Page images
PDF
EPUB

and skim the empty air more and more, till, like a burst of rain from a summer cloud, out they break, or like arrows from the rebounding cord, whenever the light-armed Parthian strikes up the prelude of the battle.

Who of the gods, ye muses, who, beat out for us men this skilled device? Whence did this fresh growth of men's experience take its rise?

It was the shepherd, Aristæus, turning his back on Tempe and her Peneus, when his bees were all dead- -so runs the tale-of disease and famine, that stood in sorrow at the sacred head where the river rises, with many a plaint, and in words like these bespoke her that bore him: Mother Cyrene, mother, whose dwelling is at the bottom of this gulf, why didst thou bear me, a son of an illustrious line of gods-if at least he of whom thou tellest me is my father, Thymbra's Apollo-to a life under an evil star? Whither has thy love for me and mine been banished? Wherefore didst thou bid me look forward to the sky? See now, even this very crown of my poor mortality, which a life of skilful watching over corn and cattle had barely won for me, every effort tried, I must resign-and thou art my mother still! Why then, come on-put thine own hand to the work, uproot my fruitful forests, bring into my stalls the fire they hate, kill my crops, burn my young plants, and wield against my vines the heaviest axe thou canst find, if the access of thy disgust at hearing me praised be indeed so strong.'

But his mother caught the sound as she sat in the bedchamber of the deep stream. Around her the nymphs were spinning wool of Miletus, ingrained with byaline's saturating dye, Drymo, and Xantho, and Ligeia, and Phyllodoce, their bright locks floating over their snowy necks, and Cydippe, and yellow-haired Lycorias-a maiden one, the other having just proved the first pangs of the goddess of travail-and Clio,

and beroe, her sister, children of Ocean both, both girt with gold, both with dresses of dappled hide, and Ephyre, and Opis, and Asian Deiopeia, and Arethusa fleet of foot, her huntress' shafts at last laid by; among them Clymene was telling the tale of Vulcan's vain jealousy, of Mars' stratagem and the joy he stole, and from chaos downwards was counting the crowded muster-roll of the loves of the gods. As they sit entranced by the song, and the spindle carries down their fleecy tasks, yet again there smote on the mother's ear the wail of Aristæus, and all were confounded on their crystal seats; but Arethusa, anticipating the rest of the sisterhood, looked forth, and raised her yellow head from the water's surface, and cried from the distance-'O thou whom a groan so loud has not scared for nought, sister Cyrene, it is himself, thy chiefest care, Aristæus, that stands at the wave of our father Peneus weeping to thee, and calling on thy cruel name.' Struck to the soul with a strange terror, 'Go, bring him, bring him to us; he may touch the floor that gods tread,' cries the mother. With that she bids the deep stream retire far and wide, making a path on which the youth might walk. Round him closed the wave arched into mountain form, took him into its giant bosom, and sped him down under the river. And now he is on his way marvelling at his mother's palace and the whole watery realm, pools locked by caves and forests echoing wide, and, all confounded by the mighty rush of the waters, is gazing on all the rivers of earth as they flow under its vast surface each in its several bed-Phasis, and Lycus, and the source whence first breaks forth the deep Enipeus, whence Tiber, the Roman's father, and whence the streams of Anio, and rocky roaring Hypanis, and Mysian Caicus, and he that bears two gilded horns on his bull's brow, Eridanus, than whom no river pours himself more forcefully through his rich cultured plains into the blue flushing deep. After he had

come under the chamber's stone-hung roof, and Cyrene had taken knowledge of her son's bootless weeping, the sisterhood, each in her course, offer him clear spring water for his hands, and present towels with the nap duly shorn, while others load the table with viands, and set on cups brimming again and again: the altars mount up with Panchaian fires; and 'Take,' says the mother, 'the bowl of Mæonia's wine-god; make we libation to Ocean.' So speaking, she offers herself a prayer to Ocean, father of creation, and the sisterhood of nymphs, the hundred guardians of the woods, the hundred of the rivers. Thrice with the clear nectar she sprinkled the blazing firequeen; thrice the flame shot up to the roof-top and shone again. Cheering his heart with the omen, she thus begins her speech :

'In the sea-god's Carpathian gulf there lives a seer, Proteus, of the sea's own hue, who takes the measure of the mighty deep with his fishes, even with his harnessed car of two-legged steeds. He is at this moment visiting again the havens of Emathia and Pallene, the country of his birth. To him we nymphs all do reverence, aye, and Nereus too, the old and grey; for all things are known to the seer, those which are, those which have been, those which drag their length through the advancing future. So it seemed good to Neptune, whose monstrous herds of loathly sea-calves he pastures under the deep. Him, my son, you must first make prisoner and bind, that he may unfold all the history of the disease and prosper the issue. For without force he will give no counsel, nor will your praying bend him; force, stern force, and fetters must be put upon the captive; against them his baffled wiles will at last be broken. I myself, when the sun has kindled his mid-day furnace, when the herbage is athirst, and cattle begin to feel the joy of the shade, will lead you into the old one's privacy, the place where he retires from his labours in

the water, that you may easily fall on him as he lies asleep. But when you have caught him in the grasp of hand and fetter, then the divers forms and features of wild beasts will he put on to mock you. He will change suddenly to a bristly boar, and a grim black tiger, a scaly dragon, and a lioness with tawny mane; or he will send forth the sharp crackling of flame, and thus slip out of your bonds, or will trickle away into unsubstantial water and be gone. But the more you find him turn himself into shape after shape, the tighter, my son, strain the gripe of your bonds, till, his last change over, he appear in the form in which you saw him when sleep had set in and his eyes were curtained.'

So saying, she bids ambrosia send forth its liquid perfume, which she spreads over her son's whole frame; at once he felt his new-trimmed locks exhale a breath of fragrance, and a supple vigour pass into his limbs. There is a vast cave eaten out in a mountain's side, whereinto wave upon wave is driven by the wind, and breaks in the retreating inlet-to the mariner, when the storm is upon him, at times a roadstead of safest shelter. There, far within, Proteus screens himself with the barrier of an enormous rock. Here the nymph places the youth in hiding, away from the light; she her self stands off in the dusk of a mist she raises. Already Sirius was all ablaze in the sky, with that fierce glow that scorches the Indians with thirst, and the sun's fiery car had exhausted the half of its circuit; the herbage was parching, and the hollow rivers, their dry jaws agape, were being baked by the sunbeams into a heated mass of mud, when Proteus was on his way from the surge, making for the accustomed cave; around him the moist generation of the broad sea, leaping gamesomely, flung about the salt spray. They lay themselves to sleep, the sea-calves, here and there along the beach; he, like the warder of a fold one day among the hills, when

the star of eve brings the calves home from pasture, and the sound of the lamb's bleating whets the wolf's maw, sits down in the middle of the rock and tells over their tale. Soon as Aristæus saw the facility within his grasp, scarcely giving the old one time to settle his tired limbs, he bursts on him with a tremendous cry, and invades him with manacles there as he lies. The god on his part, his craft then, as ever, in his mind, transforms himself into all that is monstrous in nature-the

fire, the hideous beast, the flowing stream. But when no stratagem finds him escape, vanquished, he becomes himself again, and at last from human lips speaks thus :-'Why, who has bid thee, most assured of all youths that are, to visit us in our home or what wouldst thou have hence?' But he, 'Thou knowest, Proteus, thou knowest of thyself—nought can cheat thee; but do thou leave off the will to cheat. Following the instructions of gods I am come, to ask an oracle for my o'erlaboured fortunes.' So far he spoke. At this the seer at length, with mighty force, darted on him the glassgreen glare of his fiery eyes, and heavily gnashing his teeth, thus broke the seal of his lips with the voice of destiny:

'No-think not it is no angry god that has laid his hand on thee-thy suffering is for a great crime: this thy punishment Orpheus, a wretched man by no fault of his own, should fate not interpose, is still stinging into life, still raging implacably for his ravished bride. She, in her headlong flight from thee, along the river meadow, saw not, the young doomed one that she was, in the deep grass an enormous water-serpent right before her feet, keeping ward over the river-bank. the choir of her peers, the Dryads, filled the very mountainpeaks with their crying: her dirge was sung by the steeps of Rhodope, and high Pangea and Rhesus' land, the land of the war-god, by the Getæ, by Hebrus, and Orithyia, Acte's child; while he, solacing with the hollow shell his distempered love,

But

« PreviousContinue »