The allegory of Cupid and Psyche is well presented in the following lines: They wove bright fables in the days of old, When reason borrowed fancy's painted wings; When truth's clear river flowed o'er sands of gold, And told in song its high and mystic things! And such the sweet and solemn tale of her The pilgrim-heart, to whom a dream was given, That led her through the world,--Love's worshiper,-- To seek on earth for him whose home was heaven! [Illustration: EROS WITH BOW] In the full city,--by the haunted fount,-- Through the dim grotto's tracery of spars,-- 'Mid the pine temples, on the moonlit mount, Where silence sits to listen to the stars; In the deep glade where dwells the brooding dove, The painted valley, and the scented air, She heard far echoes of the voice of Love, And found his footsteps' traces everywhere. But never more they met! since doubts and fears, Those phantom-shapes that haunt and blight the earth, Had come 'twixt her, a child of sin and tears, And that bright spirit of immortal birth; Until her pining soul and weeping eyes Had learned to seek him only in the skies; Till wings unto the weary heart were given, And she became Love's angel bride in heaven![131] The story of Cupid and Psyche first appears in the works of Apuleius, a writer of the second century of our era. It is therefore of much more recent date than most of the classic myths. =102. Keats' Ode to Psyche.= To this fact allusion is made in the following poem: O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung Even into thine own soft-conchèd ear: Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see The wingèd Psyche with awakened eyes? I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly, And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by side In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof Of leaves and tumbled blossoms, where there ran A brooklet, scarce espied! 'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass; Their arms embracèd, and their pinions, too; Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu, As if disjoinèd by soft-handed slumber, And ready still past kisses to outnumber At tender eye-dawn of Aurorean love: The wingèd boy I knew: But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? His Psyche true!