Mythology; Mythology, Greek -- Juvenile literature
In full measure had the avenging goddess meted out to Narcissus the
restless longing of unsatisfied love. By day and by night he haunted
the forest pool, and ere long the face that looked back at his was
pale as a lily in the dawn. When the moonbeams came straying down
through the branches and all the night was still, they found him
kneeling by the pool, and the white face that the water mirrored had
the eyes of one of the things of the woods to which a huntsman has
given a mortal wound. Mortally wounded he truly was, slain, like many
another since his day, by a hopeless love for what was in truth but an
image, and that an image of his own creation. Even when his shade
passed across the dark Stygian river, it stooped over the side of the
boat that it might try to catch a glimpse of the beloved one in the
inky waters.
Echo and the other nymphs were avenged, yet when they looked on the
beautiful dead Narcissus, they were filled with sorrow, and when they
filled the air with their lamentations, most piteously did the voice
of Echo repeat each mournful cry. Even the gods were pitiful, and when
the nymphs would have burned the body on a funeral pyre which their
own fair hands had built for him, they sought it in vain. For the
Olympians had turned Narcissus into a white flower, the flower that
still bears his name and keeps his memory sweet.
"A lonely flower he spied,
A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride,
Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness,
To woo its own sad image into nearness;
Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move,
But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love."
Keats.
ICARUS
Fourteen years only have passed since our twentieth century began. In
those fourteen years how many a father's and mother's heart has bled
for the death of gallant sons, greatly-promising, greatly-daring, who
have sought to rule the skies? With wings not well enough tried, they
have soared dauntlessly aloft, only to add more names to the tragic
list of those whose lives have been sacrificed in order that the
groping hands of science may become sure, so that in time the sons of
men may sail through the heavens as fearlessly as their fathers sailed
through the seas.
High overhead we watch the monoplane, the great, swooping thing, like
a monster black-winged bird, and our minds travel back to the story of
Icarus, who died so many years ago that there are those who say that
his story is but a foolish fable, an idle myth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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