hour before sunset, and, meanwhile, to communicate with him. by means of her messenger,

a bee:

Now, in those days of simpleness and faith,

Men did not think that happy things were dreams
Because they overstepped the narrow bourn
Of likelihood, but reverently deemed
Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful

To be the guerdon of a daring heart.

So Rhocus made no doubt that he was blest,
And all along unto the city's gate

Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he walked,
The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont,
And he could scarce believe he had not wings,
Such sunshine seemed to glitter through his veins.
Instead of blood, so light he felt and strange.

But the day was past its noon. the dice, Rhoecus forgot all else. Impatiently he brushed it aside :·

:

Joining some comrades over A bee buzzed about his ear.

Then through the window flew the wounded bee,
And Rhocus, tracking him with angry eyes,
Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly

Against the red disk of the setting sun,—

And instantly the blood sank from his heart. . .

Quite spent and out of breath he reached the tree,

And, listening fearfully, he heard once more
The low voice murmur, "Rhocus!" close at hand:
Whereat he looked around him, but could see
Naught but the deepening glooms beneath the oak.
Then sighed the voice, "O Rhoecus! nevermore
Shalt thou behold me or by day or night,

Me, who would fain have blessed thee with a love
More ripe and bounteous than ever yet

Filled up with nectar any mortal heart:

But thou didst scorn my humble messenger

And sent'st him back to me with bruisèd wings.

We spirits only show to gentle eyes,

We ever ask an undivided love,

And he who scorns the least of Nature's works

Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all.
Farewell! for thou canst never see me more."

Then Rhoecus beat his breast, and groaned aloud,
And cried, "Be pitiful! forgive me yet

This once, and I shall never need it more!

"Alas!" the voice returned, "'tis thou art blind,
Not I unmerciful; I can forgive,

But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes;
Only the soul hath power o'er itself."

With that again there murmured, "Nevermore!"
And Rhocus after heard no other sound,
Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves,
Like the long surf upon a distant shore,
Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down.
The night had gathered round him: o'er the plain
The city sparkled with its thousand lights,

And sounds of revel fell upon his ear

Harshly and like a curse; above, the sky,

With all its bright sublimity of stars,

Deepened, and on his forehead smote the breeze:
Beauty was all around him and delight,

But from that eve he was alone on earth.

According to the older tradition, the nymph deprived Rhocus

of his physical sight; but the superior insight of Lowell's interpretation is evident.

§ 124. Pomona and Vertumnus.1 Pomona was a Hamadryad, guardian especially of the apple-orchards, but presiding also over other fruits. "Bear me, Pomona," sings one of our poets:

"Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron groves,

To where the lemon and the piercing lime,
With the deep orange, glowing through the green,
Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined
Beneath the spreading tamarind that shakes,
Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit."2

1 Ovid, Metam. 14:623-771.

2 Thomson's Seasons.

This nymph had scorned the offers of love made her by Pan, Sylvanus, and innumerable Fauns and Satyrs. Vertumnus, too, she had time and again refused. But he, the deity of gardens

her in as many Now as a reaper,

and of the changing seasons, unwearied, wooed guises as his seasons themselves could assume. now as haymaker, now as ploughman, now as vine-dresser, now as apple-picker, now as fisherman, now as soldier, all to no avail. Finally, as an old woman, he came to her, admired her fruit, admired especially the luxuriance of her grapes, descanted on the dependence of the luxuriant vine, close by, upon the elm to which it was clinging; advised Pomona, likewise, to choose some youth say, for instance, the young Vertumnus about whom to twine her arms. Then he told how the worthy Iphis, spurned by Anaxarete, had hanged himself to her gate-post; and how the gods had turned the hard-hearted virgin to stone even as she gazed on her lover's funeral. "Consider these things, dearest child," said the seeming old woman, "lay aside thy scorn and thy delays, and accept a lover. So may neither the vernal frosts blight thy young fruits, nor furious winds scatter thy blossoms!"

When Vertumnus had thus spoken, he dropped his disguise, and stood before Pomona in his

proper person, a comely youth. Such wooing, of course, could not but win its just reward.

§ 125. The Cranes of Ibycus.1 The Furies, called also Diræ (the terrible ones), Erinyes (the persecutors, or the angered ones), and finally, by way of euphemism, Eumenides (the well-meaning), visited earth to punish filial disobedience, irreverence to old age, perjury, murder, treachery to guests, even unkindness toward beggars. They avenged the ghosts of such as, dying violent deaths, possessed on earth no representatives either by law or by kindred to avenge them. Therefore, as we shall see, they persecuted

1 Cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4:33, 71; and Statius, Silvæ 5:3, 152.

Orestes, who had slain his mother. Therefore, like the accusing voice of conscience, they marshalled to punishment the murderers of Ibycus.

This poet, beloved of Apollo, was, while journeying to the musical contest of the Isthmus at Corinth, attacked by two robbers in the Corinthian grove of Neptune. Overcome by them, he commended his cause, as he fell, to a flock of cranes that happened to be screaming hoarsely overhead. But when his body was found, all Greece, then gathered at the festival, demanded. vengeance on the murderer.

Soon afterward, the vast assemblage in the amphitheatre sat listening to a play in which the Chorus personated the Furies. The Choristers, clad in black, bore in their fleshless hands torches blazing with a pitchy flame. Advancing with measured step, they formed ranks in the orchestra. Their cheeks were bloodless, and in place of hair writhing serpents curled around their brows. Forming a circle, these awful beings sang their hymn. High it swelled, overpowering the sound of the instruments:

66

Happy the man whose heart is pure from guilt and crime! Him we avengers touch not; he treads the path of life secure from us. But woe woe! to him who has done the deed of secret murder. We, the fearful brood of Night, fasten ourselves upon him, soul and flesh. Thinks he by flight to escape us? Fly we still faster in pursuit, twine our snakes around his feet and bring him to the ground. Unwearied we pursue; no pity checks our course; still on, still on to the end of life, we give no peace, no rest."

Stillness like the stillness of death sat over the assembly. Suddenly a cry burst from one of the uppermost benches, “Lo, comrade, the cranes of Ibycus!" A dark object sailed across the sky. "The murderer has informed against himself," shouted the assemblage. The inference was correct. The criminals, straightway seized, confessed the crime and suffered the penalty.

CHAPTER XVI.

MYTHS OF LESSER DIVINITIES OF THE WATERS.

These gods may be roughly classed as dwellers in the sea, and dwellers in the streams.

§ 126. Galatea. Of the sea-divinities, daughters of Nereus and Doris, none was fairer than Galatea, sister of Amphitrite and Thetis. She loved Acis, the son of Faunus by a Naiad, and was loved in return; but her happiness was disturbed and finally ruined by the persistent and jealous attentions of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

Polyphemus in Love. For the first time in his life the Cyclops began to care for his appearance; he harrowed his coarse locks with a curry-comb, mowed his beard with a sickle, and, looking into the sea when it was calm, soliloquized, "Beautiful seems my beard, beautiful my one eye, as I count beauty, and the sea reflects the gleam of my teeth whiter than the Parian stone."1

...

He loved, not with apples, nor roses, nor locks of hair, but with fatal frenzy; and all things else he held but trifles by the way. Many a time from the green pastures would his ewes stray back, self-shepherded, to the fold. But he was singing of Galatea; and pining in his place, he sat by the seaweed of the beach from the dawn of day with the direst hurt beneath his breast of mighty Cypris's sending, the wound of her arrow in his heart!

Yet this remedy he found, and sitting on the crest of the tall cliff, and looking to the deep, 'twas thus he would sing:

“Oh, milk-white Galatea, why cast off him that loves thee? More white than is pressed milk to look upon, more delicate than the lamb art thou, than the young calf wantoner, more sleek than the unripened grape! Here dost thou resort, even so, when sweet sleep possesses me, and home straightway dost thou depart when sweet sleep lets me go, fleeing me like an ewe that

1 Theocritus, Idyl VI. See Andrew Lang's translation.