branches, and lavished kisses on the wood. The branches shrank from his lips. "Since thou canst not be my wife," said he, 66 thou shalt assuredly be my tree. I will wear thee for my crown. I will decorate with thee my harp and my quiver. When the Roman conquerors conduct the triumphal pomp to the Capitol, thou shalt be woven into wreaths for their brows. And, as eternal youth is mine, thou also shalt be always green, and thy leaf know no decay." The laurel tree bowed its head in grateful acknowledgment. The delicious humor of Lowell's extravaganza upon the story amply justifies the following citation: Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel tree's shade, Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, though 'twas a step into which he had driven her, Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic, And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over "When I last saw my love, she was fairly embarked In a laurel, as she thought—but (ah, how Fate mocks!) Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it, — return. If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right, Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite."1 § 86. Clytie.2-In the story of Clytie the conditions are reversed. She was a water-nymph and in love with Apollo, who made her no So she pined away, sitting all day long upon the cold ground, with her unbound tresses streaming over her shoulders. Nine days she sat and tasted neither food nor drink, her own tears and the chilly dew her only sustenance. She gazed on the sun when he rose; and as he passed through his daily course to his setting, she saw no other object, her eyes fixed constantly on him. At last, they say, her limbs took root in the ground, and her face became a flower, turning on its stem to follow the journeying sun. In the following lines, Thomas Moore uses the flower as an emblem of constancy: The heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close; As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets 6. MYTHS OF DIANA. § 87. In company with her radiant brother, we find Diana subduing Tityus and the Python and assisting in the punishment of Niobe. The speedy transformation of Daphne has been attributed to this goddess, the champion of maidenhood. According to some, it was she, too, that changed Callisto into a bear, when for love of Jupiter that nymph deserted the huntress-band. Numerous are the myths that celebrate the severity of the goddess of the unerring bow toward those who offended her. 1 From the Fable for Critics. How she 2 Ovid, Metam. 4: 256-270. served Agamemnon for slaying one of her hinds is told in the story of Troy; how she punished Eneus for omitting a sacrifice to her is narrated in the episode of the Calydonian hunt. Similar attributes of the goddess are exemplified in the myths of Arethusa, Acteon, and Orion. It is only when she is identified with Selene, the peaceful moonlight, that we perceive a softer side of character, such as that displayed in her relations with Endymion. § 88. The Flight of Arethusa.- A woodland nymph of Elis was this Arethusa; she delighted not in her comeliness, but in the joys of the chase. One day, returning from the wood, heated with exercise, she descended to a stream silently flowing, so clear that you might count the pebbles on the bottom. She laid aside her garments; but while she sported in the water, she heard an indistinct murmur rising as out of the depths of the stream. She made haste to reach the nearest bank. A voice followed her, "Why flyest thou, Arethusa? Alpheus am I, the god of this stream." The nymph ran, the god pursued. Arethusa, at last exhausted, cried for help to Diana, who, hearing, wrapped her votary in a thick cloud. Perplexed, the river-god still sought the trembling maiden. But a cold sweat came over her. In less time than it takes to tell, she had become a fountain. Alpheüs attempted then to mingle his stream with hers. But the Cynthian queen cleft the ground; and Arethusa, still endeavoring to escape, plunged into the abyss, and passing through the bowels of the earth, came out in Sicily, still followed by the passionate river-god. In the following version of the pursuit,* Arethusa was already a river when Alpheüs espied her. All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder The bars of the springs below; Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent's sweep, As he followed the light Of the fleet nymph's flight To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows unblended With the brackish Dorian stream:- On the emerald main, Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones, Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night: And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts They past to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap In the cave of the shelving hill; Through the woods below And the meadows of Asphodel: |