border of the tissue she had begun to wind in the wavy line of the Ocean that goes round about all, but the door sounds on its hinges, and she perceives the goddesses coming; the unfinished work drops from her hands and a ruddy blush lights her clear and snow-white face.”... Leaving her needle in the many-coloured web, she wanders down the mountain side to Lake Pergusa, then lying like a blue jewel in enamelled meads, but ever since that tragic day dark and sulphurous, as with fumes of hell. This is the story of the ravishment, as told in the great Homeric Hymn that was sung in honour of the Mother of Corn. “I begin the song of Demeter. The song of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus 189carried away as she played apart from her mother with the deep-bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow of soft grass—roses and the crocus and the fair violets and flags and hyacinths, and above all the strange flower of the narcissus, which the Earth, favouring the desire of Aidoneus, brought forth for the first time to snare the footsteps of the flower-like girl. A hundred heads of blossom grew up from the roots of it, and the sky and the earth and the salt wave of the sea were glad at the scent thereof. She stretched forth her hands to take the flower; thereupon the earth opened and the King of the great nation of the Dead sprang out with his immortal horses. He seized the unwilling girl, and bore her away weeping on his golden chariot. She uttered a shrill cry, calling upon Zeus; but neither man nor god heard her voice, nor even the nymphs of the meadow where she played; except Hecate only, sitting as ever in her cave, half veiled with a shining veil, and thinking delicate thoughts, she, and the Sun also, heard her. “So long as Persephone could still see the earth and the sky and the sea with the great waves moving, and the beams of the sun, and still thought to see again her mother, and the race of the ever-living gods, so long hope soothed her in the midst of her grief. The peaks of the hills and the depths of the sea echoed her cry. And the Mother heard it. A sharp pain seized her at the heart; she plucked the veil from her hair, and cast down the blue hood from her shoulders, and fled forth like a bird, seeking her daughter over dry land and sea. “Nine days she wandered up and down upon the earth, having blazing torches in her hands, and in her 190great sorrow she refused to taste of ambrosia, or of the cup of the sweet nectar, nor washed her face. But when the tenth morning came Hecate met her, having a light in her hands. But Hecate had heard the voice only, and had seen no one, and could not tell Demeter who had borne the girl away. And Demeter said not a word, but fled away swiftly with Hecate, having the blazing torches in her hands, till they came to the Sun, the watchman of Gods and men; and the goddess questioned him, and the Sun told her the whole story.”...