I Over the broken world, the dark gone by,Horror of outcast darkness torn with wars;And timeless agonyOf the white fire, heaped high by blinded Stars,Unfaltering, unaghast;–Out of the midmost FireAt last,–at last,–Cry! …O darkness’ one desire,–O darkness, have you heard?–Black Chaos, blindly striving towards the Word?–The Cry! Behold thy conqueror, Death!Behold, behold from whomIt flutters […]

Beloved, till the day break,Leave wide the little door;And bless, to lack and longing,Our brimming more-and-more. Is love a scanted portion,That we should hoard thereof?–Oh, call unto the deserts,Beloved and my Love!

Behind the power of the gods and beyond all the efforts of men, the three Fates sat at their spinning. No one could tell whence these sisters were, but by some strange necessity they spun the web of human life and made destinies without knowing why. It was not for Clotho to decree whether the […]

Once upon a time, through that Destiny that overrules the gods, Love himself gave up his immortal heart to a mortal maiden. And thus it came to pass. There was a certain king who had three beautiful daughters. The two elder married princes of great renown; but Psyche, the youngest, was so radiantly fair that […]

Over mountains and valleys Psyche journeyed alone until she came to the city where her two envious sisters lived with the princes whom they had married. She stayed with them only long enough to tell the story of her unbelief and its penalty. Then she set out again to search for Love. As she wandered […]

I. THE APPLE OF DISCORD. There was once a war so great that the sound of it has come ringing down the centuries from singer to singer, and will never die. The rivalries of men and gods brought about many calamities, but none so heavy as this; and it would never have come to pass, […]

The Greeks had won back Fair Helen, and had burned the city of Troy behind them, but theirs was no triumphant voyage home. Many were driven far and wide before they saw their land again, and one who escaped such hardships came home to find a bitter welcome. This was the chief of all the […]

I. THE CURSE OF POLYPHEMUS. Of all the heroes that wandered far and wide before they came to their homes again after the fall of Troy, none suffered so many hardships as Odysseus. There was, indeed, one other man whose adventures have been likened to his, and this was Aeneas, a Trojan hero. He escaped […]

There are so many tales of the vanity of kings and queens that the half of them cannot be told. There was Cassiopaeia, queen of Aethiopia, who boasted that her beauty outshone the beauty of all the sea-nymphs, so that in anger they sent a horrible sea-serpent to ravage the coast. The king prayed of […]

Apollo did not live always free of care, though he was the most glorious of the gods. One day, in anger with the Cyclopes who work at the forges of Vulcan, he sent his arrows after them, to the wrath of all the gods, but especially of Zeus. (For the Cyclopes always make his thunderbolts, […]

For many years the remembrance of Apollo’s service kept Thessaly full of sunlight. Where a god could work, the people took heart to work also. Flocks and herds throve, travellers were befriended, and men were happy under the rule of a happy king and queen. But one day Admetus fell ill, and he grew weaker […]

I. DIANA AND ACTAEON. Like the Sun-god, whom men dreaded as the divine archer and loved as the divine singer, Diana, his sister, had two natures, as different as day from night. On earth she delighted in the wild life of the chase, keeping holiday among the dryads, and hunting with all those nymphs that […]

In that day of the chase, there was one enterprise renowned above all others,–the great hunt of Calydon. Thither, in search of high adventure, went all the heroes of Greece, just as they joined the quest of the Golden Fleece, and, in a later day, went to the rescue of Fair Helen in the Trojan […]

Even if Prince Meleager had lived, it is doubtful if he could ever have won Atalanta to be his wife. The maiden was resolved to live unwed, and at last she devised a plan to be rid of all her suitors. She was known far and wide as the swiftest runner of her time; and […]

Not among mortals alone were there contests of skill, nor yet among the gods, like Pan and Apollo. Many sorrows befell men because they grew arrogant in their own devices and coveted divine honors. There was once a great hunter, Orion, who outvied the gods themselves, till they took him away from his hunting-grounds and […]

Venus did not always befriend true lovers, as she had befriended Hippomenes, with her three golden apples. Sometimes, in the enchanted island of Cyprus, she forgot her worshippers far away, and they called on her in vain. So it was in the sad story of Hero and Leander, who lived on opposite borders of the […]

The island of Cyprus was dear to the heart of Venus. There her temples were kept with honor, and there, some say, she watched with the Loves and Graces over the long enchanted sleep of Adonis. This youth, a hunter whom she had dearly loved, had died of a wound from the tusk of a […]

Pan led a merrier life than all the other gods together. He was beloved alike by shepherds and countrymen, and by the fauns and satyrs, birds and beasts, of his own kingdom. The care of flocks and herds was his, and for home he had all the world of woods and waters; he was lord […]

Pan came at length to be such a wonderful piper with his syrinx (for so he named his flute) that he challenged Apollo to make better music if he could. Now the sun-god was also the greatest of divine musicians, and he resolved to punish the vanity of the country-god, and so consented to the […]

Even with the gifts of Prometheus, men could not rest content. As years went by, they lost all the innocence of the early world; they grew more and more covetous and evil-hearted. Not satisfied with the fruits of the Earth, or with the fair work of their own hands, they delved in the ground after […]