Eros

“ Psyche listened. Drop by drop the poisonous words passed into her soul. She had thought him king of all living things—worthy to rule over gods as well as men. She was so sure that his body was worthy sheath for the heart she knew so well.... She had pictured him beautiful as Eros, son of Aphrodite—young and fair, with crisp, golden locks—a husband to glory in—a lover to adore. And now she knew, with shame and dread, that he who had won her love between the twilight and the dawn was a thing to shame her, a monster to be shunned of men. ”

“ Sometimes, but only for a moment, I saw a faint solitary figure with a veiled face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a dream within a dream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I knew by an understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought, that it was Eros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or woman from the beginning of the world has ever known what love is, or looked into his [135] eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. ”

“ Eros.
Your dejection passes beyond all bounds. You cannot have been shown the singularly cheerful little jewel which Pallas [Pg 175] has brought with her? It raises every one's spirits.
Heracles.
It will not raise mine; for all of you, Eros, have been immortals from the beginning, and your mortality is a new and pungent flavour on the moral palate. ”

“ Eros [turning suddenly] .
Ah! Pallas! What, you have brought that ivory box with you? Why did you burden your hands with that?
Pallas.
I snatched it from the burning palace. There is something strange at the bottom of it—something like an opal, with a violet flame in it.
[Pg 12] Eros.
Alas! we have no great need of jewels here. This shining beech-leaf is the treasure you should wear, Pallas. See, a little bough of it, bent just above the white enamel of your forehead. It will be as green as a beryl to-day, and red like copper to-morrow, and perhaps you will need no third adornment. ”

“ In her garden, sitting amongst the flowers and idly watching his mother's fair white doves as they preened their snowy feathers in the sun, Aphrodite found her son Eros, and angrily poured forth to him the story of her shame.
"Thine must be the task of avenging thy mother's honour," she said. "Thou who hast the power of making the loves of men, stab with one of thine arrows the heart of this presumptuous maiden, and shame her before all other mortals by making her love a monster from which all others shrink and which all despise." With wicked glee Eros heard his mother's commands. ”

“ O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze
Of sudden wings
Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space
To fan my very face,
And gone as fleet,
Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat,
With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any trace
To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?
And why this palpitating heart,
This blind and unrelated joy,
This meaningless desire,
That moves me like the Child
Who in the flushing darkness troubled lies,
Inventing lonely prophecies,
Which even to his Mother mild
He dares not tell;
To which himself is infidel ”

“ Alas, that such a divinity or personification, this original, ancient Eros, should ever have been dethroned by others less spiritual than Adele; dethroned, aye, dragged down from the lofty pedestal, the rock of ages; and his torch of flame become but an urn of ashes to be scattered by every vagrant wind; he, himself, in time, represented as a thoughtless wayward child, often as a wanton sporting with bows and arrows as if at play; and forcing himself where no true affection exists, not even regard. ”

“ Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-born instinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its web of golden fancies,—made her wish to look upon her inmost self as in a glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul—the Eros and the Psyche—their beautiful offspring, Genius! ”

“ And he who shares with her an unending supremacy of perfection of form is not one of the gods, her equals, but a mortal lad, who was the son of a king.
As Aphrodite sported one day with Eros, the little god of love, by accident she wounded herself with one of his arrows. And straightway there came into her heart a strange longing and an ache such as the mortal victims of the bow of Eros knew well. While still the ache remained, she heard, in a forest of Cyprus, the baying of hounds and the shouts of those who urged them on in the chase. ”

“ One must always follow the spontaneous motions of the heart; it is the divine within us that stirs in the heart. And one must worship Eros so reverently that one can never be content with anything but the most poignant, most passionate manifestations of his power. To be content with a love that has turned in the course of time to mere affection, kindliness and quiet comprehension is almost to blaspheme against the name of Eros. Your true lover, thought Mrs. Aldwinkle, leaves the old, paralytic love and turns whole-heartedly to the young passion. ”

“ Less than thine Eros, in a summer night!’
‘Nay, do not jeer, but help my puzzled plight:
Because he loves so marvellously me,
And I with all he loves in love must be,
How to except myself I do not see.
Yea, now that other vanities are vain,
I’m vain, since him it likes, of being withal
Weak, foolish, small!’
‘How can a Maid forget her ornaments!
The Powers, that hopeless doom the proud to die,
Unask’d smile pardon upon vanity,
Nay, praise it, when themselves are praised thereby.’
‘Ill-match’d I am for a God’s blandishments! ”

“ Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all 1604 the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love) , fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. ”

“ CHORUS Erôs, Erôs, who blindest, tear by tear, Men's eyes with hunger; thou swift Foe that pliest Deep in our hearts joy like an edgèd spear; Come not to me with Evil haunting near, Wrath on the wind, nor jarring of the clear Wing's music as thou fliest! There is no shaft that burneth, not in fire, Not in wild stars, far off and flinging fear, As in thine hands the shaft of All Desire, Erôs, Child of the Highest! In vain, in vain, by old Alpheüs' shore The blood of many bulls doth stain the river And all Greece bows on Phoebus' Pythian floor ”

“ Those who have been favoured with much possession and satiety, have, to be sure, dropped a word now and then about the "raging demon," as, for instance, the most lovable and most beloved of all the Athenians—Sophocles; but Eros always laughed at such revilers,—they were always his greatest favourites.—There is, of course, here and there on this terrestrial sphere a kind of sequel to love, in which that covetous longing of two persons for one another has yielded to a new desire and covetousness, to a common, higher thirst for a superior ideal standing above them: but who knows this love? ”

“ I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and
Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now
All length is torture. Since the torch is out,
Lie down, and stray no farther. Now all labour
Mars what it does; yea, very force entangles
Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done.
Eros!—I come, my queen.—Eros!—Stay for me.
Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand,
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.
Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,
And all the haunt be ours.—Come, Eros, Eros!
Enter Eros.
EROS.
What would my lord? ”

“ The lips of courage, the eyes of truth, and the body of ecstasy, Eros, Lord!
Grant that their years like rocketing gems of a necklace snapped at the throat of a priest,
56Differ from each by the color and shape, but in ardor and excellence none are least!
Loose on them Trouble and Pain, swift leopards, to be taught and tamed by their crystal wills!
Fling to them mountains to overcome that their feet may be glad on the necks of the hills!
Every immortal must put on dust at a time all know or he is not God,
These shall take seizin of Death together, the dream shall break in the crumbling sod. ”

“ It recalled to her the early Grecian period, soon after she herself had risen, born by the forces of nature from the foam of the sea at Cyprus; of the time when Eros (Amor) and the Graces were ever in her train, and she herself the deity of reproduction and love; of the time when the myrtle, the rose, and the apple were especially sacred to her, and the dove, the swan and certain other animals were symbolic of her activities. And she looked upon him with affection.
“Eros! Oh, Eros! my lovely boy! son of my youth!” and her voice failed. ”

“ Thereupon she sent for her son, the great god Eros, who lords it over gods and men. The poison of his fiery darts none can withstand, and with him it rests to burn [Pg 38] men's hearts with the fever of unsatisfied desire, or so to temper the venom of his shafts that it runs like heavenly nectar through the veins. Yet the joy that he gives withal is akin to madness, and the torture of his wrath a frenzy unquenchable.
"Best-beloved son," she said, "if thou carest aught for thy mother's name and fame, thou wilt hasten now to do my bidding. ”

“ For what is love (let me speak freely to you, gentlemen and guests) , what is love, but the very inspiration of that Deity whose name is Love? Be sure that not without reason did the ancients feign Eros to be the eldest of the gods, by whom the jarring elements of chaos were attuned into harmony and order. ”

“ Dearest treasure, I am burning to yield myself to most voluptuous sport, lying on your bosom, to let my hands play with your buttocks. Aphrodité, why dost thou fire me with such delight in her? Oh! Eros, I beseech thee, have mercy and make her share my couch. Words cannot express the tortures I am suffering. Oh! my adored one, I adjure you, open your door for me and press me to your heart; 'tis for you that I am suffering. Oh! my jewel, my idol, you child of Aphrodité, the confidante of the Muses, the sister of the Graces, you living picture of Voluptuousness, oh! ”

“ Is it not in the nature of vulgar souls always to call an enemy evil? And should we call Eros an enemy? The sexual feelings have that in common with those of pity and worship that one being gratifies another by his own enjoyment—we do not too often meet with such a benevolent arrangement in nature. And we actually revile it and spoil it by an evil conscience! ”

“ As the period is now rapidly descending the incline leading to the conception of Eros as the devil himself, it is only natural that in the descriptions of "real" love on which it prides itself it should be more frigid and impotent, more seraphic and platonic than any other age we are acquainted with. ”

“ When it came to the turn of Eros, the judges told him that he must return to earth, to announce to men what passed in the other world, and that he must well observe everything, in order to be able to render a faithful account to the living. Thus he witnessed the miserable state of the wicked, which was to last a thousand years, and the delights enjoyed by the just; that both the good and the bad received the reward or the punishment of their good or bad deeds, ten times greater than the measure of their crimes or of all their virtues. ”

“ There can only be one such ring in the world. Oh, they could not fail to recognize it. The little chubby wicked Eros surrounded by the rubies—I have looked at the design every day—every night—sometimes the firelight gleaming upon the circle of rubies has made them seem to me a band of blood. Was that the idea of the artist who made the design, I wonder—a circle of blood with the god Eros in the centre. ”

“ Ay, you have more influence under his roof than any one else, but Aphrodite and Eros are a thousand times more powerful, for you rule by pans, spits, and soft pillows—they govern hearts with divine, irresistible omnipotence. ”

“ Thou seekest the great god Eros? I would that I could help thee, lady; but love once fled is hard to find again. Easier is it to win the dead to life than to bring back love that doubt hath put to flight. I cannot help [Pg 70] thee, for I know not how thou canst find him, or where thou must seek. But, if thou wilt journey further, and cross many a long mile of pasture and woodland, thou wilt come to the rich corn-lands and the shrine of Demeter, the great Earth Mother. ”

“ Go now, I pray thee, and smite her with a poisoned arrow from thy bow. Make her to love some loathly monster, deformed in soul and body, and with a passion so shameless and all-consuming that men shall spurn her, even as now they haste to pay their vows. As thou lovest me, go with all speed and do my bidding."
So Eros sped away to fulfil Aphrodite's command, and plant in the heart of Psyche the image of a dark and dreadful monster, and make her love it. ”

“ So accustomed have we grown, however, to the commonplace that we follow him at first with difficulty. His “Eros” is indeed an unknown god to the run of readers. He is no Cupid rosy-red, with flowery bow and fire-tipped dart to smite and melt the hearts of sweet young lovers. ”

“ Now when Aphrodite heard she was very wroth, and hurrying over the beautiful ocean to the edges of the land, she called her son Eros, and “What is this I hear,” she said, “that my altars are deserted, and men, leaving me, are paying their sacrifices to a maid of mortal birth? Truly I am incensed beyond measure. But I will make this impudent hussy know her place, and who it is that even Zeus, the lord of Heaven, pays homage to. Go thou, my son, and sharpening thy keenest arrow cause her to fall in passionate burning love with some wretch, some renegade, the very lowest of mankind.” ”