“St. Martin’s summer, halcyon days.” King Henry VI, i. 2, 131. “Halcyon days”–how often is the expression made use of, how seldom do its users realise from whence they have borrowed it. “These were halcyon days,” says the old man, and his memory wanders back to a time when for him “All the world is […]

“… Every sound is sweet;Myriads of rivers hurrying thro’ the lawn,The moan of doves in immemorial elms,And murmuring of innumerable bees.” Tennyson. In the fragrance of the blossom of the limes the bees are gleaning a luscious harvest. Their busy humming sounds like the surf on a reef heard from very far away, and would […]

“Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,Thou from whose immortal bosom,Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,Breathe thine influence most divineOn thine own child, Proserpine. If with mists of evening dewThou dost nourish those young flowersTill they grow, in scent and hue,Fairest children of the hours,Breathe thine influence most divineOn thine own […]

“We call such a man a hero in English to this day, andcall it a ‘heroic’ thing to suffer pain and grief, thatwe may do good to our fellow-men.” Charles Kingsley. In the pleasant land of Argos, now a place of unwholesome marshes, once upon a time there reigned a king called Acrisius, the father […]

Through the tropic nights their sonorous, bell-like booming can be heard coming up from the marshes, and when they are unseen, the song of the bull-frogs would suggest creatures full of solemn dignity. The croak of their lesser brethren is less impressive, yet there is no escape from it on those evenings when the dragon-flies’ […]

… “The sad deathOf Hyacinthus, when the cruel breathOf Zephyr slew him–Zephyr penitentWho now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.” Keats. “Whom the gods love die young”–truly it would seem so, as we read the old tales of men and of women beloved of the gods. To those men who […]

Atalanta, daughter of the king of Arcadia, returned sad at heart to her own land. Only as comrades, as those against whose skill in the chase she was wont to pit her own skill, had she looked upon men. But Meleager, the hero who loved her and her fair honour more than life itself, and […]

By day, while the sun-god drove his chariot in the high heavens and turned the blue-green AEgean Sea into the semblance of a blazing shield of brass, Idas and Marpessa sat together in the trees’ soft shades, or walked in shadowy valleys where violets and wild parsley grew, and where Apollo rarely deigned to come. […]

In days when the world was young and when the gods walked on the earth, there reigned over the island of Cyprus a sculptor-king, and king of sculptors, named Pygmalion. In the language of our own day, we should call him “wedded to his art.” In woman he only saw the bane of man. Women, […]

“The road, to drive on which unskilled were Phaeton’s hands.” Dante–Purgatorio. To Apollo, the sun-god, and Clymene, a beautiful ocean-nymph, there was born in the pleasant land of Greece a child to whom was given the name of Phaeton, the Bright and Shining One. The rays of the sun seemed to live in the curls […]

To the modern popular mind perhaps none of the goddesses of Greece–not even Venus herself–has more appeal than has the huntress goddess, Diana. Those who know but little of ancient statuary can still brighten to intelligent recognition of the huntress with her quiver and her little stag when they meet with them in picture gallery […]

Conqueror of all conquerable earth, yet not always victorious over the heart of a maid was the golden-locked Apollo. As mischievous Eros played one day with his bow and arrows, Apollo beheld him and spoke to him mockingly. “What hast thou to do with the weapons of war, saucy lad?” he said. “Leave them for […]

Those who are interested in watching the mental development of a child must have noted that when the baby has learned to speak even a little, it begins to show its growing intelligence by asking questions. “What is this?” it would seem at first to ask with regard to simple things that to it are […]