Gods and Heroes. Francillon Robert Edward

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СКАЧАТЬ to the peg indeed – so near that even Apollo, who could do everything better than anybody, thought he should find it very hard to beat him. The peg was a great way off, so Apollo took up the heaviest quoit, aimed perfectly straight, and sent it flying like a thunderbolt through the air. But Zephyrus, who was waiting, gave a great blast, and blew Apollo’s quoit as it was flying, so that it struck the boy, who fell to the ground.

      It was a cruel thing altogether. Apollo thought that he himself had struck his friend by aiming badly: the boy thought the same, for neither could tell it was Zephyrus, – nobody has ever seen the wind.

      So perished Hyacinthus: nor could Apollo do anything to show his love and grief for his friend except change him into a flower, which is called Hyacinth to this day. It is said that, if you look, you will find “Hya” written in Greek letters upon every petal of the flower. Some people, however, say that it is not “Hya” at all, but “Aiai,” which means “alas.” I don’t know which is true; but if you will some day look at the petal of a hyacinth through a microscope (the stronger the better, I should say), you will find out for yourself and be able to tell me.

      Apollo seems to have been rather fond of turning his friends into trees and flowers. There was another friend of his named Cyparissus, who once, by accident, killed one of Apollo’s favorite stags, and was so sorry for what he had done, and pined away so miserably, that the god, to put him out of his misery, changed him into a cypress-tree. “Cypress” comes from Cyparissus, as you will easily see. And we still plant the cypress in churchyards, because it is the tree of tears and mourning that cannot be cured.

III. – THE SUNFLOWER

      There was a nymph named Clytie, who was so beautiful that Apollo fell in love with her. She was very proud and glad of being loved by the god of the Sun, and loved him a great deal more than he loved her. But she believed that his love was as great as her own: and so she lived happily for a long time.

      But one day, Apollo happened to see a king’s daughter, whose name was Leucothoe. He thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen: so he fell in love with her, and forgot Clytie as much as if there was nobody but Leucothoe in the world. Clytie, however, knew nothing of all this, and only wondered why Apollo never came to see her any more.

      Now the king, whose name was Orchamus, kept his daughter very strictly: and did not wish her to have anything to do with Apollo. I suppose he was afraid of Apollo’s loving her for a time, and then leaving her to be miserable and unhappy, as happened to many nymphs and princesses in those days besides Clytie. So when King Orchamus found that Apollo was making love to Leucothoe, he shut her up in his palace, and would not allow her to go out or anybody else to go in.

      But Apollo was much too clever to be beaten in that way. He disguised himself as Leucothoe’s own mother, and so came to see her whenever he pleased, without anybody being anything the wiser. And so everything went on just as he wished, if it had not been for Clytie, whom he had treated just as King Orchamus was afraid he would treat Leucothoe.

      Clytie wondered why Apollo never came to see her till she could bear it no longer; and she watched him, to find out what was the reason of it all. She watched till at last she saw somebody who looked like a queen go into the palace of King Orchamus. But she knew Apollo much too well to be taken in by any disguise. She secretly followed him into the palace, and found him making love to Leucothoe.

      In her misery and jealousy, she went straight to King Orchamus, and told him what she had seen. Perhaps she hoped that the king would send his daughter away altogether, so that Apollo would then come back to her. She could not possibly foresee what would really happen. King Orchamus was so enraged with his daughter for receiving Apollo’s visits against his commands that he ordered Leucothoe to be buried alive. Of course he could not punish Apollo: because Apollo was a god, while he was only a king.

      Perhaps you will think that Apollo might have managed to save Leucothoe from such a terrible death as her father had ordered for her. As he did not, I suppose that King Orchamus had her buried before anybody could tell the news – at any rate she was dead when Apollo arrived at her grave. All he could do for her was to show his love and his sorrow by turning her into a tree from which people take a sweet-smelling gum called myrrh.

      As to Clytie, whose jealousy had caused the death of the princess, he refused ever to speak to her or look at her again: and he turned her into a sunflower, which has no perfume like the myrrh-tree into which he had changed Leucothoe. But, in spite of his scorn and of everything he could do to her, Clytie loved him still: and though he would not look at her, she still spends her whole time in gazing up at him with her blossoms, which are her eyes. People say that the blossoms of the sunflower always turn toward the sun – towards the east when he is rising, toward the west when he is setting, and straight up at noon, when he is in the middle of the sky. Of course, like all other blossoms, they close at night, when he is no longer to be seen. As for the sun himself, I suspect he has forgotten both Clytie and Leucothoe long ago; and sees no difference between them and any other trees or flowers.

IV. – THE NARCISSUS

      This story has nothing to do with Apollo: but I may as well tell it among the other flower stories.

      There was a very beautiful nymph named Echo, who had never, in all her life, seen anybody handsomer than the god Pan. You have read that Pan was the chief of all the Satyrs, and what hideous monsters the Satyrs were. So, when Pan made love to her, she very naturally kept him at a distance: and, as she supposed him to be no worse-looking than the rest of the world, she made up her mind to have nothing to do with love or love-making, and was quite content to ramble about the woods all alone.

      But one day, to her surprise, she happened to meet with a young man who was as different from Pan as any creature could be. Instead of having a goat’s legs and long hairy arms, he was as graceful as Apollo himself: no horns grew out of his forehead, and his ears were not long, pointed, and covered with hair, but just like Echo’s own. And he was just as beautiful in face as he was graceful in form. I doubt if Echo would have thought even Apollo himself so beautiful.

      The nymphs were rather shy, and Echo was the very shyest of them all. But she admired him so much that she could not leave the spot, and at last she even plucked up courage enough to ask him, “What is the name of the most beautiful being in the whole world?”

      “Whom do you mean?” asked he. “Yourself? If you want to know your own name, you can tell it better than I can.”

      “No,” said Echo, “I don’t mean myself, I mean you. What is your name?”

      “My name is Narcissus,” said he. “But as for my being beautiful – that is absurd.”

      “Narcissus!” repeated Echo to herself. “It is a beautiful name. Which of the nymphs have you come to meet here in these woods all alone? She is lucky – whoever she may be.”

      “I have come to meet nobody,” said Narcissus. “But – am I really so beautiful? I have often been told so by other girls, of course; but really it is more than I can quite believe.”

      “And you don’t care for any of those girls?”

      “Why, you see,” said Narcissus, “when all the girls one knows call one beautiful, there’s no reason why I should care for one more than another. They all seem alike when they are all always saying just the same thing. Ah! I do wish I could see myself, so that I could tell if it was really true. I would marry the girl who could give me the wish of my heart – to see myself as other people see me. But as nobody can make me do that, why, I suppose I shall get on very well without marrying anybody at all.”

      Looking-glasses had not been invented in those days, so that Narcissus had really never seen even so much of himself as his chin.

      “What!” СКАЧАТЬ