There, Orpheus! Orpheus! there was all Thy labor shed, there burst the Dynast's bond, And thrice arose that rumor from the lake. "Ah, what!" she cried, "what madness hath undone Me! and, ah, wretched! thee, my Orpheus, too! For lo! the cruel Fates recall me now; Chill slumbers press my swimming eyes.... Farewell! Night rolls intense around me as I spread My helpless arms ... thine, thine no more ... to thee." She spake, and, like a vapor, into air Flew, nor beheld him as he claspt the void And sought to speak; in vain; the ferry-guard Now would not row him o'er the lake again, His wife twice lost, what could he? whither go? What chant, what wailing, move the Powers of Hell? Cold in the Stygian bark and lone was she. Beneath a rock o'er Strymon's flood on high, Seven months, seven long-continued months, 'tis said, He breath'd his sorrows in a desert cave, And sooth'd the tiger, moved the oak, with song.[157] The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he repulsed their advances. Finally, excited by the rites of Bacchus, one of them exclaimed, "See yonder our despiser!" and threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it came within the sound of his lyre, fell harmless at his feet; so also the stones that they threw at him. But the women, raising a scream, drowned the voice of the music, and overwhelmed him with their missiles. Like maniacs they tore him limb from limb; then cast his head and lyre into the river Hebrus, down which they floated, murmuring sad music to which the shores responded. The Muses buried the fragments of his body at Libethra, where the nightingale is said to sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other part of Greece. His lyre was placed by Jupiter among the stars; but the shade of the bard passed a second time to Tartarus and rejoined Eurydice. Other mortals who visited the Stygian realm and returned were Hercules, Theseus, Ulysses, and Æneas.[158] FOOTNOTES: [151] Ovid, Metam. 5, 341-347. [152] Song of Proserpine, while gathering flowers on the plain of Enna. [153] Ovid, Metam. 5. 440, 642; Apollodorus, 1, 5, § 2; Hyginus, Fab. 147. [154] From Proserpine, stanzas written by Lake Pergusa; by George E. Woodberry (_Century_ _Magazine_, July, 1909). [155] Ovid, Metam. 10, 1-77. [156] See Commentary [157] From W. S. Landor's Orpheus and Eurydice in Dry Sticks. [158] See Index. CHAPTER X MYTHS OF NEPTUNE, RULER OF THE WATERS [Illustration: FIG. 95. POSEIDON]