She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee
Mixed with the music of the hunting roll'd,
But her delight is all in archery,
And naught of ruth and pity wotteth she
More than her hounds that follow on the flight;
The goddess draws a golden bow of might
And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay.
She tosses loose her locks upon the night,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way."
Andrew Lang.
Again and again in mythological history we come on stories of the
goddess, sometimes under her best known name of Diana, sometimes under
her older Greek name of Artemis, and now and again as Selene, the
moon-goddess, the Luna of the Romans. Her twin brother was Apollo, god
of the sun, and with him she shared the power of unerringly wielding a
bow and of sending grave plagues and pestilences, while both were
patrons of music and of poetry.
When the sun-god's golden chariot had driven down into the west, then
would his sister's noiseless-footed silver steeds be driven across the
sky, while the huntress shot from her bow at will silent arrows that
would slay without warning a joyous young mother with her newly-born
babe, or would wantonly pierce, with a lifelong pain, the heart of
some luckless mortal.
Now one night as she passed Mount Latmos, there chanced to be a
shepherd lad lying asleep beside his sleeping flock. Many times had
Endymion watched the goddess from afar, half afraid of one so
beautiful and yet so ruthless, but never before had Diana realised the
youth's wonderful beauty. She checked her hounds when they would have
swept on in their chase through the night, and stood beside Endymion.
She judged him to be as perfect as her own brother, Apollo--yet more
perfect, perhaps, for on his upturned sleeping face was the silver
glamour of her own dear moon. Fierce and burning passion could come
with the sun's burning rays, but love that came in the moon's pale
light was passion mixed with gramarye. She gazed for long, and when,
in his sleep, Endymion smiled, she knelt beside him and, stooping,
gently kissed his lips. The touch of a moonbeam on a sleeping rose was
no more gentle than was Diana's touch, yet it was sufficient to wake
Endymion. And as, while one's body sleeps on, one's half-waking mind,
now and again in a lifetime seems to realise an ecstasy of happiness
so perfect that one dares not wake lest, by waking, the wings of one's
realised ideal should slip between grasping fingers and so escape
forever, so did Endymion realise the kiss of the goddess. But before
his sleepy eyes could be his senses' witnesses, Diana had hastened
away. Endymion, springing to his feet, saw only his sleeping flock,
nor did his dogs awake when he heard what seemed to him to be the
baying of hounds in full cry in a forest far up the mountain. Only to
his own heart did he dare to whisper what was this wonderful thing
that he believed had befallen him, and although he laid himself
down, hoping that once again this miracle might be granted to him, no
miracle came; nor could he sleep, so great was his longing.
[Illustration: SHE CHECKED HER HOUNDS, AND STOOD BESIDE ENDYMION]
All the next day, through the sultry hours while Apollo drove his
chariot of burnished gold through the land, Endymion, as he watched
his flocks, tried to dream his dream once more, and longed for the day
to end and the cool, dark night to return. When night came he tried to
lie awake and see what might befall, but when kind sleep had closed
his tired eyes,
"There came a lovely vision of a maid,
Who seemed to step as from a golden car
Out of the low-hung moon."
Lewis Morris.
Always she kissed him, yet when her kiss awoke him he never could see
anything more tangible than a shaft of silver moonlight on the moving
bushes of the mountain side, never hear anything more real than the
far-away echo of the baying of pursuing hounds, and if, with eager,
greatly-daring eyes, he looked skywards, a dark cloud, so it seemed to
him, would always hasten to hide the moon from his longing gaze.
In this manner time passed on. The days of Endymion were filled by
longing day-dreams. His sleeping hours ever brought him ecstasy. Ever,
too, to the goddess, the human being that she loved seemed to her to
grow more precious. For her all the joy of day and of night was
concentrated in the moments she spent by the side of the sleeping
Endymion. The flocks of the shepherd flourished like those of no other
herd. No wild beast dared come near them; no storm nor disease
assailed them. Yet for Endymion the things of earth no longer held any
value. He lived only for his dear dream's sake. Had he been permitted
to grow old and worn and tired, and still a dreamer, who knows how his
story might have ended? But to Diana there came the fear that with age
his beauty might wane, and from her father, Zeus, she obtained for the
one she loved the gifts of unending youth and of eternal sleep.
There came a night when the dreams of Endymion had no end. That was a
night when the moon made for herself broad silver paths across the
sea, from far horizon to the shore where the little waves lapped and
curled in a radiant, ever-moving silver fringe. Silver also were the
leaves of the forest trees, and between the branches of the solemn
cypresses and of the stately dark pines, Diana shot her silver arrows.
No baying of hounds came then to make Endymion's flocks move uneasily
in their sleep, but the silver stars seemed to sing in unison
together. While still those gentle lips touched his, hands as gentle
lifted up the sleeping Endymion and bore him to a secret cave in Mount
Latmos. And there, for evermore, she came to kiss the mouth of her
sleeping lover. There, forever, slept Endymion, happy in the perfect
bliss of dreams that have no ugly awaking, of an ideal love that knows
no ending.
ORPHEUS
"Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing;
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by,
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing die."
Shakespeare.
"Are we not all lovers as Orpheus was, loving what is
gone from us forever, and seeking it vainly in the
solitudes and wilderness of the mind, and crying to
Eurydice to come again? And are we not all foolish as
Orpheus was, hoping by the agony of love and the ecstasy
of will to win back Eurydice; and do we not all fail, as
Orpheus failed, because we forsake the way of the other
world for the way of this world?"
Fiona Macleod.
It is the custom nowadays for scientists and for other scholarly
people to take hold of the old myths, to take them to pieces, and to
find some deep, hidden meaning in each part of the story. So you will
find that some will tell you that Orpheus is the personification of
the winds which "tear up trees as they course along, chanting their
wild music," and that Eurydice is the morning "with its short-lived
beauty." Others say that Orpheus is "the mythological expression of
the delight which music gives to the primitive races," while yet
others accept without hesitation the idea that Orpheus is the sun
that, when day is done, plunges into the black abyss of night, in the
vain hope of overtaking his lost bride, Eurydice, the rosy dawn. And,
whether they be right or wrong, it would seem that the sadness that
comes to us sometimes as the day dies and the last of the sun's rays
vanish to leave the hills and valleys dark and cold, the sorrowful
feeling that we cannot understand when, in country places, we hear
music coming from far away, or listen to the plaintive song of the
bird, are things that very specially belong to the story of Orpheus.
In the country of Thrace, surrounded by all the best gifts of the
gods, Orpheus was born. His father was Apollo, the god of music and of
song, his mother the muse Calliope. Apollo gave his little son a lyre,
and himself taught him how to play it. It was not long before all the
wild things in the woods of Thrace crept out from the green trees and
thick undergrowth, and from the holes and caves in the rocks, to
listen to the music that the child's fingers made. The coo of the dove
to his mate, the flute-clear trill of the blackbird, the song of the
lark, the liquid carol of the nightingale--all ceased when the boy
made music. The winds that whispered their secrets to the trees owned
him for their lord, and the proudest trees of the forest bowed their
heads that they might not miss one exquisite sigh that his fingers
drew from the magical strings. Nor man nor beast lived in his day that
he could not sway by the power of his melody. He played a lullaby, and
all things slept. He played a love-lilt, and the flowers sprang up in
full bloom from the cold earth, and the dreaming red rosebud opened
wide her velvet petals, and all the land seemed full of the loving
echoes of the lilt he played. He played a war-march, and, afar off,
the sleeping tyrants of the forest sprang up, wide awake, and bared
their angry teeth, and the untried youths of Thrace ran to beg their
fathers to let them taste battle, while the scarred warriors felt on
their thumbs the sharpness of their sword blades, and smiled, well
content. While he played it would seem as though the very stones and
rocks gained hearts. Nay, the whole heart of the universe became one
great, palpitating, beautiful thing, an instrument from whose
trembling strings was drawn out the music of Orpheus.
He rose to great power, and became a mighty prince of Thrace. Not his
lute alone, but he himself played on the heart of the fair Eurydice
and held it captive. It seemed as though, when they became man and
wife, all happiness must be theirs. But although Hymen, the god of
marriage, himself came to bless them on the day they wed, the omens on
that day were against them. The torch that Hymen carried had no golden
flame, but sent out pungent black smoke that made their eyes water.
They feared they knew not what; but when, soon afterwards, as Eurydice
wandered with the nymphs, her companions, through the blue-shadowed
woods of Thrace, the reason was discovered. A bold shepherd, who did
not know her for a princess, saw Eurydice, and no sooner saw her than
he loved her. He ran after her to proclaim to her his love, and she,
afraid of his wild uncouthness, fled before him. She ran, in her
terror, too swiftly to watch whither she went, and a poisonous snake
that lurked amongst the fern bit the fair white foot that flitted,
like a butterfly, across it. In agonised suffering Eurydice died. Her
spirit went to the land of the Shades, and Orpheus was left
broken-hearted.
The sad winds that blow at night across the sea, the sobbing gales
that tell of wreck and death, the birds that wail in the darkness for
their mates, the sad, soft whisper of the aspen leaves and the leaves
of the heavy clad blue-black cypresses, all now were hushed, for
greater than all, more full of bitter sorrow than any, arose the music
of Orpheus, a long-drawn sob from a broken heart in the Valley of the
Shadow of Death.
Grief came alike to gods and to men as they listened, but no comfort
came to him from the expression of his sorrow. At length, when to bear
his grief longer was impossible for him, Orpheus wandered to Olympus,
and there besought Zeus to give him permission to seek his wife in the
gloomy land of the Shades. Zeus, moved by his anguish, granted the
permission he sought, but solemnly warned him of the terrible perils
of his undertaking.
But the love of Orpheus was too perfect to know any fear; thankfully
he hastened to the dark cave on the side of the promontory of
Taenarus, and soon arrived at the entrance of Hades. Stark and grim
was the three-headed watchdog, Cerberus, which guarded the door, and
with the growls and the furious roaring of a wild beast athirst for
its prey it greeted Orpheus. But Orpheus touched his lute, and the
brute, amazed, sank into silence. And still he played, and the dog
would gently have licked the player's feet, and looked up in his face
with its savage eyes full of the light that we see in the eyes of the
dogs of this earth as they gaze with love at their masters. On, then,
strode Orpheus, playing still, and the melody he drew from his lute
passed before him into the realms of Pluto.
Surely never were heard such strains. They told of perfect, tender
love, of unending longing, of pain too great to end with death. Of all
the beauties of the earth they sang--of the sorrow of the world--of
all the world's desire--of things past--of things to come. And ever,
through the song that the lute sang, there came, like a thread of
silver that is woven in a black velvet pall, a limpid melody. It was
as though a bird sang in the mirk night, and it spoke of peace and of
hope, and of joy that knows no ending.
Into the blackest depths of Hades the sounds sped on their way, and
the hands of Time stood still. From his bitter task of trying to quaff
the stream that ever receded from the parched and burning lips,
Tantalus ceased for a moment. The ceaseless course of Ixion's wheel
was stayed, the vulture's relentless beak no longer tore at the
Titan's liver; Sisyphus gave up his weary task of rolling the stone
and sat on the rock to listen, the Danaides rested from their labour
of drawing water in a sieve. For the first time, the cheeks of the
Furies were wet with tears, and the restless shades that came and went
in the darkness, like dead autumn leaves driven by a winter gale,
stood still to gaze and listen. Before the throne where Pluto and his
queen Proserpine were seated, sable-clad and stern, the relentless
Fates at their feet, Orpheus still played on. And to Proserpine then
came the living remembrance of all the joys of her girlhood by the
blue AEgean Sea in the fair island of Sicily. Again she knew the
fragrance and the beauty of the flowers of spring. Even into Hades the
scent of the violets seemed to come, and fresh in her heart was the
sorrow that had been hers on the day on which the ruthless King of
Darkness tore her from her mother and from all that she held most
dear. Silent she sat beside her frowning, stern-faced lord, but her
eyes grew dim.
When, with a quivering sigh, the music stopped, Orpheus fearlessly
pled his cause. To let him have Eurydice, to give him back his more
than life, to grant that he might lead her with him up to "the light
of Heaven"--that was his prayer.
The eyes of Pluto and Proserpine did not dare to meet, yet with one
accord was their answer given. Eurydice should be given back to him,
but only on one condition. Not until he had reached the light of earth
again was he to turn round and look upon the face for a sight of which
his eyes were tired with longing. Eagerly Orpheus complied, and with a
heart almost breaking with gladness he heard the call for Eurydice and
turned to retrace his way, with the light footfall of the little feet
that he adored making music behind him. Too good a thing it
seemed--too unbelievable a joy. She was there--quite close to him.
Their days of happiness were not ended. His love had won her back,
even from the land of darkness. All that he had not told her of that
love while yet she was on earth he would tell her now. All that he had
failed in before, he would make perfect now. The little limping
foot--how it made his soul overflow with adoring tenderness. So near
she was, he might even touch her were he to stretch back his hand....
And then there came to him a hideous doubt. What if Pluto had played
him false? What if there followed him not Eurydice, but a mocking
shade? As he climbed the steep ascent that led upwards to the light,
his fear grew more cruelly real. Almost he could imagine that her
footsteps had stopped, that when he reached the light he would find
himself left once more to his cruel loneliness. Too overwhelming for
him was the doubt. So nearly there they were that the darkness was no
longer that of night, but as that of evening when the long shadows
fall upon the land, and there seemed no reason for Orpheus to wait.
Swiftly he turned, and found his wife behind him, but only for a
moment she stayed. Her arms were thrown open and Orpheus would fain
have grasped her in his own, but before they could touch each other
Eurydice was borne from him, back into the darkness.
"Farewell!" she said--"Farewell!" and her voice was a sigh of hopeless
grief. In mad desperation Orpheus sought to follow her, but his
attempt was vain. At the brink of the dark, fierce-flooded Acheron the
boat with its boatman, old Charon, lay ready to ferry across to the
further shore those whose future lay in the land of Shades. To him ran
Orpheus, in clamorous anxiety to undo the evil he had wrought. But
Charon angrily repulsed him. There was no place for such as Orpheus in
his ferry-boat. Those only who went, never to return, could find a
passage there. For seven long days and seven longer nights Orpheus
waited beside the river, hoping that Charon would relent, but at last
hope died, and he sought the depths of the forests of Thrace, where
trees and rocks and beasts and birds were all his friends.
He took his lyre again then and played:
"Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice."
Milton.
Day and night he stayed in the shadow of the woodlands, all the sorrow
of his heart expressing itself in the song of his lute. The fiercest
beasts of the forest crawled to his feet and looked up at him with
eyes full of pity. The song of the birds ceased, and when the wind
moaned through the trees they echoed his cry, "Eurydice! Eurydice!"
In the dawning hours it would seem to him that he saw her again,
flitting, a thing of mist and rising sun, across the dimness of the
woods. And when evening came and all things rested, and the night
called out the mystery of the forest, again he would see her. In the
long blue shadows of the trees she would stand--up the woodland paths
she walked, where her little feet fluttered the dry leaves as she
passed. Her face was white as a lily in the moonlight, and ever she
held out her arms to Orpheus:
"At that elm-vista's end I trace,
Dimly thy sad leave-taking face,
Eurydice! Eurydice!
The tremulous leaves repeat to me
Eurydice! Eurydice!"
Lowell.
[Illustration: SWIFTLY HE TURNED, AND FOUND HIS WIFE BEHIND HIM]
For Orpheus it was a good day when Jason, chief of the Argonauts,
sought him out to bid him come with the other heroes and aid in the
quest of the Golden Fleece.
"Have I not had enough of toil and of weary wandering far and wide,"
sighed Orpheus. "In vain is the skill of the voice which my goddess
mother gave me; in vain have I sung and laboured; in vain I went down
to the dead, and charmed all the kings of Hades, to win back Eurydice,
my bride. For I won her, my beloved, and lost her again the same day,
and wandered away in my madness even to Egypt and the Libyan sands,
and the isles of all the seas.... While I charmed in vain the hearts
of men, and the savage forest beasts, and the trees, and the lifeless
stones, with my magic harp and song, giving rest, but finding
none."[3]
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.