, (the West-wind,) who was also fond of Hyacinthus and
jealous of his preference of Apollo, blew the quoit out of its course to make it strike
Hyacinthus. Keats alludes to this in his Endymion, where he describes the lookers-on at
the game of quoits: -
"Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side, pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him; Zephyr penitent,
Who now ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain."
An allusion to Hyacinthus will also be recognized in Milton's Lycidas: -
"Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe."
Chapter IX: Ceyx And Halcyone; Or, The Halcyon Birds
Ceyx was king of Thessaly, where he reigned in peace, without violence or
wrong. He was son of Hesperus, the Day-star, and the glow of his beauty reminded
one of his father. Halcyone the daughter of Aeolus was his wife, and devotedly
attached to him. Now Ceyx was in deep affliction for the loss of his brother, and direful
prodigies following his brother's death made him feel as if the gods were hostile to him.
He thought best therefore to make a voyage to Claros in Ionia, to consult the oracle of
through her frame, and her face grew deadly pale. "What fault of mine, dearest
husband, has turned your affection from me? Where is that love of me that used to be
uppermost in your thoughts? Have you learned to feel easy in the absence of
Halcyone? Would you rather have me away?" She also endeavored to discourage
him, by describing the violence of the winds, which she had known familiarly when she
lived at home in her father's house, Aeolus being the god of the winds, and having as
much as he could do to restrain them. "They rush together," said she, "with such fury
that fire flashes from the conflict. But if you must go," she added, "dear husband, let
me go with you, otherwise I shall suffer, not only the real evils which you must
encounter, but those also which my fears suggest."
These words weighed heavily on the mind of King Ceyx, and it was no less his
own wish than hers to take her with him, but he could not bear to expose her to the
dangers of the sea. He answered therefore consoling her as well as he could, and
finished with these words: "I promise, 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." When he had
thus spoken he ordered the vessel to be drawn out of the shiphouse, and the oars and
sails to be put aboard. When Halcyone saw these preparations she shuddered, as if
with a presentiment of evil. With tears and sobs she said farewell, and then fell
senseless to the ground.
Ceyx would still have lingered, but now the young men grasped their oars and
pulled vigorously through the waves, with long and measured strokes. Halcyone raised
her streaming eyes, and saw her husband standing on the deck, waving his hand to
her. She answered his signal till the vessel had receded so far that she could no
Age of Fable or Beauties of Mythology Page 9