"And for me, damsels, harbour pitiful And favouring thoughts, dear children, that I come To some good man's or woman's house, to ply My task in willing service of such sort As agèd women use. A tender child I could nurse well and safely in my arms, And tend the house, and spread the master's couch Recessed in the fair chamber, or could teach The maids their handicraft." The offer is gladly accepted, for Celeus himself has an infant son, Demophoon, the hope of his race: The aged woman enters the dwelling, making in her long-robed grief a wonderful contrast to the four sportive girls:-- "Who lifting up their ample kirtle-folds Sped down the waggon-furrowed way, and shook Their curls about their shoulders--yellow gold Like crocuses in bloom." Once within the house, which she awes with her uncomprehended presence, the goddess sits absorbed in grief, until she is compelled to smile for a moment at the jests of the quick-witted maid Iambe, and consents to take in lieu of the wine that is offered her, a beverage of beaten barley, water, and herbs. These details are of course introduced to justify the ritual of Eleusis, in which the clown and the barley-water played a traditional part. Thus Demeter becomes nurse to Demophoon, but she has ideas of her duties differing from the common, and worthy of her unusual qualifications. She neither suckles nor feeds the infant but anoints him with ambrosia and lays him at night to sleep on the embers of the hearth. This his watchful mother discovers with not unnatural alarm; when the goddess reveals herself and departs, foiled in her desire to make her nursling immortal. The spirit that animates this fable is not that poetic frivolity which we are accustomed to associate with Paganism. Here we find an immortal in profoundest grief and mortals entertaining an angel unawares; we are told of supernatural food, and of a burning fire that might make this mortal put on immortality did not the generous but ignorant impulses of the natural man break in upon that providential purpose and prevent its consummation. Eleusis was the natural home for such a myth, and we may well believe that those initiated into the mysteries there were taught to dwell on its higher interpretation. But there are other hymns in a lighter vein in which the play of fancy is not guided by any moral intuition. The hymn to Hermes is one perpetual ebullition of irresponsible humour.