Half a Hundred Hero Tales of Ulysses and The Men of Old
General
Half a Hundred Hero Tales of Ulysses and The Men of Old
Mythology, Classical -- Juvenile literature
"Here lies a youth as beautiful as brave,
Who through the heavens his father's chariot drave."
His mother Clymené, frantic with grief, ceased not to roam the world,
followed by her weeping daughters, until at last she came to the banks
of Po, and found there the sculptured urn. She hung above it, bedewing
the marble with her tears, crying aloud the name so dear to her. Her
daughters stood around, weeping and lamenting with her. All night long
they kept their watch, and returning day found them still calling on
their brother's name. Four days and nights they kept their stand, till
at length, when for their weariness they would have sought rest, they
found they could not move. Phaethusa's arms were covered with
hardening bark and branching boughs; Lampetia stood rooted to the
ground; Æglé, as she tore her hair, only filled her hands with leaves.
While their faces were yet untransformed, they cried to their mother
for help. But, alas! she was powerless. She tore the bark from their
fair bodies, she stripped the leaves from their sprouting fingers, she
clung to their hardening limbs in vain. Only blood came trickling
where she tore away the leaves and bark, and in faint voices the
maidens cried that she only wounded her daughters when she tore their
trees.
Then the bark covered their fair faces, and they stood for ever dumb,
waving green boughs in the sun, while tears of amber rolled slowly
down the encrusting bark.
ARETHUSA
BY V. C. TURNBULL
Lord of all waters was Oceanus, the ancient Titan god, whose beard,
like a foaming cataract, swept to his girdle. Many fair daughters had
he, of whom poets sing, yet the fairest of all was the nymph Arethusa.
She had not lacked for wooers, but she shunned the haunts of men and
abode on the Acroceraunian heights whence she had sprung, or when she
descended to the plain hid herself in tangled bushes and overhanging
alders. She loved the quiet woodland ways, and had vowed herself to
the chaste huntress Diana, and in her train loved to fleet through the
woods and over the plains of Achaia, chasing the flying deer.
Now it happened one day that Arethusa, wearied with hunting and with
the great heat, wandered alone among the woods and meadows, seeking a
place of rest. Presently she heard the ripple of waters, and soon she
came to a river flowing between straight poplars and hoary willows.
Swiftly and quietly it ran, making no eddies, and so pure were its
waters that she could count the pebbles lying in its deep bed like
jewels in an open casket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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