“Mistress, who loveth the haunts of Golgi, and Idalium, and high-peaked
Eryx, Aphrodite that playest with gold! how have the delicate-footed
Hours, after twelve months, brought thy Adonis back to thee from the
ever-flowing Acheron! Tardiest of the immortals are the boon Hours, but
all mankind wait their approach with longing, for they ever bring
something with them. O Cypris, Dione’s child! thou didst change—so is
the story among men—Berenice from mortal to immortal, by dropping
ambrosia into her fair bosom; and in gratitude to thee for this, O thou
of many names and many temples! Berenice’s daughter, Arsinoe, lovely
Helen’s living counterpart, makes much of Adonis with all manner of
braveries.
“All fruits that the tree bears are laid before him, all treasures of
the garden in silver baskets, and alabaster boxes, gold-inlaid, of
Syrian ointment; and all confectionery that cunning women make on their
kneading-tray, kneading up every sort of flowers with white meal, and
all that they make of sweet honey and delicate oil, and all winged and
creeping things are here set before him. And there are built for him
green bowers with wealth of tender anise, and little boy-loves flutter
about over them, like young nightingales trying their new wings on the
tree, from bough to bough. Oh, the ebony, the gold, the eagle of white
ivory that bears aloft his cup-bearer to Cronos-born Zeus! And up there,
see! a second couch strewn for lovely Adonis, scarlet coverlets softer
than sleep itself (so Miletus and the Samian wool-grower will say);
Cypris has hers, and the rosy-armed Adonis has his, that eighteen or
nineteen-year-old bridegroom. His kisses will not wound, the hair on his
lip is yet light.
“Now, Cypris, good-night, we leave thee with thy bridegroom; but
to-morrow morning, with the earliest dew, we will one and all bear him
forth to where the waves splash upon the sea-strand, and letting loose
our locks, and letting fall our robes, with bosoms bare, we will set up
this, our melodious strain:
“‘Beloved Adonis, alone of the demigods (so men say) thou art permitted
to visit both us and Acheron! This lot had neither Agamemnon, nor the
mighty moon-struck hero Ajax, nor Hector the first-born of Hecuba’s
twenty children, nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus who came home from Troy, nor
those yet earlier Lapithæ and the sons of Deucalion, nor the Pelasgians,
the root of Argos and of Pelop’s isle. Be gracious to us now, loved
Adonis, and be favorable to us for the year to come! Dear to us hast
thou been at this coming, dear to us shalt thou be when thou comest
again.’”