Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen make me immortal with a kiss! Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. I will be Paris, and, for love of thee, Instead of Troy shall Wertenberg be sacked; And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colors on my plumèd crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, And then return to Helen for a kiss. Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter When he appeared to hapless Semele; More lovely than the monarch of the sky In wanton Arethusa's azured arms; And none but thou shalt be my paramour. Marlowe, as was natural, contented himself with an external handling of the Faust legend. Goethe allegorized the whole, and turned the episode of Helen into a parable of modern poetry. When Lynkeus, the warder, is reprimanded for not having duly asked Helen into the feudal castle, he defends himself thus; Harrend auf des Morgens Wonne, Oestlich spähend ihren Lauf, Ging auf einmal mir die Sonne Wunderbar im Süden auf. Zog den Blick nach jener Seite, Statt der Schluchten, statt der Höh'n, Statt der Erd-und Himmelsweite, Sie, die Einzige, zu spähn.[23] The new light that rose upon the Middle Ages came not from the East, but from the South, no longer from Galilee, but from Greece. Thus, after living her long life in Hellas as the ideal of beauty, unqualified by moral attributes, Helen passed into modern mythology as the ideal of the beauty of the pagan world. True to her old character, she arrives to us across the waters of oblivion with the cestus of the goddess round her waist, and the divine smile upon her lips. Age has not impaired her charm, nor has she learned the lesson of the Fall. Ever virginal and ever fair, she is still the slave of Aphrodite. In Helen we welcome the indestructible Hellenic spirit. Penelope is the exact opposite to Helen. The central point in her character is intense love of her home, an almost cat-like attachment to the house where she first enjoyed her husband's love and which is still full of all the things that make her life worth having. Therefore, when at last she thinks that she will have to yield to the suitors and leave it, these words are always on her lips: #dôma kouridion mala kalon enipleion biotoio, tou pote memnêsesthai oïomai enper oneirô.#[24]