Heathen mythology Part 26

I that shower dewy light Through slumbering leaves, bring storms!--the tempest birth Of memory, thought, remorse:--be holy, Earth!

I am the solemn night!"

HEMANS.

DEATH.

Poets have given to Death a heart of iron, bowels of steel, black wings, and a net with which she envelopes her victims. Statuaries carve her under the form of a large skeleton, armed with a scythe, and bearing wings.

Sparta and Elis honoured her, but Phoenicia and Spain paid to her more particularly the homage of a divinity. She inhabits the infernal regions; and though, in more modern times, Death has been always addressed as a divinity of the masculine gender. The Lacedaemonians indeed, regarded her, not as an existing, but as an imaginary being.

"Mysterious power! whose dark and gloomy sway Extends o'er all creation, what art thou?

They call thee 'King of Terrors!' drear dismay Followeth thy footsteps, and around thy brow Hovers a thick impenetrable cloud, Which, to some hearts, is Hope's sad funeral shroud.

Beside the infant on its cradle bed, The mother watches thro' the hour of night; Hope hath not quite her lonely spirit fled, Tho' o'er her first-born babe hath pa.s.sed the blight Of fell disease: wait, wait one moment more, Thy hand has touched it, Death, and hope is o'er.

Thou turn'st the hall of revelry to gloom, The wedding garment to a garb of woe; Thou com'st in silence to the banquet room, Ceased is the noisy mirth, the red wine's flow, And men look pale at thee, and gasp for breath, Thou doest this, thou doest more, oh! Death

Thou twin'st the cypress wreath round victory's brow, The brave have won the fight, but, fighting, fell; It was thine arm that laid the victor low, And toll'd amid the triumph, a lone knell For his departure: Death--thy gloomy power Can throw a sadness o'er the happiest hour.

Thou comest to the monarch in his hour Of pomp, and pride, and royalty's array; And the next victim of thy reckless power May be the beggar in his hut of clay: Thy hand can lay the tattered vagrant down Beside the head that wore the kingly crown.

{153} Childhood is thine, its unexpanded bloom, Shrinks to decay beneath thy chilling breath; Gay Youth, thou witherest, with thy touch of doom, Stern Manhood shrinks beneath thy grasp, oh, death, And fragile Age by worldly cares opprest, Sinks, softly sinks, into those arms for rest.

And then methought death's hollow voice replied, 'Rash mortal--would'st thou tempt the dangerous gloom, Launch thy frail bark upon the awful tide That leaves the lonely islands of the tomb; Darest thou, in thy vain impotence of pride Demand the knowledge to frail man denied?

Call'st thou me reckless, when I place my hand Upon the earliest buddings of the spring?

Had I allowed those sweet buds to expand, What would the skies of gloomy autumn bring?

Darkness, dismay: those sweet buds, leaf by leaf, Had sadly faded, full of tears and grief.

What though I slew the victor in his pride, 'Tis meet the brave on battle field should die, His name is echoed thro' the nations wide, Reared is the column where his ashes lie; He sought for fame, he won it, bravely won; He died for fame, when his great task was done.

What tho' I turn the banquet room to grief, The wedding garment to a garb of woe, Do I not bring to wounded hearts relief?

Do I not ease the wretched of his woe?

Then taunt me not with wanton cruelty, Man knows 'tis written 'thou must surely die!'

But at what hour, no mortal power may know, Whether at morn, at dewy eve, or night, When sinks the heart beneath its weight of woe, Or throb the pulses with supreme delight, Vain mortal! cease G.o.d's sovereign will to scan, Be thou prepared to meet the son of man!'"

CLARKE.

SLEEP.

Sleep, the accustomed companion of night, inhabits the lower regions, though Ovid has placed his palace in the cold Scythia.

----------------"In his dark abode Deep in a cavern dwells the drowsy G.o.d, Whose gloomy mansion nor the rising sun Nor setting, visits, nor the lightsome noon; But lazy vapours round the region fly, Perpetual twilight and a doubtful sky; No crowing c.o.c.k does there his wings display Nor with his h.o.r.n.y bill provoke the day; Nor watchful dogs, nor the more wakeful geese, Disturb, with nightly noise, the sacred peace: {154} Nor beast of nature nor the laws, are nigh, Nor trees with tempests rocked, nor human cry, But safe repose, without an air of breath, Dwells here, and a dumb quiet next to death, An arm of Lethe with a gentle flow, Arising upward from the rock below, The palace moats, and o'er the pebbles creeps, And with soft murmurs calls the coming sleeps.

Around its entry nodding poppies grew, And all cool simples that sweet rest bestow; Night from the plants their sleepy virtue drains, And pa.s.sing, sheds it on the silent plains: No door there was th' unguarded house to keep, On creaking hinges turned to break his sleep.

But in the gloomy court was raised a bed, Stuffed with black plumes, and in an ebon stead; Black was the covering too where lay the G.o.d, And slept supine, his limbs displayed abroad."

OVID.

The princ.i.p.al minister of Sleep is Morpheus, son of Somnus, who was the presider over sleep; the former was the parent of dreams, of whom, by a beautiful idea, imagination was said to be the mother. The palace of Somnus was a dark cave, where the G.o.d lies asleep on a bed of feathers. The dreams stand by him, and Morpheus, as his princ.i.p.al minister, watches, to prevent any noise from awaking him.

"Oh lightly, lightly tread, A holy thing is sleep; On the worn spirit shed, And eyes that wake to weep.

A holy thing from heaven, A gracious, dewy cloud, A covering mantle given, The weary to enshroud!

Oh! lightly, lightly tread; Revere the pale, still brow, The meekly drooping head, The long hair's willowy flow.

Ye know not what ye do, That call the slumberers back, From the world unseen by you Unto life's dim faded track.

Her soul is far away, In her childhood's land, perchance, Where her young sisters play, Where s.h.i.+nes her mother's glance.

Some old sweet native sound Her spirit haply weaves; A harmony profound, Of woods with all their leaves.

{155} A murmur of the sea, A laughing tone of streams; Long may her sojourn be In the music land of dreams.

Each voice of love is there, Each gleam of beauty fled, Each lost one still more fair-- Oh! lightly, lightly tread!"

HEMANS.

By the Lacedaemonians, the image of Somnus was always placed near that of death on account of their apparent resemblance.

"How wonderful is death, Death and his brother Sleep!

One, pale as yonder waning moon, With lips of lurid blue; The other rosy as the morn When throned in ocean's wave, It blushes o'er the world: Yet both so pa.s.sing wonderful!"

Sh.e.l.lEY.

---------------"The one glides gentle o'er the s.p.a.ce Of earth, and broad expanse of ocean waves, Placid to man. The other has a heart Of iron; yea, the heart within his breast Is bra.s.s, unpitying; whom of men he grasps Stern he retains."

HESIOD

MANES.

The Manes was a name applied generally to the soul after it has separated from the body, and were among the infernal deities being supposed to preside over the grave, burial places, and monuments of the dead.

They were wors.h.i.+pped with great great solemnity, particularly by the Romans, and were always invoked by the Augurs before proceeding about their sacerdotal offices.

It was believed that these spirits quitted, during the hours of night, their melancholy dwelling-place, and "revisited the glimpses of the moon,"

to exercise their benevolence or their fury. They were allowed also to leave their tombs three times during the course of the year while their fetes, which were the most pompous in Rome, were proceeding in their honour.

{156}

NEMESIS.

Nemesis, G.o.ddess of Justice and of Vengeance, was the daughter of Necessity. This divinity had wings, a fillet of serpents round her brow, and a sword to strike the unhappy criminals who merited its blow;--though always ready to punish the impious, she was equally liberal in rewarding the good and the virtuous. The people of Smyrna were the first who made her statue with wings, to show with what celerity she is prepared to punish the crimes of the wicked.

[Ill.u.s.tration]