CHAPTER XXII.

_HERO AND LEANDER._

Virgil's Mention of this Tale.--Ovid and Statius.--Autumnal Poetry.--Confusion between the Mythical Musæus and the Grammarian.--The Introduction of the Poem.--Analysis of the Story.--Hallam's Judgment on Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_.--Comparison of Marlowe and Musæus.--Classic and Romantic Art.

Quid juvenis, magnum cui versat in ossibus ignem Durus amor? Nempe abruptis turbata procellis Nocte natat cæca serus freta; quem super ingens Porta tonat cæli, et scopulis inlisa reclamant Æquora; nec miseri possunt revocare parentes, Nec moritura super crudeli funere virgo.[253]

This is the first allusion to a story, rather Roman than Greek, which was destined to play an important part in literature. The introduction of the fable without names into a poem like the third Georgic shows, however, that the pathetic tale of Hero and Leander's love had already found familiar representation in song or sculpture or wall-painting before Virgil touched it with the genius that turned all it touched to gold. Ovid went further, and placed the maiden of Sestos among the heroines for whom he wrote rhetorical epistles in elegiac verse. In Statius, again, we get a glimpse of the story translated from the sphere of romance into the region of antique mythology. To the hero Admetus, Adrastus gives a mantle dyed with Tyrian purple, and embroidered with Leander's death. There flows the Hellespont; the youth is vainly struggling with the swollen waves; and there stands Hero on her tower; and the lamp already flickers in the blast that will destroy both light and lives at once. It still remained for a grammarian of the fifth century, Musæus, of whom nothing but the name is known, to give the final form to this poem of love and death. The spring-tide of the epic and the idyl was over. When Musæus entered the Heliconian meadows to pluck this last pure rose of Greek summer, autumn had already set its silent finger on "bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang." His little poem of three hundred and forty hexameters is both an epic and an idyl. While maintaining the old heroic style of narrative by means of repeated lines, it recalls the sweetness of Theocritus in studied descriptions, dactylic cadences, and brief reflective sayings that reveal the poet's mind. Like some engraved gems, the latest products of the glyphic art, this poem adjusts the breadth of the grand manner to the small scale required by jewelry, treating a full subject in a narrow space, and in return endowing slight motives with dignity by nobleness of handling.

Calm mornings of sunshine visit us at times in early November, appearing like glimpses of departed spring amid the wilderness of wet and windy days that lead to winter. It is pleasant, when these interludes of silvery light occur to ride into the woods and see how wonderful are all the colors of decay. Overhead, the elms and chestnuts hang their wealth of golden leaves, while the beeches darken into russet tones, and the wild-cherry glows like blood-red wine. In the hedges crimson haws and scarlet hips are wreathed with hoary clematis or necklaces of coral briony berries; the brambles burn with many-colored flames; the dog-wood is bronzed to purple; and here and there the spindle-wood puts forth its fruit, like knots of rosy buds, on delicate frail twigs. Underneath lie fallen leaves, and the brown brake rises to our knees as we thread the forest paths. Everything is beautiful with beauty born of over-ripeness and decline. Green summer comes no more this year, at any rate. In front are death and bareness and the winter's frost.

Such a day of sunlight in the November of Greek poetry is granted to us by _Hero and Leander_. The grace of the poem is soul-compelling--indescribable for sweetness. Yet every epithet, each exquisite conceit, and all the studied phrases that yield charm, remind us that the end has come. There is peculiar pathos in this autumnal loveliness of literature upon the wane. In order to appreciate it fully we must compare the mellow tints of Musæus with the morning glory of Homer or of Pindar. We then find that, in spite of so much loss, in spite of warmth and full light taken from us, and promise of the future exchanged for musings on the past, a type of beauty unattainable by happier poets of the spring has been revealed. Not to accept this grace with thanksgiving, because, forsooth, December, that takes all away, is close at hand, would be ungrateful.[254]

Yet, though clearly perceptible by the æsthetic sense, it is far less easy to define its quality than to miss it altogether. We do not gain much, for example, by pointing to the reminiscences of bygone phraseology curiously blended with new forms of language, to the artificial subtleties of rhythm wrung from well-worn metres, to the richness of effect produced by conscious use of telling images, to the iridescent shimmer of mixed metaphors, compound epithets, and daring tropes, contrasted with the undertone of sadness which betrays the "idle singer of an empty day," although these elements are all combined in the autumnal style. Nor will it profit us to distinguish this kind of beauty from the _beauté maladive_ of morbid art. So difficult, indeed, is it to seize its character with any certainty, that in the case of _Hero and Leander_ the uncritical scholars of the Greek Renaissance mistook the evening for the morning star of Greek poetry, confounding Musæus the grammarian with the semi-mythic bard of the Orphean age. When Aldus Manutius conceived his great idea of issuing Greek literature entire from the Venetian press, he put forth _Hero and Leander_ first of all in 1498, with a preface that ran as follows: "I was desirous that Musæus, the most ancient poet, should form a prelude to Aristotle and the other sages who will shortly be imprinted at my hands." Marlowe spoke of "divine Musæus," and even the elder Scaliger saw no reason to suspect that the grammarian's studied verse was not the first clear woodnote of the Eleusinian singer. What renders this mistake pardonable is the fact that, however autumnal may be the poem's charm, no point of the genuine Greek youthfulness of fancy has been lost. Through conceits, confusions of diction, and oversweetness of style emerges the clear outline which characterized Greek art in all its periods. Both persons and situations are plastically treated--subjected, that is to say, to the conditions best fulfilled by sculpture. The emotional element is adequate to the imaginative presentation; the feeling penetrates the form and gives it life, without exceeding the just limits which the form imposes. The importance of this observation will appear when we examine the same poem romantically handled by our own Marlowe. If nothing but the _Hero and Leander_ of Musæus had survived the ruin of Greek literature, we should still be able to distinguish how Greek poets dealt with their material, and to point the difference between the classic and the modern styles.

What is truly admirable in this poem, marking it as genuinely Greek, is the simplicity of structure, clearness of motives, and unaffected purity of natural feeling. The first fifteen lines set forth, by way of proem, the whole subject:

#eipe, thea, kryphiôn epimartyra lychnon erôtôn, kai nychion plôtêra thalassoporôn hymenaiôn, kai gamon achlyoenta, ton ouk iden aphthitos Êôs, kai Sêston kai Abydon hopê gamos ennychos Hêrous.#[255]

Here, perhaps, a modern poet might have stayed his hand: not so Musæus; he has still to say that he will tell of Leander's death, and, in propounding this part of his theme, to speak once more about the lamp:

#lychnon, erôtos agalma, ton ôphelen aitherios Zeus ennychion met' aethlon agein es homêgyrin astrôn kai min epiklêsai nymphostolon astron erôtôn.#[256]

Seven lines were enough for Homer while explaining the subject of the _Iliad_. Musæus, though his poem is so short, wants more than twice as many. He cannot resist the temptation to introduce decorative passages like the three lines just quoted, which are, moreover, appropriate in a poem that aims at combining the idyllic and epic styles.

After the proem we enter on the story. Sestos and Abydos are divided by the sea, but Love has joined them with an arrow from his bow:

#êïtheon phlexas kai parthenon; ounoma d' autôn himeroeis te Leandros eên kai parthenos Hêrô.#[257]

Hero dwelt at Sestos; Leander lived at Abydos; and both were "exceeding fair stars of the two cities." By the sea, outside the town of Sestos, Hero had a tower, where she abode in solitude with one old servant, paying her daily orisons to Dame Kupris, whose maiden votary she was, and sprinkling the altars of Love with incense to propitiate his powerful deity. "Still even thus she did not shun his fire-breathing shafts;" for so it happened that when the festival of Adonis came round, and the women flocked into the town to worship, and the youths to gaze upon the maidens, Hero passed forth that day to Venus's temple, and all the men beheld her beauty, and praised her for a goddess, and desired her for a bride. Leander, too, was there; and Leander could not content himself, like the rest, with distant admiration:

#heile de min tote thambos, anaideiê, tromos, aidôs; etreme men kradiên, aidôs de min eichen halônai; thambee d' eidos ariston, erôs d' apenosphisen aidô; tharsaleôs d' hyp' erôtos anaideiên agapazôn êrema possin ebaine kai antion histato kourês.#[258]

He met the maiden face to face, and his eyes betrayed his passion; and she too felt the power of love in secret, and repelled him not, but by her silence and tranquillity encouraged him to hope:

#ho d' endothi thymon ianthê hotti pothon syneêke kai ouk apeseisato kourê.#[259]

So far one hundred and nine lines of the poem have carried us. The following one hundred and eleven lines, nearly a third of the whole, are devoted to the scene in the temple between Hero and her lover. This forms by far the most beautiful section of the tale; for the attention is concentrated on the boy and girl between whom love at first sight has just been born. In the twilight of early evening, in the recesses of the shrine, they stand together, like fair forms carved upon a bass-relief. Leander pleads and Hero listens. The man's wooing, the maiden's shrinking; his passionate insistance, her gradual yielding, are described in a series of exquisite and artful scenes, wherein the truth of a natural situation is enhanced by rare and curious touches. With genuine Greek instinct the poet has throughout been mindful to present both lovers clearly to the eye, so that a succession of pictures support and illustrate the dialogue, which rises at the climax to a love-duet. The descriptive lines are very simple, like these:

#êrema men thlibôn rhodoeidea daktyla kourês byssothen estonachizen athesphaton. hê de siôpêi, hoia te chôomenê, rhodeên exespase cheira.#[260]

Or again:

#parthenikês d' euodmon eüchroon auchena kysas.#[261]

Or yet again:

#ophra men oun poti gaian echen neuousan opôpên, tophra de kai Leiandros erômaneessi prosôpois ou kamen eisoroôn hapalochroon auchena kourês.#[262]

We do not want more than this: it is enough to animate the plastic figures presented to our fancy. Meanwhile Hero cannot resist the pleadings of Leander, and her yielding is described with beautiful avoidance of superfluous sentiment:

#êdê kai glykypikron edexato kentron erôtôn, thermeto de kradiên glykerôi pyri parthenos Hêrô kalleï d' himeroentos aneptoiêto Leandrou.#[263]

A modern poet would have sought to spiritualize the situation: in the hands of the Greek artist it remains quite natural; it is the beauty of Leander that persuades and subdues Hero to love, and the agitations of her soul are expressed in language which suggests a power that comes upon her from without. At the same time there is no suspicion of levity or sensuality. Hero cannot be mistaken for a light of love. When the time comes, she will break her heart upon the dead body of the youth who wins her by his passion and his beauty. Leander has hitherto been only anxious to possess her for his own. Hero, as soon as she perceives that he has won the fight, bethinks her with a woman's wisdom of ways and means. Who is the strange man to whom she must abandon herself in wedlock; and what does he know about her; and how can they meet? Therefore she tells him her name and describes her dwelling:

#pyrgos d' amphiboêtos emos domos ouranomêkês hôi eni naietaousa syn amphipolôi tini mounêi Sêstiados pro polêos hyper bathykymonas ochthas geitona ponton echô stygerais boulêisi tokêôn. oude moi engys easin homêlikes, oude choreiai êïtheôn pareasin; aei d' ana nykta kai êô ex halos ênemoentos epibremei ouasin êchê.#[264]

Having said so much, shame overtakes her; she hides her face, and blames her over-hasty tongue. But Leander, pondering how he shall win the stakes of love proposed to him--#pôs ken erôtos aethleuseien agôna#--is helped at last by Love himself, the wounder and the healer of the heart in one. He bursts into a passionate protestation: "Maiden, for the love of thee I will cross the stormy waves; yea, though the waters blaze with fire, and the sea be unsailed by ships. Only do thou light a lamp upon thy tower to guide me through the gloom:

#ophra noêsas essomai holkas Erôtos echôn sethen astera lychnon.#[265]

Seeing its spark, I shall not need the north star or Orion. And now, if thou wouldst have my name, know that I am Leander, husband of the fair-crowned Hero."

Nothing now remains for the lovers but to arrange the signs and seasons of their future meeting. Then Hero retires to her tower, and Leander returns to Abydos by the Hellespont:

#pannychiôn d' oarôn kryphious potheontes aethlous pollakis êrêsanto molein thalamêpolon orphnên.#[266]

It may be said in passing that this parting scene, though briefly narrated, is no less well conducted, _wohl motivirt_, as Goethe would have phrased it, than are all the other incidents of the poem (lines 221-231). The interpretation of the passage turns upon the word #pannychidas#, in line 225, which must here be taken to mean the vigil before marriage.

At this point the action turns. Musæus, having to work within a narrow space, has made the meeting and the dialogue between the lovers disproportionate to the length of the whole piece. In this way he secures our sympathy for the youth and maid, whom we learn to know as living persons. He can now afford to drop superfluous links, and to compress the tale within strict limits. The cunning of his art is shown by the boldness of the transition to the next important incident. The night and the day are supposed to have passed. We hear nothing of the impatience of Leander or of Hero's flux and reflux of contending feelings. The narrative is resumed just as though the old thread had been broken and another had been spun; and yet there is no sense of interruption:

#êdê kyanopeplos anedrame nyktos omichlê andrasin hypnon agousa kai ou potheonti Leandrôi.#[267]

The lover's attitude of suspense, waiting at nightfall on the beach for Hero's lamp to burn, is so strongly emphasized in the following lines that we are made to feel how anxiously and yearningly the hours of daylight had been spent by him. No sooner does the spark shine forth than Leander darts forward to the waves, and, having prayed to Love, leaps lively in:

#hôs eipôn meleôn eratôn apedysato peplon amphoterais palamêisin, heôi d' esphinxe karênôi, êïonos d' exôrto, demas d' errhipse thalassêi, lampomenou d' espeuden aei katenantia lychnou autos eôn eretês autostolos automatos nêus.#[268]

Hero meanwhile is on the watch, and when her bridegroom gains the shore, breathless and panting, he finds himself within her arms:

#ek de thyraôn nymphion asthmainonta periptyxasa siôpêi aphrokomous rhathamingas eti stazonta thalassês êgage nymphokomoio mychous epi partheneônos.#[269]

There she washes the stain and saltness of the sea from his body, and anoints him with perfumed oil, and leads him with tender words of welcome to the marriage-bed. The classic poet feels no need of apologizing for the situation, nor does he care to emphasize it. The whole is narrated with Homeric directness, contrasting curiously with the romantic handling of the same incident by Marlowe. Yet the point and pathos of clandestine marriage had to be expressed; and to a Greek the characteristic circumstance was the absence of customary ritual. This defect, while it isolated the lovers from domestic sympathies and troops of friends, attracted attention to themselves, and gave occasion to some of the best verses in the poem:

#ên gamos all' achoreutos; eên lechos all' ater hymnôn; ou Zygiên Hêrên tis epeuphêmêsen aoidos; ou daïdôn êstrapte selas thalamêpolon eunên; oude polyskarthmôi tis epeskirtêse choreiêi, ouch hymenaion aeise patêr kai potnia mêtêr; alla lechos storesasa telessigamoisin en hôrais sigê paston epêxen, enymphokomêse d' omichlê, kai gamos ên apaneuthen aeidomenôn hypemaiôn. nyx men eên keinoisi gamostolos, oude pot' êôs nymphion eide Leandron arignôtois eni lektrois; nêcheto d' antiporoio palin poti dêmon Abydou ennychiôn akorêtos eti pneiôn hymenaiôn. Hêrô d' helkesipeplos, heous lêthousa tokêas, parthenos hêmatiê nychiê gynê. Amphoteroi de pollakis êrêsanto katelthemen es dysin êô.#[270]

So the night passed, and through many summer nights they tasted the sweets of love, #chloeroisin iainomenoi meleessin#. But soon came winter, and with winter the sea grew stormy, and ships were drawn up on the beach, and the winds battled with each other in the Hellespontine Straits; and now Hero should have refrained from lighting her lamp, #minyôrion astera lektrôn#: but love and fate compelled her, and the night of tempest and of destiny arrived. Manfully Leander wrestled with the waves; yet the storm grew stronger; his strength ebbed away, an envious gust blew out the guiding lamp; and so he perished in the waters. The picture of his death-struggle is painted with brief incisive touches. The last two lines have a strange unconscious pathos in them, as though the life and love of a man were no better than a candle:

#kai dê lychnon apiston apesbese pikros aêtês kai psychên kai erôta polytlêtoio Leandrou.#[271]

What remains to be told is but little. The cold gray dawn went forth upon the sea; how gray and comfortless they know who, after lonely watching through night hours, have seen discolored breakers beat upon a rainy shore. Hero from her turret gazed through the twilight; and there at her feet lay dead Leander, bruised by the rocks and buffeted by slapping waves. She uttered no cry; but tore the embroidered raiment on her breast, and flung herself, face downward, from the lofty tower. In their death, says the poet after his own fashion, they were not divided:

#allêlôn d' aponanto kai en pymatôi per olethrôi.#[272]

This line ends the poem.

This is but a simple story. Yet for that very reason it is one of those stories which can never grow old. As Leigh Hunt, after some unnecessary girding at scholars and sculptors, has sung:

I never think of poor Leander's fate, And how he swam, and how his bride sat late, And watched the dreadful dawning of the light, But as I would of two that died last night. So might they now have lived, and so have died; The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side.

What makes it doubly touching is, that this poem of young love and untimely fate was born, like a soul "beneath the ribs of death," in the dotage and decay of Greek art. I do not know whether it has often been noticed that the qualities of romantic grace and pathos were chiefly appreciated by the Greeks in their decline. It is this circumstance, perhaps, which caused the tales of _Hero and Leander_ and _Daphnis and Chloe_ to attract so much attention at the time of the Renaissance. Modern students found something akin to their own modes of feeling in the later classics. Are not the colors of the autumn in harmony with the tints of spring?

The judicious Hallam, in a famous passage of the _History of Literature_, records his opinion that "it is impossible not to wish that Shakespeare had never written" the sonnets dedicated to Mr. W. H. With the same astounding #apeirokalia#, or insensibility to beauty, he ventures to dismiss the _Hero and Leander_ of Marlowe as "a paraphrase, in every sense of the epithet, of the most licentious kind." Yet this severe high-priest of decorum has devoted three pages and a half to the analysis of _Romeo and Juliet_, in which play we have, as he remarks with justice, "more than in any other tragedy, the mere passion of love; love, in all its vernal promise, full of hope and innocence, ardent beyond all restraint of reason, but tender as it is warm." What can be said of the critical perceptions of one who finds so strongly marked a moral separation between the motives of Marlowe's poem and Shakespeare's play?

The truth is that the words used by Hallam to characterize the subject of _Romeo and Juliet_ are almost exactly applicable to _Hero and Leander_, after due allowance made for the distinction between the styles of presentation proper to a tragedy in the one case, and in the other to a narrative poem. Reflecting upon this, it is probable that the impartial student will side with Swinburne when he writes: "I must avow that I want, and am well content to want, the sense, whatever it be, which would enable me to discern more offence in that lovely picture of the union of two lovers in body as in soul than I can discern in the parting of Romeo and Juliet."

To discuss the morality of Marlowe's muse is, however, alien to the present purpose. What has to be brought plainly forward is the artistic difference between the methods of Marlowe and Musæus. Hallam, in calling the English _Hero and Leander_ a "paraphrase," was hardly less wrong than Warton, who called it a "translation." It is, in fact, a free and independent reproduction of the story first told by Musæus. Without the poem of Musæus the poem of Marlowe would not have existed; but though the incidents remain unchanged, the whole manner of presenting them, of selecting characteristic details, and of guiding the sympathy and imagination of the reader is altered. In other words, the artistic consciousness had shifted its point of gravity between the ages of Musæus and Marlowe, and a new poem was produced to satisfy the new requirements of the æsthetic ideal. Musæus, as we have already seen, thought it essential to set forth the whole of his subject at the opening in its minutest details: Sestos and Abydos, the marriage-bed on which the morning never shone, the swimming feat of Leander, and the lamp, which was the star of love, till envious fate blew out both love and light and life itself together, all find their proper place in the proemium. In conducting the narrative he is careful to present each motive, as it were, from the outside, to cast the light of his imagination upon forms rendered as distinct as possible in their plasticity, just as the sun's light falls upon and renders visible a statue. There is no attempt to spiritualize the subject, to flood it with emotion, thought, and passion, to pierce into its inmost substance, to find the analogue to its implicit feeling in the depth of his own soul, and, by expressing that, to place his readers at the point of view from which he contemplates the beauty of the fable. The poet withdraws his personality, leaving the animated figures he has put upon the stage of fancy, the carefully prepared situations that display their activity, and the words invented for them, to tell the tale. He can therefore afford to be both simple and direct, brief in descriptive passages, and free from psychological digressions. A few gnomic sentences, here and there introduced, suffice to maintain the reflective character of a meditated work of art. All this is in perfect concord with the Greek conception of art, the sculpturesque ideal.

Marlowe takes another course. The three hundred and forty lines which were enough for Musæus are expanded into six sestiads or cantos, each longer than the whole Greek poem.[273] Yet to this lengthy narrative no prelude is prefixed. Unlike Musæus, Marlowe rushes at once into the story. He does not wait to propound it, or to talk about the fatal lamp, or to describe Hero's tower. That Hero lived in a tower at all we only discover by accident on the occasion of her visit to the shrine of Venus, and Leander makes his first appearance there, guided by no lamp, but by his own audacity. On the other hand, all descriptions that set free the poet's feeling are enormously extended. The one epithet #himeroeis#, or love-inspiring, for instance, which satisfied Musæus, is amplified by Marlowe through forty lines throbbing with his own deep sense of adolescent beauty. The temple of Venus, briefly alluded to by Musæus, is painted in detail by Marlowe, with a luminous account of its frescos, bass-reliefs, and pavements. The first impassioned speech of Leander runs at one breath over ninety-six verses, while mythological episodes and moral reflections are freely interpolated. All the situations, however delicate, so long as they have raised the poet's sense of beauty to enthusiasm, are treated with elaborate and loving sympathy. In presenting them with their fulness of emotion to the reader, Marlowe taxes his inexhaustible invention to the utmost, and permits the luxuriance of his fancy to run riot. The passion which carries this soul of fire and air up to the empyrean, where it moves at ease, sometimes betrays him into what we know as faults of taste. It is as though the love-ache, grown intense, had passed over for a moment into pain, as though the music, seeking for subtler and still more subtle harmonies, had touched at times on discord.

Compared with the Greek poem, this _Hero and Leander_ of Marlowe is like some radiant double-rose placed side by side with the wild-brier whence it sprang by cultivation. The petals have been multiplied, the perfume deepened and intensified, the colors varied in their modulations of a single tint. At the same time something in point of simple form has been sacrificed. The first thing, then, that strikes us in turning from Musæus to Marlowe is that what the Greek poet considered all-important in the presentation of his subject has been dropped or negligently handled by the English, while the English poet has been prodigal in places where the Greek displayed his parsimony. On looking further, we discover that the modern poet, in all these differences, aims at effects not realized by ancient art. The life and play and actual pulsations of emotion have to be revealed, both as they exist in the subject of the poem and as the poet finds them in his own soul. Everything that will contribute to this main achievement is welcomed by the poet, and the rest rejected. All the motives which had an external statuesque significance for the Greek must palpitate with passion for the English. Those that cannot clothe themselves with spirit as with a garment are abandoned. He wants to make his readers feel, not see: if they see at all, they must see through their emotion; whereas the emotion of the Greek was stirred in him through sight. We do not get very far into the matter, but we gain something, perhaps, by adding that as sculpture is to painting and music, so is the poetry of Musæus to that of Marlowe. In the former, feeling is subordinate, or, at most, but adequate, to form; in the latter, _Gefühl ist alles_.

What has just been advanced is stated broadly, and is therefore only accurate in a general sense. For while the Greek _Leander_ contains exquisite touches of pure sentiment, so the English _Leander_ offers fully perfected pictures of Titianesque beauty. Still, this does not impair the strength of the position: what is really instructive in the comparative study of the two tales of _Hero and Leander_ will always be that the elder poem, in spite of its autumnal quality, is classical; the younger, in spite of its most utter paganism, is romantic. To enter into minute criticism of Marlowe's poem would be out of place here; and, were it included in my programme, I should shrink from this task as a kind of profanation. Those who have the true sense of ideal beauty, and who can rise by sympathy above the commonplaces of every-day life into the free atmosphere of art, which is nature permeated with emotion, will never forget the prolonged, recurring, complex cadences of that divinest dithyramb poured forth from a young man's soul. Every form and kind of beauty is included in his adoration, and the whole is spiritualized with imagination, ardent and passionate beyond all words.

FOOTNOTES:

[253] "What of the youth, whose marrow the fierceness of Love has turned to flame? Late in the dark night he swims o'er seas boiling with bursting storms; and over his head the huge gates of the sky thunder; and the seas, dashing on the rocks, call to him to return: nor can the thought of his parents' agony entice him back, nor of the maiden doomed to a cruel death upon his corpse."--Virg. _Georg._ iii. 258. Translated by an Oxford graduate.

[254] It is not only in Musæus that we trace a fascination comparable to that of autumn tints in trees. The description by Ausonius of Love caught and crucified in the garden of Proserpine, which contains the two following lines,

Inter arundineasque comas gravidumque papaver Et tacitos sine labe lacus sine murmure rivos,

might be quoted as an instance of the charm. Indeed, it pervades the best Latin poetry of the silver age, the epistles of Philostratus, many of the later Greek epigrams, and all the Greek romances, with _Daphnis and Chloe_ at their head.

[255] Tell, goddess, of the lamp, the confidant of secret love, and of the youth who swam by night to find his bridal-bed beyond the sea, and of the darkened marriage on which immortal morning never shone, and of Sestos and Abydos, where was the midnight wedding of Hero.

[256] Love's ornament, which Zeus in heaven, after the midnight contest, should have brought into the company of stars and called it the bride-adorning star of love.

[257] By setting on fire a youth and a maiden, of whom the names were love-inspiring Leander and virgin Hero.

[258] Then came upon him astonishment, audacity, trembling, shame; in his heart he trembled, and shame seized him at having been made captive: yet he marvelled at the faultless form, and love kept shame away; then manfully by love's guidance he embraced audacity, and gently stepped and stood before the girl.

[259] And he within himself was glad at heart, because the maiden understood his love, and cast it not from her.

[260] Gently pressing the rosy fingers of the maiden, from the depths of his breast he sighed; but she, in silence, as though angered, drew her rosy hand away.

[261] Kissing the fair perfumed maiden's neck.

[262] The while she bent her glance upon the ground, Leander tired not with impassioned eyes of gazing at the maiden's neck.

[263] Now she, too, received into her soul the bitter-sweet sting of love, and the heart of maiden Hero was warmed with delicious fire, and before the beauty of love-inspiring Leander she quailed.

[264] A tower, beset with noises of the sea, and high as heaven, is my home: there I dwell, together with one only servant, before the city walls of Sestos, above the deep-waved shore, with ocean for my neighbor: such is the stern will of my parents. Nor are there maidens of my age to keep me company, nor dances of young men close by; but everlastingly at night and morn a roaring from the windy sea assails my ears.

[265] Minding it, I shall be a ship of love, having thy lamp for star.

[266] In their desire for the hidden lists of midnight converse they oftentimes prayed that darkness should descend and lead them to the bridal-bed.

[267] Now the dark-mantled gloom of night rose over earth, bringing to mortals sleep, but not to longing Leander.

[268] So having said, he withdrew from his lovely limbs the mantle with both bands, and bound it on his head, and leaped from the shore, and cast his body on the sea, and ever fared face-forward to the burning lamp, himself the oarsman, self-impelled, a self-directed ship.

[269] From the door she passed, and silently embraced her panting bridegroom, dripping with the foamy sprinklings of the sea, and led him to the bride-adorning chamber of her maiden hours.

[270] There was wedding, but without the ball; there was bedding but without the hymn: no singer invoked bridal Here; no blaze of torches lit the nuptial couch, nor did the youths and maidens move in myriad mazes of the dance: father and mother sang no marriage chant. But silence spread the bed and strewed the couch, and darkness decked the bride; without hymns of Hymen was the wedding. Night was their bridesmaid, nor did dawning see Leander in the husband's room. He swam again across the straits to Abydos, still breathing of bridal in his soul unsatisfied of joy. Hero, meanwhile, by day a maid, at night a wife, escaped her parents' eyes: both bride and bridegroom oftentimes desired that day should set.

[271] And so the bitter blast extinguished the faithless lamp and the life and love of suffering Leander.

[272] They enjoyed each other even thus in the last straits of doom.

[273] Marlowe lived to write only the first two sestiads.