Eurydice

“ So little are the bees! so great, O Aristæus, the bliss or woe of Orpheus and Eurydice! Yet, because by guile thou hast won the power to gain from me the knowledge that thou dost seek, hearken to me now, Aristæus! Four bulls must thou find—four cows of equal beauty. Then must thou build in a leafy grove four altars, and to Orpheus and Eurydice pay such funeral honours as may allay their resentment. At the end of nine days, when thou hast fulfilled thy pious task, return and see what the gods have sent thee. ”

“ Also she recognizes Eurydice's touch, when at length the hand is put in hers from behind, like a most transcendant genius. And when, yielding to Eurydice's entreaties she has turned round and slain her with a look, her despair over the body is grand in the extreme. It is worth a journey to Paris to see, for there is no such Art to be otherwise looked upon. Her husband stumbled over me by mere chance, and took me to her dressing-room. Nothing could have happened better as a genuine homage to the performance, for I was disfigured with crying."—30th of November 1862. ”

“ We are like Orpheus, and true sentiment is our Eurydice with her touch on our shoulder; the spirits that follow are the sham-sentiments, the temptations to look back and pose. The music of our lyre is the love and thought we bring to our every-day life. Let us keep steadily on with the music, and lead our Eurydice right through Hades until we have her safely over the Lethe, and we know sentimentality only as a name. ”

“ You must conquer even Love, for her sake. Go back to earth, playing and singing as you came, and Eurydice shall follow behind you. But if, until you pass the gate of Hades, you turn your head to look at her; if you give even a single glance behind you to see if she is there, then you shall never see her again.”
You may think that Eurydice might have been given to him back without any conditions. But Hades was ruled by strict laws, which not even the king and queen could break; and nobody could be allowed to conquer death without showing that he could conquer temptation. Orpheus was overjoyed. ”

“ Are we not all lovers as Orpheus was, loving what is gone from us forever, and seeking it vainly in the solitudes and wilderness of the mind, and crying to Eurydice to come again? And are we not all foolish as Orpheus was, hoping by the agony of love and the ecstasy of will to win back Eurydice ”

“ The sad wail of Orpheus upon the single word "Eurydice" is heard through its strains, which continually increase in solemnity. At last, as if too much to bear, Orpheus interrupts their threnody with the words, "The Sounds of your Lament increase my bitter Anguish." The chorus in reply resumes its melancholy tribute to Eurydice and then retires, leaving Orpheus alone, who in a monologue full of pathos and sorrow ("My Eurydice! my Eurydice! lost forever") , sings his grief and implores the gods to restore his loved one. ”

“ But the cup of happiness was dashed from the lips that touched its brim. For even as they stood upon the uttermost verge of the dark place, the light of the sun just dawning upon their faces and their feet within a pace of earthly soil, Eurydice stumbled and cried out in pain.
Without a thought Orpheus turned to see what ailed her, and in that moment was she caught from him. Far down the path he saw her, a ghost once more, fading from his sight like smoke as her faint form was lost in the gloom; only for a moment could he see her white arms stretched towards him in vain ”

“ Orpheus explains that he dare not look at her, but Eurydice is not satisfied. She refuses to go farther, for if he can not look at her she does not wish to live. The ensuing duet is intense and full of climacteric effects. The voices chase each other like clouds before a storm, low down and hovering near that sea of sound, the orchestra, over which the conductor rules with his wand like Neptune with his trident.
Orpheus firmly resists the pleadings of Eurydice until she declares that his coldness will break her heart,—she will die of grief if he does not look at her. ”

“ Love has joined you also. I beg by these places full of despair
by this huge Chaos and the silence of this desolate kingdom,
unweave the premature death of Eurydice!
Everything is owed to you and, having delayed
a little bit, sooner or later, we hasten to one seat (death) .
We all proceed here, this is the ultimate house and you
hold the most enduring dominion over the human race. ”

“ Thereafter, when the ninth dawn brightens to her birth, thou shalt send Lethean poppies for funeral gifts to Orpheus, and adore appeased Eurydice with a slain heifer-calf, and sacrifice a black ewe and again seek the grove. ”

“ He pondered the words in his heart, and wondered what she might mean.
"If love is stronger than death," he thought, "then my love can win her back. If I can charm the hearts of all living things with the magic of my song, I may charm, too; the souls of the dead and of their pitiless king, so that he shall give me back Eurydice, my wife. I will go down to the dark halls of Hades, and bring her up to the fair earth once more." ”

“ While I was assisting Miss Minerva to her red crape shawl, a storm was brewing in another quarter, to wit, between Mr Apollo Johnson and O’Brien. O’Brien was assiduously attending to Miss Eurydice, whispering what he called soft blarney in her ear, when Mr Apollo, who was above spirit-boiling heat with jealousy, came up, and told Miss Eurydice that he would have the honour of escorting her home. ”

“ Eurydice, whose name comes from a Sanskrit word denoting the broad-spreading blush of dawn across the sky, is a personification of that light slain by the serpent of darkness at twilight.
Orpheus is sometimes considered as the sun, and the dawn (Eurydice) reappears opposite the place where he disappeared; as the dawn is no longer seen after the sun has fairly risen, the ancients said, “Orpheus has turned round too soon to look at Eurydice, and so is parted from the wife he loves.” ”

“ The story of Eurydice occupies twenty-nine stanzas, and with it the poem ends abruptly. It is full of carefully-wrought pictures, excessively smooth and sugared, recalling the superficial manner of the later Roman painters. Even in the passage that describes Eurydice's agony, just quoted, the forest is odorata or vagha. Fear and flight make the maiden more adorna. The ruffian Aristæus gets tired in the chase. He, too, must be presented in a form of elegance. Not the action, but how the action might be made a groundwork for embroidery of beauty, is the poet's care. ”

“ By these places filled with horrors, and by the silence of these boundless realms, I entreat thee restore Eurydice to life."
He paused, and all Tartarus waited with him for a reply. The terrible eyes of Pluto were cast down, and to Proserpine came a memory of the far-off days when she too was a maid upon earth sporting in the flowery meads of Enna. Then Orpheus struck again his magic strings and sang: "To thee we all belong; to thee soon or late we all must come. It is but for a little space that I crave my Eurydice. Nay, without her I will not return. ”

“ The most absolute contact short of this is still contact by courtesy only. So here, as everywhere else, Eurydice glides off as we are about to grasp her. We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket. ”

“ Alas for the schemes of prosy men and women! [Pg 40] when tender Loveliness goes airing herself through shady lanes, frank young Valor is seldom far off. The Eurydice may be only a school-girl, and Orpheus a brave, manly boy in a blue coat; but there is a world of heart-fluttering, for all that. The flush of conscious beauty blooming on the cheek of one, is generally a shadow of the warm red that mantles the face of the other. While Eurydice Gripstone mused in quiet nooks, it was no fabled youth of magic lyre who sent the rhetoric and botany waltzing through her brain ”

“ Makes all the little senses blind;
’Tis well! he drinks love’s alchemy!
Where’er in Hades thou may’st be—
Come back! my love! come back to me,
Eurydice! Eurydice!
Persephone! Persephone!
Lull him with love that unto me
No thought may leap with sudden ire,
And steal again my heart’s desire
When she shall come. Ye Gods! that light!
It shone when on that fatal night
The dæmons took her from my side;—
’Tis she! they bring her back! my bride!
Let Pluto wake—let Jove decree—
My self—my soul—come back to me
My joy in life and death to be—
Eurydice! Eurydice!{13}
Persephone! ”

“ Meanwhile not a few believe, and men themselves have expressed the opinion, that the time is come when Eurydice is to call for an Orpheus, rather than Orpheus for Eurydice: that the idea of Man, however imperfectly brought out, has been far more so than that of Woman, that she, the other half of the same thought, the other chamber of the heart of life, needs now to take her turn in the full pulsation, and that improvement in the daughters will best aid in the reformation of the sons of this age. ”

“ Travers, with satisfaction, "and you will therefore be able to understand my point of view. I have a very real regard for Miss Eurydice. Her work is of great, though unequal, value, and I should like to see her happy and comfortable and, if I may say so, safe. I do not think that the life of women who work in public offices, unless they are peculiarly gifted by nature, is safe. I may be old-fashioned, Miss Waring, but I still maintain that woman's sphere is the home."
"I am glad you feel like that about Eurydice," said Stella, softly. ”

“ Presenting himself before the throne on which sat the stony-hearted king and his consort Persephone, Orpheus recounted his woes to the sound of his lyre. Moved to pity by his sweet strains, they listened to his [82] melancholy story, and consented to release Eurydice on condition that he should not look upon her until they reached the upper world. Orpheus gladly promised to comply with this injunction, and, followed by Eurydice, ascended the steep and gloomy path which led to the realms of life and light. ”

“ Of course Eurydice herself and her husband [Pg 56] Philip, who was with her at this time, fell into Polysperchon's hands as prisoners. Olympias was almost beside herself with exultation and joy at having her hated rival thus put into her power. She imprisoned Eurydice and her husband in a dungeon, so small that there was scarcely room for them to turn themselves in it; and while they were thus confined, the only attention which the wretched prisoners received was to be fed, from time to time, with coarse provisions, thrust in to them through a hole in the wall. ”

“ Presented by his father with a lyre and taught to play upon it, he became the most famous of musicians, and not only his fellow mortals but even the wild beasts were softened by his strains. The very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. And so also was Eurydice,—whom he loved and won.
Fig. 93. Orpheus and Eurydice
From the painting by Lord Leighton
Hymen was called to bless with his presence the nuptials of Orpheus with Eurydice, but he conveyed no happy omens with him. ”

“ The right arm of Orpheus is stretched out in a vain attempt to grasp her, and to hold her back from being carried away by the resistless power that draws her. His left hand holds his lyre, and all its strings save one are broken. His eye is fixed on Eurydice's face in a gaze of hopeless pain. The picture is terrible rather than beautiful to look upon. It tells us how, in the sad, dark heathen world, before Christ came, men thought that though Love might sometimes seem stronger than Death, Death was really stronger than Love. ”

“ She, still not comprehending why he does not even cast a glance upon her, protests that without his love she prefers to die.
Orpheus, no longer able to resist the appeal of his beloved bride, forgets the warning of Amor. He turns and passionately clasps Eurydice in his arms. Immediately she dies.
It is then that Orpheus intones the lament, "Che farò senza Euridice" (I have lost my Eurydice) , that air in the score which has truly become immortal and by which Gluck, when the opera as a whole shall have disappeared from the stage, will still be remembered. ”

“ Isn't that a little off it?"
"I don't mean physically," said Eurydice, with a wave of her hand which included his crutches. "You can't help being a cripple. It is morally I am sick to think of you. Here you are, surrounded by luxury, waited on hand and foot by menials, and yet you can't face your hardships alone—you are so parasitic by nature that you have to drag down a girl like Stella by trading on her pity." ”

“ Professor Waring was in the Museum. He had become so restless after breakfast that it had seemed best to despatch him there, and retrieve him after Julian arrived.
Eurydice had not asked Mr. Travers for a morning off; she had merely conceded that she would allow Stella to arrange a subsequent meeting with Julian on Sunday, if it was really necessary.
Eurydice kissed Stella tenderly before she left the house to go to the town hall. She knew that she had saved her sister, but she foresaw for the victim of salvation a few painful moments. Even a kindly Providence may have its twinges of remorse. ”

“ Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and then he started out to search for Eurydice. He passed through the crowd of ghosts and entered the realm beyond the dark river Styx. There, in front of the throne of Pluto, he sang of his longing that Eurydice might be restored to him, until the cheeks of even the Fates were wet with tears.
"Pluto himself gave way to Orpheus' music and called Eurydice. She came to Orpheus, limping on her wounded foot. They roam the happy fields of the gods together now, he leading sometimes and sometimes she. ”