HYPOLYMPIA Or The Gods in the Island An Ironic Fantasy, Edmund Gosse [classic literature list .txt] 📗

to him with acclamation.

CIRCE [looking up at RHEA, with eager sympathy].

What did you do, you poor dears?

RHEA [after a pause].

We did nothing.

KRONOS.

Zeus let us stay then. Why has he driven us out now?

RHEA [aside].

He does not understand, Circe. It is very sweet of you to be so kind to us, but you must go back now to your young companions. Who is here?

CIRCE.

I think we are all here, or nearly all. I have not seen Iris, but surely all the rest are here.

RHEA.

Is Zeus very much disturbed? On the ship I heard Æolus say that it was impossible to go near him, he was so unreasonably angry.

CIRCE.

Yes, he thought that our miseries were all the fault of Poseidon and Æolus. But mortality will make a great change in Zeus; I think perhaps a greater change than in any of us. He has eaten a very substantial breakfast. Æsculapius says that as Zeus has hitherto considered the quality of his food so much, it is probable that in these lower conditions it may prove to be quantity which will interest him most. He was greatly pleased with a curious kind of aromatic tube which Hermes invented for him this morning.

RHEA.

Does Zeus blow down it?

CIRCE.

No; he puts fire to one end of it, and draws in the vapour. He is delighted. How clever Hermes is, is he not, Rhea? What shall you do here?

RHEA.

I must look after Kronos, of course. But he gives me no trouble. And I do not need to do much more. I am very tired, Circe. I was tired in my immortality. When Kronos and I were young, things were so very different in Olympus.

CIRCE.

How were they different? Do tell me what happened. I have always longed to know, but it was not considered quite nice, quite respectful to Zeus, for us to ask questions about the Golden Age. But now it cannot matter; can it, Rhea?

RHEA [after a pause].

The fact is that when I look back, I cannot see very plainly any longer. Do you know, Circe, that after the younger Gods invaded Heaven, although Zeus was very good-natured to us, and let us go on as deities, something of our god-head passed away?

KRONOS [aloud, to himself].

I said to him, "If I am unwelcome, I can go." And he answered, "Pray don't discommode yourself." Just like that; very politely, "Don't discommode yourself." And now he drives us away after all.

CIRCE [flinging herself over to KRONOS' knees].

Oh! Kronos, he does not drive you away! It is not he. It is our new enemies, not of our own race, that have driven us. And we are all here--Pallas, Ares, Phoebus--we are all here. You like Hermes, do you not, Kronos? Well, Hermes is here, and he will amuse you.

KRONOS.

I thought that Zeus had forgiven us. But never mind, never mind!

RHEA.

We are tired, Circe. And what does the new life matter to us now? The old life had run low, and we had long been prepared for mortality by the poverty of our immortality.

[Enter HERMES running.]

HERMES [in reply to a gesture of CIRCE].

I cannot stay. I am trying to rouse Demeter from her dreadful state of depression. She sits in the palace heaving deep sighs, and doing absolutely nothing else. It will affect her heart, Æsculapius say.

CIRCE.

She has always been so closely wedded to the study of agriculture, and now....

HERMES.

Precisely. And it has occurred to me that the way to rouse her will be to send Persephone to her in a little country cart I have discovered. I have two mouse-coloured ponies already caught and harnessed--such little beauties. The only thing left to do is to search for Persephone.

CIRCE.

I will find her in a moment. [Exit.]

RHEA.

We hear that you have already invented a means of amusing Zeus, Hermes? Is he prepared to forget his thunderbolt?

HERMES.

He has mentioned it only twice this morning, and I have set Hephæstus to work to make him another, of yew-tree wood. It will be less incommodious, more fitted to this place, and in a very short time Zeus will forget the original.

KRONOS [loudly, to himself].

Zeus gave me an orb and sceptre to console me. I used to play cup and ball with them behind his throne.

RHEA [in a solicitous aside to HERMES].

Oh! it is not true. Kronos' mind now wanders so strangely. He thinks that it is Zeus who has turned him out of Olympus.

HERMES [in the same tone].

Do not distress him, Rhea, by contradiction and explanation. I will find modes of amusing him a little every day, and, for the rest, let him doze in the sunshine. His mind is worn so smooth that it fails any longer to catch in ideas as they flit against it. They pass off, glide away. It is useless, Rhea, to torment Kronos.

RHEA.

I shall watch him, all day long. For I, too, am weary. Do not propose to me, with your restless energy, any fresh interests. Let me sit, with my cold hands folded in my lap, and look at Kronos, nodding, nodding. It is very kind of Circe, but we are too old for love; and of you, but we are too old for amusement. Let us rest, Hermes, rest and sleep; perhaps dream a little, dream of the far-away past.

[CIRCE and PERSEPHONE enter from the left.]

PERSEPHONE [to HERMES].

My mother requires so much activity of mind and body. You must not believe that I was neglecting her. But I went forth in despair this morning to see what I could invent, adapt, discover, as a means of rousing her. I am stupid, I could think of nothing. I wandered through the woods, down the glen, along the sea-shore, up the side of the tarn and of the marsh, but I could think of nothing.

CIRCE.

And when I found Persephone she was lying, flung out among the flowers, with bees and butterflies leaping round her in the sunshine, and the beech-leaves singing their faint song of peace. It was beautiful, it was like Enna--with, ah! such a difference.

PERSEPHONE.

Circe does not tell you that I was so foolish as to be in tears. But now it seems that you have invented an occupation for Ceres? You are so divinely ingenious.

HERMES.

I hope it may be successful.

PERSEPHONE.

Tell me what it is.

HERMES.

I have found at the back of the palace a small rural waggon, and I have caught two ponies, with coats like grey velvet, and great antelopes' eyes--dear little creatures. I have harnessed them, and now I want you to sit in this cart, while I am dressed like some herdsman of these barbarians, and lead the ponies, and we will go together to coax Demeter out into the fields.

PERSEPHONE.

Oh! Hermes, how splendid of you. Let us fly to carry out your plan. Circe, will you not come with us?

CIRCE.

Or shall I not rather go to prepare the mind of Demeter for an agreeable surprise? Shall you be happy by yourselves, Kronos and Rhea?

RHEA.

Quite happy, for we desire to sleep.

[Exit CIRCE to right, HERMES and PERSEPHONE to left.]

III

 

[A ring of turf, in a hollow of the slope, surrounded by beech-trees, except on one side, where a marsh descends to a small tarn. Over the latter is rising the harvest moon. PHOEBUS APOLLO alone; he watches the luminary for a long time in silence.]

PHOEBUS.

Selene! sister!--since that tawny shell, Stained by thy tears and hollowed by thy sighs, Recalls thee still to mind--dost thou regard, From some tumultuous covert of this woodland, Thy whilom sphere and palace? Nun of the skies, In coy virginity of pulse, thy hands Repelled me when I sought to win thy lair, Fraternal, with no thoughts but humorous ones; And in thy chill revulsion, through thy skies, At my advance thy crystal home would fade, A ghost, a shadow, a film, a papery dream. Thou and thy moon were one. What is it now, Thy phantom paradise of gorgeous pearl, With sibilant streams and palmy tier on tier Of wind-bewhitened foliage? Still it floats, As when thy congregated harps and viols Beat slow harmonious progress, light on light, Across our stainless canopy of heaven. Ah! but how changed, Selene! If thy form Crouches among these harsher herbs, O turn Thy withering face away, and press thine eyes To darkness in the strings of dusty heather, Since that loose globe of orange pallor totters, Racked with the fires of anarchy, and sheds The embers of thy glory; and the cradles Of thy imperial maidenhood are foul With sulphur and the craterous ash of hell. O gaze not, sister, on the loathsome wreck Of what was once thy moon. Yet, if thou must With tear-fed eyes visit thine ancient realm, Bend down until the fringe of thy faint lids Hides all save what is in this tarn reflected-- Cold, pallid, swimming in the lustrous pool, There only worthy of thy clear regard, A vision purified in woe.

[The reeds in the tarn are stirred, and there is audible a faint shriek and a ripple of laughter. A shrouded figure rises from the marsh, and, hastening by PHOEBUS through the darkness, is lost in the woods. It is followed closely by PAN, who, observing PHOEBUS, pauses in embarrassment.]

PHOEBUS.

I thought I was alone.

PAN.

And so did we, sire.

PHOEBUS.

Am I to congratulate you on your distractions?

PAN.

I have a natural inclination to marshy places.

PHOEBUS.

This is a ghastly night, Pan.

PAN.

I had not observed it, sire. Yes, doubtless a ghastly night. But I was occupied, and I am no naturalist. This glen curiously reminded me of rushy Ladon. I am a great student of reeds, and I was agreeably surprised to find some very striking specimens here--worthy of the Arcadian watercourses, as I am a deity. I should say, was a deity.

PHOEBUS.

They will help, perhaps, to reconcile you to mortality. You can add them to your collection.

PAN.

That, sire, is my hope. The stems are particularly full and smooth, and the heads of the best of them rustle back with a profusion of flaxen flowerage, remarkably agreeable to the touch. I broke one as your Highness approached. But the wind, or some goblin, bore it from me. This curious place seems full of earth-spirits.

PHOEBUS.

You must study them, too, Pan. That will supply you with another object.

PAN.

But the marsh water has a property unknown to the Olympian springs. I suspect it of being poisoned. After standing long in it, I found myself troubled with aching in the shank, from knee to hoof. If this is repeated, my studies of reed-life will be made dolorously difficult.

PHOEBUS.

It must now be part of your pleasure to husband your enjoyments. You have always rolled in the twinkle of the vine-leaves, hot enough and not too hot, with grapes--immense musky clusters--just within your reach. If you think of it philosophically----

PAN.

How, sire?

PHOEBUS.

Philosophically.... Well, if you think of it sensibly, you will see that there was a certain dreariness in this uniformity of satisfaction. Rather amusing, surely, to find the cluster occasionally spring up out of reach, to find the polished waist of the reed slip from your hands? Occasionally, of course; just enough to give a zest to pursuit.

PAN.

Ah! there was pursuit in Ladon, but it was pursuit which always closed easily in capture. What I am afraid of is that here capture may prove the exception. Your Highness ... but a