fly. Love had conquered—Love, the lord of gods and men, who mocks at maidens' vows and melts the coldest breast. So there, amid the alien waters of the sea, the two met in loving embrace, never again to part. And after this the gods brought them once again to the light of the sun. For, finding at length a way of escape through a fissure of the rocks, they rushed forth as that Arethusan Fount which springs up in the Sicilian island of Ortygia.
"And now from their fountains
In Enna's mountains,
Down one dale where the morning basks
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of Asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;—
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more."
Shelley
THE STORY OF DAPHNE
BY M. M. BIRD
Phœbus Apollo, the Sun-god, a hunter unmatched in the chase, had slain the awful Python with his shafts. To commemorate such a doughty deed, he instituted the Pythian Games wherein noble youths should strive for mastery. The prize was a simple green wreath, the symbol of victory. The laurel was not yet the leaf dedicated to the wreaths the gods bestowed upon the happy victors, but every kind of green was worn with promiscuous grace upon the flowing locks of Phœbus.
Flushed with pride in his new success against the Python, Phœbus saw Cupid, Venus' immortal son, bending his bow and aiming his feathered shafts at unwary mortals. A heart once pricked by one of those tiny darts felt all the bitter-sweet of love, and never recovered from the wound. Him Phœbus taunted. "Are such as these fit weapons for chits?" he cried. "Know that such archery is my proper business. My shafts fly resistless. See how the Python has met his just doom at my hands. Take up thy torch, and, with that only, singe the feeble souls of lovers."
Cupid returned him answer that though on all beside Apollo's shafts might be resistless, to Cupid would justly be the fame when he himself was conquered. The mischievous boy flew away to the heights of Parnassus, and thence winged one of his sharpest arrows against the breast of the bold deity. Another and different shaft he took, blunt and tipped with lead, and this he aimed at the heart of a certain nymph of surpassing fairness, a shaft designed to provoke disdain of love in her chaste bosom. Her name was Daphne, the young daughter of Peneus. She was a follower of Diana, the divine huntress. All her days she spent in the woods among the wild creatures, or scoured the open plains with swift feet. All her love was given to the free life of the forest: she roamed in fearless pursuit of beasts of prey, her quiver at her side, her bow in hand, her lovely hair bound in many a fillet about her head. Her father often blamed her. "Thou owest it," he said, "to thyself and me to take a husband."
But she, casting her young arms about his neck, begged him to leave her free to pursue the life she loved, and not set the yoke of marriage on her unwilling shoulders. "No more I beg of thee," she said, "than Diana's fond parent granted her."
Her soft-hearted father consented to respect her whim, but warned her that she would soon rue her unnatural wish.
As Daphne was one day hunting in the forest, Apollo perceived her. The arrow winged by Cupid had not failed of its effect, and the poison of love ran like fever through his veins. He saw the polished argent of her bared shoulder; he saw the disheveled hair that the wind had loosened from its snood; he saw the eyes, limpid and innocent as a fawn's, the beauty and speed of her feet as she fled down the forest glade, her taper fingers as they fitted an arrow to the bow-string. He saw and burned.
Swift as the wind the startled damsel had fled as she espied him, nor when he overtook her would she stay to hearken to his flattering words.
"Stay, nymph!" he cried. "It is no foe who follows you. Why should you flee as the trembling doe from the lion, the lamb from the hungry wolf, the dove from the pursuing falcon? It is a god who loves and follows. It is a god you flee from, a god who loves, and will not be denied."
Still she fled and still he followed; he the loving, she the loath, he pleading and she deaf to his prayers. As a hare doubles to elude the greyhound that is gaining on her, the flying maid turned back and sought thus to elude her pursuer. In vain she strove against a god. Terror winged her feet, but there is no escape from Love. He gained ground upon her, and now she felt his hot breath on her hair; his arm was just outstretched to clasp her.
The nymph grew pale with mortal terror. Spent with her long, hard race for freedom, she cast a despairing look around her. No help was to be seen, but near by ran the waters of a little brook. "Oh, help!" she cried, "if water gods are deities indeed. Earth, I adjure you, gape and entomb this unhappy wretch; or change my form, the cause of all my fear!"
The kind earth heard her frenzied prayer. The frightened nymph found her feet benumbed with cold and rooted to the ground. As Apollo's arms were flung about her a filmy rind grew over her body, her outflung arms were changed to leafy boughs, her hair, her fingers, all were turned to shuddering leaves; only the smoothness of her skin remained.
"Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!" For a maiden he clasped a laurel tree, and his hot lips were pressed upon the cold and senseless bark.
Yet Apollo is a gracious god, and presently, when his passion had cooled, he repented him of his mad pursuit and its desperate ending. The idea of the coy maiden, roaming the forest fancy-free, crept into his imagination, more delicate and lovely than when she lived in deed. So he vowed that the laurel should be his peculiar tree. Her leaves should be bound for poet's brow, should crown the victor in the chariot race, and the conqueror as he marched in the great triumph.
Secure from thunder should she stand, unfading as the immortal gods; and as the locks of Apollo are unshorn, her boughs should be decked in perpetual green through all the changing seasons.
And the grateful tree could only bend her fair boughs above him and wave the leafy burden of her head.
DEUCALION AND PYRRHA
BY M. M. BIRD
To the golden age of innocence, when the world was young and men a race of happy children, succeeded an age of silver, and then an age of brass. Last came an age of iron, when every man's hand was against his neighbor, and Justice fled affrighted to the sky. Then the sons of earth, the giants, no longer curbed by law or fear of the gods, waxed bold and wanton. Piling mountain upon mountain they essayed to scale the heavens and hurl its monarch from his throne. These Jupiter blasted with his red lightnings and transfixed with his winged bolts. But from their blood, as from seed that the sower scatters, there arose a race of men, a feeble folk, but no less godless and lawless than their sires. Then Jupiter, beholding the ways of men that they were evil and that none was righteous in his eyes, determined to destroy this world and people it with a new race unlike the first. He was minded at first to destroy it by fire, and made ready his artillery of thunderbolts, but then he bethought him that the vast conflagration might blaze up to heaven itself and scorch the gods on their golden thrones. So