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Alas, he naught esteems that face of thine,
To which love’s eyes pay tributary gazes;
Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne,
Whose full perfection all the world amazes;
But having thee at vantage–wondrous dread!–
Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.”

Shakespeare.

To all her warnings, Adonis would but give smiles. Ill would it become him to slink abashed away before the fierceness of an old monster of the woods, and, laughing in the pride of a whole-hearted boy at a woman’s idle fears, he sped homewards with his hounds.

With the gnawing dread of a mortal woman in her soul, Aphrodite spent the next hours. Early she sought the forest that she might again plead with Adonis, and maybe persuade him, for love of her, to give up the perilous chase because she loved him so.

But even as the rosy gates of the Dawn were opening, Adonis had begun his hunt, and from afar off the goddess could hear the baying of his hounds. Yet surely their clamour was not that of hounds in full cry, nor was it the triumphant noise that they so fiercely make as they pull down their vanquished quarry, but rather was it baying, mournful as that of the hounds of Hecate. Swift as a great bird, Aphrodite reached the spot from whence came the sound that made her tremble.

Amidst the trampled brake, where many a hound lay stiff and dead, while others, disembowelled by the tusks of the boar, howled aloud in mortal agony, lay Adonis. As he lay, he “knew the strange, slow chill which, stealing, tells the young that it is death.”

And as, in extremis, he thought of past things, manhood came to Adonis and he knew something of the meaning of the love of Aphrodite–a love stronger than life, than time, than death itself. His hounds and his spear seemed but playthings now. Only the eternities remained–bright Life, and black-robed Death.

Very still he lay, as though he slept; marble-white, and beautiful as a statue wrought by the hand of a god. But from the cruel wound in the white thigh, ripped open by the boar’s profaning tusk, the red blood dripped, in rhythmic flow, crimsoning the green moss under him. With a moan of unutterable anguish, Aphrodite threw herself beside him, and pillowed his dear head in her tender arms. Then, for a little while, life’s embers flickered up, his cold lips tried to form themselves into a smile of understanding and held themselves up to hers. And, while they kissed, the soul of Adonis passed away.

“A cruel, cruel wound on his thigh hath Adonis, but a
deeper wound in her heart doth Cytherea[1] bear. About
him his dear hounds are loudly baying, and the nymphs of
the wild woods wail him; but Aphrodite with unbound
locks through the glades goes wandering–wretched, with
hair unbraided, with feet unsandalled, and the thorns as
she passes wound her and pluck the blossom of her sacred
blood. Shrill she wails as down the woodland she is
borne…. And the rivers bewail the sorrows of
Aphrodite, and the wells are weeping Adonis on the
mountains. The flowers flush red for anguish, and
Cytherea through all the mountain-knees, through every
dell doth utter piteous dirge:

“‘Woe, woe for Cytherea, he hath perished, the lovely
Adonis!‘”

Bion.

Passionately the god besought Zeus to give her back her lost love, and when there was no answer to her prayers, she cried in bitterness: “Yet shall I keep a memorial of Adonis that shall be to all everlasting!” And, as she spoke, her tears and his blood, mingling together, were turned into flowers.

“A tear the Paphian sheds for each blood-drop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to flowers. The blood brings forth the roses, the tears, the wind-flower.”