"When rude around the high-wrought ark The tempests raged, the waters dark Around the mother tossed and swelled; With not unmoistened cheek she held Her Perseus in her arms and said: 'What sorrows bow this hapless head! Thou sleepst the while, thy gentle breast Is heaving in unbroken rest, In this our dark, unjoyous home, Clamped with the rugged brass, the gloom Scarce broken by the doubtful light That gleams from yon dim fires of night. But thou, unwet thy clustering hair, Heedst not the billows raging wild, The moanings of the bitter air, Wrapt in thy purple robe, my beauteous child! Oh! seemed this peril perilous to thee, How sadly to my words of fear Wouldst thou bend down thy listening ear! But now sleep on, my child! sleep thou, wide sea! Sleep, my unutterable agony! Oh! change thy counsels, Jove, our sorrows end! And if my rash, intemperate zeal offend, For my child's sake, his father, pardon me!'" The god Apollo, too, had his mortal loves: the fair maiden Coronis, whom in a fit of jealousy he shot through the heart,--the mother of AEsculapius, the god of healing; Daphne, the beautiful nymph, who would not listen to his entreaties, and was finally changed into a laurel tree; and the muse Calliope, by whom he became the father of Orpheus, who inherited his parent's musical and poetical gifts. The story of the loves of Orpheus and his beautiful wife, Eurydice, is one of the most touching in all literature: how she died from the bite of a venomous serpent, and her spirit was conducted down to the gloomy realms of Hades, leaving Orpheus broken-hearted; how Zeus gave him permission to go down into the infernal regions to seek his wife; how he appeased even Cerberus's rage by his music, and Hades and Proserpina consented to restore Eurydice to life and to her husband's care, but on the one condition that he should leave the infernal regions without once turning to look into the face of his beloved wife; and how he observed the mandate until just before he reached the earth, when he turned, only to behold the vanishing form of the wife he had so nearly snatched from the grave. The rest of his days were passed in sadness, and finally some Bacchantes, enraged at his sad notes, tore him limb from limb, and cast his mangled remains into the river Hebrus. "As the poet-musician's head floated down the stream, the pallid lips still murmured 'Eurydice!' for even in death he could not forget his wife; and as his spirit floated on to join her, he incessantly called upon her name, until the brooks, trees, and fountains he had loved so well caught up the longing cry and repeated it again and again."