her Love, ever longing to do something by which to atone for the deed
that had been her undoing. From temple to temple she went, but nowhere
did she come near him, until at length in Cyprus she came to the place
where Aphrodite herself had her dwelling. And inasmuch as her love had
made her very bold, and because she no longer feared death, nor could
think of pangs more cruel than those that she already knew, Psyche
sought the presence of the goddess who was her enemy, and humbly
begged her to take her life away.
With flaming scorn and anger Aphrodite received her.
"O thou fool," she said, "I will not let thee die!
But thou shalt reap the harvest thou hast sown,
And many a day that wretched lot bemoan;
Thou art my slave, and not a day shall be
But I will find some fitting task for thee."
There began then for Psyche a time of torturing misery of which only
those could speak who have knowledge of the merciless stripes with
which the goddess can scourge the hearts of her slaves. With cruel
ingenuity, Aphrodite invented labours for her.
In uncountable quantity, and mingled in inextricable and bewildering
confusion, there lay in the granary of the goddess grains of barley
and of wheat, peas and millet, poppy and coriander seed. To sort out
each kind and lay them in heaps was the task allotted for one day, and
woe be to her did she fail. In despair, Psyche began her hopeless
labour. While the sun shone, through a day that was for her too short,
she strove to separate the grains, but when the shadows of evening
made it hard for her to distinguish one sort from another, only a few
very tiny piles were the result of her weary toil. Very soon the
goddess would return, and Psyche dared not think what would be the
punishment meted out to her. Rapidly the darkness fell, but while the
dying light still lingered in some parts of the granary, it seemed to
Psyche as though little dark trickles of water began to pour from
underneath the doors and through the cracks in the wall. Trembling she
watched the ceaseless motion of those long, dark lines, and then, in
amazement, realised that what she saw were unending processions of
ants. And as though one who loved her directed their labours, the
millions of busy little toilers swiftly did for Psyche what she
herself had failed to do. When at length they went away, in those long
dark lines that looked like the flow of a thread-like stream, the
grains were all piled up in high heaps, and the sad heart of Psyche
knew not only thankful relief, but had a thrill of gladness.
"Eros sent them to me:" she thought. "Even yet his love for me is not
dead."
And what she thought was true.
Amazed and angry, Aphrodite looked at the task she had deemed
impossible, well and swiftly performed. That Psyche should possess
such magic skill only incensed her more, and next day she said to her
new slave:
"Behold, on the other side of that glittering stream, my
golden-fleeced sheep crop the sweet flowers of the meadow. To-day must
thou cross the river and bring me back by evening a sample of wool
pulled from each one of their shining fleeces."
Then did Psyche go down to the brink of the river, and even as her
white feet splashed into the water, she heard a whisper of warning
from the reeds that bowed their heads by the stream.
"Beware! O Psyche," they said. "Stay on the shore and rest until the
golden-fleeced sheep lie under the shade of the trees in the evening
and the murmur of the river has lulled them to sleep."
But Psyche said, "Alas, I must do the bidding of the goddess. It will
take me many a weary hour to pluck the wool that she requires."
And again the reeds murmured, "Beware! for the golden-fleeced sheep,
with their great horns, are evil creatures that lust for the lives of
mortals, and will slay thee even as thy feet reach the other bank.
Only when the sun goes down does their vice depart from them, and
while they sleep thou canst gather of their wool from the bushes and
from the trunks of the trees."
And again the heart of Psyche felt a thrill of happiness, because she
knew that she was loved and cared for still. All day she rested in the
wood by the river and dreamt pleasant day-dreams, and when the sun had
set she waded to the further shore and gathered the golden wool in the
way that the reeds had told her. When in the evening she came to the
goddess, bearing her shining load, the brow of Aphrodite grew dark.
"If thou art so skilled in magic that no danger is danger to thee, yet
another task shall I give thee that is worthy of thy skill," she said,
and laid upon Psyche her fresh commands.
Sick with dread, Psyche set out next morning to seek the black stream
out of which Aphrodite had commanded her to fill a ewer. Part of its
waters flowed into the Styx, part into the Cocytus, and well did
Psyche know that a hideous death from the loathly creatures that
protected the fountain must be the fate of those who risked so proud
an attempt. Yet because she knew that she must "dree her weird," as
Pan had said, she plodded onward, towards that dark mountain from
whose side gushed the black water that she sought. And then, once
again, there came to her a message of love. A whirring of wings she
heard, and
"O'er her head there flew the bird of Jove,
The bearer, of his servant, friend of Love,
Who, when he saw her, straightway towards her flew,
And asked her why she wept, and when he knew,
And who she was, he said, 'Cease all thy fear,
For to the black waves I thy ewer will bear,
And fill it for thee; but, remember me,
When thou art come unto thy majesty.'"
And, yet once again, the stricken heart of Psyche was gladdened, and
when at nightfall she came with her ewer full of water from the dread
stream and gave it to Aphrodite, although she knew that a yet more
arduous task was sure to follow, her fear had all passed away.
With beautiful, sullen eyes, Aphrodite received her when she brought
the water. And, with black brow, she said: "If thou art so skilled in
magic that no danger is known to thee, I shall now give thee a task
all worthy of thy skill."
Thereon she told her that she must seek that dark valley where no
silver nor golden light ever strikes on the black waters of Cocytus
and of the Styx; and where Pluto reigns in gloomy majesty over the
restless shades. From Proserpine she was to crave for Aphrodite the
gift of a box of magical ointment, the secret of which was known to
the Queen of Darkness alone, and which was able to bring to those who
used it, beauty more exquisite than any that the eyes of gods or of
men had as yet looked upon.
"I grow weary and careworn," said Aphrodite, and she looked like a
rose that has budded in Paradise as she spoke. "My son was wounded by
a faithless slave in whom, most weakly, he put his trust, and in
tending to his wound, my beauty has faded."
And at these scornful words, the heart of Psyche leaped within her.
"In helping his mother, I shall help him!" she thought. And again she
thought, "I shall atone." And so, when day was come, she took her way
along the weary road that leads to that dark place from whence no
traveller can ever hope to return, and still with gladness in her
heart. But, as she went onward, "cold thoughts and dreadful fears"
came to her.
"Better were it for me to hasten my journey to the shades," she
thought.
And when she came to an old grey tower, that seemed like an old man
that Death has forgotten, she resolved to throw herself down from it,
and thus swiftly to find herself at her journey's end. But as she
stood on the top of the tower, her arms outstretched, like a white
butterfly that poises its wings for flight, a voice spoke in her ear.
"Oh, foolish one," it said, "why dost thou strive to stay the hope
that is not dead?" And while she held her breath, her great eyes wide
open, the voice spoke on, and told her by what means she might
speedily reach Hades and there find means to face with courage the
King of Darkness himself and his fair wife, Proserpine.
All that she was bidden to do, Psyche did, and so at last did she
come before the throne of Proserpine, and all that Psyche endured, all
that she saw, all that through which she came with bleeding heart and
yet with unscathed soul, cannot here be written.
To her Proserpine gave the box of precious ointment that Aphrodite
described, and gladly she hastened homeward. Good, indeed, it was to
her when again she reached the fair light of day. Yet, when she had
won there, there came to Psyche a winged thought, that beat against
the stern barriers of her mind like a little moth against a window.
"This ointment that I carry with me," said Psyche to herself, "is an
ointment that will bring back to those all faded by time, or worn by
suffering, a beauty greater than any beauty that has joyed the
Immortals!" And then she thought:
"For my beauty, Eros--_Love_--loved me; and now my beauty is worn and
wasted and well-nigh gone. Were I to open this box and make use of the
ointment of Proserpine, then indeed I should be fair enough to be the
bride of him who, even now, believes that he loves me--of Eros whose
love is my life!"
So it came to pass that she opened the fateful box. And out of it
there came not Beauty, but Sleep, that put his gyves upon her limbs,
and on her eyelids laid heavy fingers. And Psyche sank down by the
wayside, the prisoner of Sleep.
But Eros, who had loved her ever, with a love that knew the ebb and
flow of no tides, rose from his bed and went in search of her who had
braved even the horrors of Hades for his dear sake. And by the wayside
he found her, fettered by sleep. Her little oval face was white as a
snowdrop. Like violets were her heavy eyelids, and underneath her
sleeping eyes a violet shadow lay. Once had her mouth been as the bow
of Eros, painted in carmine. Now either end of the bow was turned
downwards, and its colour was that of a faded rose-leaf.
And as Eros looked at her that he loved, pity stirred his heart, as
the wind sweeps through the sighing, grey leaves of the willow, or
sings through the bowing reeds.
"My _Beloved_!" he said, and he knew that Psyche was indeed his
beloved. It was her fair soul that he loved, nor did it matter to him
whether her body was like a rose in June or as a wind-scourged tree in
December. And as his lips met hers, Psyche awoke, and heard his soft
whisper:
"Dear, unclose thine eyes.
Thou mayst look on me now. I go no more,
But am thine own forever."
Lewis Morris.
Then did there spring from the fair white shoulders of Psyche, wings
of silver and of gold, and, hand in hand with Eros, she winged her way
to Olympus.
And there all the deathless gods were assembled, and Aphrodite no
longer looked upon her who had once been her slave with darkened
brows, but smiled upon her as the sun smiles upon a new-born flower.
And when into the hand of Psyche there was placed a cup of gold, the
voice of the great Father and King of Olympus rang out loud and clear:
"Drink now, O beautiful, and have no fear!
For with this draught shalt thou be born again,
And live for ever free from care and pain."
William Morris.
In this wise did Psyche, a human soul, attain by bitter suffering to
the perfect happiness of purified love.
And still do we watch the butterfly, which is her emblem, bursting
from its ugly tomb in the dark soil, and spreading joyous white and
gold-powdered wings in the caressing sunshine, amidst the radiance and
the fragrance of the summer flowers. Still, too, do we sadly watch her
sister, the white moth, heedlessly rushing into pangs unutterable,
thoughtlessly seeking the anguish that brings her a cruel death.
THE CALYDONIAN HUNT
OEneus and Althaea were king and queen of Calydon, and to them was
born a son who was his mother's joy and yet her bitterest sorrow.
Meleager was his name, and ere his birth his mother dreamed a dream
that the child that she bore was a burning firebrand. But when the
baby came he was a royal child indeed, a little fearless king from the
first moment that his eyes, like unseeing violets, gazed steadily up
at his mother. To the chamber where he lay by his mother's side came
the three Fates, spinning, ceaselessly spinning.
"He shall be strong," said one, as she span her thread. "He shall be
fortunate and brave," said the second. But the third laid a billet of
wood on the flames, and while her withered fingers held the fatal
threads, she looked with old, old, sad eyes at the new-born child.
"To thee, O New-Born," she said, "and to this wood that burns, do we
give the same span of days to live."
From her bed sprang Althaea, and, heedless of the flames, she seized
the burning wood, trod on it with her fair white feet, and poured on
it water that swiftly quenched its red glow. "Thou shalt live forever,
O Beloved," she said, "for never again shall fire char the brand that
I have plucked from the burning."
And the baby laughed.
"Those grey women with bound hair
Who fright the gods frighted not him; he laughed
Seeing them, and pushed out hands to feel and haul
Distaff and thread."
The years sped on, and from fearless and beautiful babyhood, Meleager
grew into gallant boyhood, and then into magnificent youth. When Jason
and his heroes sailed away into a distant land to win the Golden
Fleece, Meleager was one of the noble band. From all men living he won
great praise for his brave deeds, and when the tribes of the north and
west made war upon AEtolia, he fought against their army and scattered
it as a wind in autumn drives the fallen leaves before it.
But his victory brought evil upon him. When his father OEneus, at
the end of a fruitful year, offered sacrifices to the gods, he omitted
to honour the goddess Diana by sacrificing to her, and to punish his
neglect, she had sent this destroying army. When Meleager was victor,
her wrath against his father grew yet more hot, and she sent a wild
boar, large as the bulls of Epirus, and fierce and savage to kill and
to devour, that it might ravage and lay waste the land of Calydon. The
fields of corn were trampled under foot, the vineyards laid waste, and
the olive groves wrecked as by a winter hurricane. Flocks and herds
were slaughtered by it, or driven hither and thither in wild panic,
working havoc as they fled. Many went out to slay it, but went only to
find a hideous death. Then did Meleager resolve that he would rid the
land of this monster, and called on all his friends, the heroes of
Greece, to come to his aid. Theseus and his friend Pirithous came;
Jason; Peleus, afterwards father of Achilles; Telamon, the father of
Ajax; Nestor, then but a youth; Castor and Pollux, and Toxeus and
Plexippus, the brothers of Althaea, the fair queen-mother. But there
came none more fearless nor more ready to fight the monster boar of
Calydon than Atalanta, the daughter of the king of Arcadia. When
Atalanta was born, her father heard of her birth with anger. He
desired no daughter, but only sturdy sons who might fight for him, and
in the furious rage of bitter disappointment he had the baby princess
left on the Parthenian Hill that she might perish there. A she-bear
heard the baby's piteous cries, and carried it off to its lair, where
she suckled it along with her young, and there the little Atalanta
tumbled about and played with her furry companions and grew strong and
vigorous as any other wild young creature of the forest.
Some hunters came one day to raid the den and kill the foster-mother,
and found, amazed, a fearless, white-skinned thing with rosy cheeks
and brave eyes, who fought for her life and bit them as did her fierce
foster-brothers, and then cried human tears of rage and sorrow when
she saw the bear who had been her mother lying bloody and dead. Under
the care of the hunters Atalanta grew into a maiden, with all the
beauty of a maid and all the strength and the courage of a man. She
ran as swiftly as Zephyrus runs when he rushes up from the west and
drives the white clouds before him like a flock of timid fawns that a
hound is pursuing. The shafts that her strong arm sped from her bow
smote straight to the heart of the beast that she chased, and almost
as swift as her arrow was she there to drive her spear into her
quarry. When at length her father the king learned that the beautiful
huntress, of whom all men spoke as of one only a little lower than
Diana, was none other than his daughter, he was not slow to own her as
his child. So proud was he of her beauty and grace, and of her
marvellous swiftness of foot and skill in the chase, that he would
fain have married her to one of the great ones of Greece, but Atalanta
had consulted an oracle. "Marry not," said the oracle. "To thee
marriage must bring woe."
So, with untouched heart, and with the daring and the courage of a
young lad, Atalanta came along with the heroes to the Calydonian Hunt.
She was so radiantly lovely, so young, so strong, so courageous, that
straightway Meleager loved her, and all the heroes gazed at her with
eyes that adored her beauty. And Diana, looking down at her, also
loved the maiden whom from childhood she had held in her protection--a
gallant, fearless virgin dear to her heart.
The grey mist rose from the marshes as the hunt began, and the hunters
of the boar had gone but a little way when they came upon traces of
the hated boar. Disembowelled beasts marked its track. Here, in a
flowery meadow, had it wallowed. There, in rich wheat land, had it
routed, and the marks of its bestial tusks were on the gashed grey
trunks of the trees that had once lived in the peace of a fruitful
olive grove.
In a marsh they found their enemy, and all the reeds quivered as it
heaved its vast bulk and hove aside the weed in which it had wallowed,
and rooted with its tusks amongst the wounded water-lilies before it
leapt with a snort to meet and to slay the men who had come against
it. A filthy thing it was, as its pink snout rose above the green ooze
of the marshes, and it looked up lustingly, defying the purity of the
blue skies of heaven, to bring to those who came against it a cruel,
shameful death.
Upon it, first of all, Jason cast his spear. But the sharp point only
touched it, and unwounded, the boar rushed on, its gross, bristly head
down, to disembowel, if it could, the gallant Nestor. In the branches
of a tree Nestor found safety, and Telamon rushed on to destroy the
filthy thing that would have made carrion of the sons of the gods. A
straggling cypress root caught his fleeting foot and laid him prone, a
helpless prey for the rooting brute. His hounds fell before it, but
ere it could reach him, Atalanta, full of vengeful rage--the pure
angered against the filthy and cruel--let draw her bow, with a prayer
to Diana to guide her shaft aright. Into the boar's smoking flank sped
the arrow.
"The sudden string
Rang, and sprang inward, and the waterish air
Hissed, and the moist plumes of the songless reeds
Moved as a wave which the wind moves no more.
But the boar heaved half out of ooze and slime,
His tense flank trembling round the barbed wound,
Hateful; and fiery with invasive eyes
And bristling with intolerable hair
Plunged, and the hounds clung, and green flowers and white
Reddened and broke all round them where they came.
And charging with sheer tusk he drove, and smote
Hyleus; and sharp death caught his sudden soul,
And violent sleep shed night upon his eyes."
Swinburne.
More than ever terrible was the monster now that it was wounded. One
after the other the hunters fell before its mad rage, and were sent to
the shades by a bloody and merciless death.
Before its furious charge even the heart of a hero might have been
stricken. Yet Meleager, like a mighty oak of the forest that will not
sway even a little before the rush of a storm, stood full in its way
and met its onslaught.
"Aimed on the left side his well-handled spear
Grasped where the ash was knottiest hewn, and smote,
And with no missile wound, the monstrous boar
Right in the hairiest hollow of his hide
Under the last rib, sheer through bulk and bone,
Deep in; and deeply smitten, and to death,
The heavy horror with his hanging shafts,
Leapt, and fell furiously, and from raging lips
Foamed out the latest wrath of all his life."
Great was the shout that rose from those who still lived when that
grim hunt thus came to an end. And when, with his keen blade, Meleager
struck off the head, even as the quivering throat drew its last
agonised breath, louder still shouted the men of Greece. But not for
himself did Meleager despoil the body of his foe. He laid the ugly
thing at the feet of Atalanta.
"This is thy spoil, not mine," he said. "The wounding shaft was sped
by thee. To thee belongs the praise."
And Atalanta blushed rosily, and laughed low and gladly, not only
because Diana had heard her prayer and helped her slay the beast, but
for happiness that Meleager was so noble in his giving.
At that the brows of the heroes grew dark, and angrily one cried:
"Lo, now,
Shall not the Arcadian shoot out lips at us,
Saying all we were despoiled by this one girl."
Like a spark that kindles the dry grass, their kindling anger spread,
and they rushed against Atalanta, seized the trophy she had been
given, and smote her as though she were but a shameless wanton and not
the noble daughter of a king.
And because the heart of Meleager was given very wholly to the fair
huntress, and because those whom he deemed his friends had not only
dishonoured her, but had done him a very grievous wrong, a great rage
seized him. Right and left he smote, and they who had been most bitter
in their jealousy of Atalanta, the two brothers of his own mother,
were laid low in death.
Tidings of the slaying of the boar had been brought to Althaea by swift
messengers, and she was on her way to the temples bearing gifts to the
gods for the victory of her son, when she beheld the slow-footed
procession of those who bore the bodies of the dead. And when she saw
the still faces of her two dear brothers, quickly was her joy turned
into mourning. Terrible was her grief and anger when she learned by
whose hand they were slain, and her mother's love and pride dried up
in her heart like the clear water of a fountain before the scorching
of a devouring fire. No sacrifices to the gods would she offer, but
her dead brothers should have the greatest sacrifice that mother could
make to atone for the guilt of her son. Back to the palace she went,
and from its safe hiding-place drew out the brand that she had rescued
from the flames when Meleager the hero was but a babe that made his
mother's heart sing for joy. She commanded a fire to be prepared, and
four times, as its flames blazed aloft, she tried to lay the brand
upon the pile. Yet four times she drew back, and then at last she
threw into the reddest of the ashes the charred brand that for a
little she held so close to her breast that it seemed as though she
fondled her child.
A wreath of leaves as sign of victory was being placed on Atalanta's
beautiful head by the adoring hands of Meleager when his mother gave
him his doom. Through his body there rushed a pang of mortal agony.
His blood turned to fire, and the hand of Death that smote him was as
a hand of molten lead. In torture his gallant spirit passed away,
uncomplaining, loving through his pain the maid for whose dear sake he
had brought woe upon himself. As the last white ashes in the fire
crumbled and fell away into nothingness, the soul of Meleager
departed. Swiftly through the dark valley his mother's shade followed
him, for she fell upon a sword and so perished. And Diana, looking
down on the grief-stricken sisters of Meleager and on the bitter
sorrow of his father, had compassion on them and turned them into
birds.
So ended the Calydonian Hunt, and Atalanta returned to Arcadia, heavy
at heart for the evil she had wrought unwittingly. And still the Three
Fates span on, and the winds caught up the cold wood ashes and blew
them across the ravaged land that Meleager had saved and that quickly
grew fertile again.
ATALANTA
Atalanta, daughter of the king of Arcadia, returned sad at heart to
her own land. Only as comrades, as those against whose skill in the
chase she was wont to pit her own skill, had she looked upon men. But
Meleager, the hero who loved her and her fair honour more than life
itself, and whose love had made him haste in all his gallant strength
and youthful beauty to the land of the Shades, was one to touch her as
never before had she been touched. Her father, proud of her triumph in
Calydon, again besought her to marry one of her many noble suitors.