Iris (mythology)

“ Not for the world would a young creature like Iris have let such words escape her, or such thoughts pass through her mind. Whether at the bottom of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an oppressive presence, it is hard to say, until we know more about her. Iris sits between the little gentleman and the “Model of all the Virtues,” as the black-coated personage called her. I will watch them all.
I am sure that the young girl can hide nothing from me. Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks. ”

“ The Greeks plant the Iris on tombs, possibly because the goddess Iris was believed to guide the souls of dead women to their last resting-place, as Mercury conducted the souls of men. The Iris was one of the flowers dedicated to Juno, and with the ancients was wont to be employed as the symbol of eloquence or power ”

“ Hermes was so useful that Juno, the queen of the heavens, thought she must have a messenger, too. So she took Iris, a little sky fairy.
Iris lived up among the clouds, and played with the stars, and romped with the little winds.
At night she used to sleep in the silver cradle of the Moon.
Sometimes Apollo, the Sun, took her in his golden car. Sometimes she slipped down to earth with the rain. Sometimes she went to visit her grandfather, the gray old Sea. ”

“ For, seeing that she died, not by nature, nor yet by the hand of man, but before her time, and of her own madness, Queen Proserpine had not shred the ringlet from her head which she shreds from them that die. Wherefore [437] Iris, flying down with dewy wings from heaven, with a thousand colors about her from the light of the sun, stood above her head and said: “I give thee to death, even as I am bidden, and loose thee from thy body.” ”

“ It is now for the Father of Heaven, and these his children, to resume their immortality and to regain their incomparable abodes. Be it my reward for the joyous labour of bringing the good news, to be the first to kiss these awful and eternal feet.
[Iris flings herself before Zeus in adoration, and folds her wings about her face. As she touches him, his deity blazes forth from him. When Iris rises again, she glances round at the Gods with gratified astonishment, for all of them have become brilliant and young.] ”

“ All round his bed hovered pleasant dreams, gently stooping over him to whisper their messages, like a field of wheat swayed by the breeze, or willows that bow their silver heads and murmur to each other the secrets that no one ever knows. Brushing the idle dreams aside, as a ray of sunshine brushes away the grey wisps of mist that hang to the hillside, Iris walked up to the couch where Somnus lay. ”

“ Iris, the daughter of Thaumas and Electra, personified the rainbow, and was the special attendant and messenger of the queen of heaven, whose commands she executed with singular tact, intelligence, and swiftness.
Most primitive nations have regarded the rainbow as a bridge of communication between heaven and earth, and this is doubtless the reason why Iris, who represented that beautiful phenomenon of nature, should have been invested by the Greeks with the office of communicating between gods and men. ”

“ I fancy I see you now, with the scarlet signals flaming on your cheeks, but, Iris, I shall never intrude. It is for you to say whether I shall love you in silence and afar, or face to face, as I dream that some day I may.
“I want you, dear—I want you with all my heart. Of all the women in the world, you are the one God meant for me. ”

“ Iris is represented as rising from the landscape below, where is the outline of a cave with a tiny streamlet. The faint curve of the rainbow is encircling her limbs, and tending in the direction of her flight. The tinge of light in the colors is in accord with her floating tresses of gold, and the etherial like drapery sporting with the breeze. The beautiful arms of the figure are raised far above the head, as if in the high attainment of bearing aloft the golden flagon, and the pressure of one hand keeps afloat a cloud-like veil sweeping gently backwards, scorning to hide a face so fair. ”

“ You have put yourself outside this long ago, you never can be of this again. See, Iris, how happy they are, and young, and clean, and earnest to do right: most earnest to do right, Iris, despite the most damnable enchantments. And as they are so you might have been with Boy Fenwick, but you chose differently. Iris March, the death of Boy Fenwick puts you out of court. See, Iris, and for God’s sake let these children be!”
But that catholic Guy had not seen that beautiful white mask between the tawny formal curls and the two amethysts for eyes. ”

“ Then, when your name-flower embroiders the marshes, you will know who loves you—who worships you—who offers you his all.”
That night, when the moon swung high in the heavens, Iris tiptoed out into the garden, with the letter—sentient, alive, and human—crushed close against her heart. ”

“ The Iris—the Undine of plants—is never contented without water, and she is happiest when she can stand ankle-deep in it, not stirring on her slender stalk, so that she may use the smooth surface of the pool as a mirror. The Iris and the Wistaria are both suggestive of the feminine qualities, but the latter has the more clinging grace, while the former, like a Quakeress, has more shyness and modesty. But the Iris—or rather the Shobu or Sweet Flag so often mistaken for the Iris—is a healer too, and her very presence is supposed to ward off disease. ”

“ But the cause why they call it Iris, is, That if the beames of the Sunne strike upon it directly within house, it doth send from it against the walls that bee neare, the very resemblance both in forme and also in colour of a rainebow; and eftsoones it will chaunge the same in much varietie, to the great admiration of them that behold it. ”

“ Iris had lit a flame and was like to be burnt to death in the cold{202} fires of that flame. Iris had lit a flame, and the flames that Iris lit seemed quenchable only by death. Boy and Iris. Hector and Iris. Napier and Iris. But Napier could not die, favoured of the gods. Iris could not die, “for the Marches are never let off anything,” and so it would be the younger brother of Hector-not-so-proud who must die, who must have died, thoughtfully trying to tempt his mother into the carelessness of death. ”

“ And as he looked at the little picture, the presentment of the girl he loved caught and imprisoned by the magic of the sun, Anstice felt the full bitterness of his hopeless love surge over his soul in a flood whose onrush no philosophy could stem. To him Iris would always be the one desired woman in the world. No other woman, be she a hundred times more beautiful, could ever fill the place held in his heart by this grey-eyed girl. ”

“ There they are, whenever the silvery arrows of the sun flash through the delicate leafage like a wondrous rain—there they are, bright, dazzling, flashing, and sparkling, the vivid transparent grouped rays of Iris herself on every pearly drop of dew, lying waiting for the sun to gather it to his bosom, and feel the daily fire of his life-giving ray. Nature has surpassed herself, and all is bright, while, bright though the decorations be, the most aesthetic critic could not find one that offends. ”

“ Iris herself was outwardly calm, but her eyes had the wild, scared look of a hunted animal, and fixed themselves for one brief second on the face of Chester St. John, as if mutely appealing to him for aid.
The look went straight to his heart, and, leaving his place by the side of Isabel, he spoke to Iris in a tone that was tremulous with deep feeling:
“Depend on me, Iris; I shall do everything in my power to clear you of this cruel charge. There must be some bitter enemy plotting against your peace and happiness, some bold and daring enemy, since they dare accuse you of theft! ”

“ But his heart sank at the idea of facing Iris once more, and the thought of her as she would surely be, the centre and queen of all the evening's gaiety, was almost unendurable.
At times he told himself that he could not go to Greengates that night. He was only human, and the sight of her, dressed, as she would surely be, in some shimmering airy thing which would enhance all her beauty, would break down his steadfast resolve. ”

“ We, Iris—you and us—we aren’t made only of flesh-and-blood. There’s a little devil of slackness who stands waiting for any of us who thinks he or she is only made of flesh-and-blood. We are made of air, too—this air, Iris, that we are{326} breathing now. We are made of this air, you and us. We were born in it, our fathers and mothers were born in it. Guy, Hilary, I, you, Napier, we were all of us born within a hundred miles of this room, Guy at Mace, Hilary at Magralt, Napier and I here at Sutton Marie, and you not two miles away across the fields. ”

“ It was Iris, in one of her statue-trances. She had come down, whether sleeping or waking, I knew not at first, led by an instinct that told her she was wanted,—or, possibly, having overheard and interpreted the sound of our movements,—or, it may be, having learned from the servant that there was trouble which might ask for a woman's hand. I sometimes think women have a sixth sense, which tells them that others, whom they cannot see or hear, are in suffering. How surely we find them at the bedside of the dying! ”

“ Iris had a longing to be allowed to admire, a longing that was a fiercely integral part of her nature. And she was a woman with tangible desires, who would, one thought, lay claim to her man's body and mind with every part of her own, and with no illusions about the spirituality or intelligence of her love. Iris was of the earth divinely, and perhaps that's why she couldn't help obsessing a man's mind....
But for Roger's coming, she might have continued for years being proposed to decently and indecently by the young fops and financiers whose piracies the world so completely licences ”

“ Half an hour later, as Sara and I were strolling near the far point of the island, we caught through the trees a glimpse of Iris seated in the low, crooked bough of a live-oak, and at her feet John Hoffman, reclining on the white tufted moss that covered the ground. “Absurd!” I said, angrily.
“Why absurd? Is she not good and fair? To me there is something very bewitching about Iris Carew. She is the most graceful little creature; look at her attitude now, swinging in that bough! and when she walks there is a willowy suppleness about her that makes the rest of us look like grenadiers. ”

“ Ten years of browsing in a well equipped library will do much for anyone, and Iris had made the most of her opportunities. This girl of twenty, hemmed about by the narrow standards of East Lancaster, had a broad outlook upon life, a large view, that would have done credit to a woman of twice her age. From the beginning, the people of the books had been real to her, and she had filled the old house with the fairy figures of romance.
Of the things that make for happiness, the love of books comes first. No matter how the world may have used us, sure solace lies there. ”

“ And Iris, for all her pride and looks, for all her tawny hair and sometimes too distant eyes, had really as little to say in the matter as Antony or I; for Roger Poole had a reputation to keep up, not so much with the world as with himself, the reputation of a man who always played in luck! Besides, luck or no luck, Iris had straightway fallen in love with him. ”

“ Her mind was a perfect laboratory of tests and reagents; every syllable you put into breath went into her intellectual eudiometer, and all your thoughts were recorded on litmus-paper. I think there has rarely been a more admirable woman. Of course, Miss Iris was immensely and passionately attached to her.—Well,—these are two highly oxygenated adverbs, —grateful,—suppose we say,—yes,—grateful, dutiful, obedient to her wishes for the most part,—perhaps not quite up to the concert pitch of such a perfect orchestra of the virtues. ”

“ This would be consistent with the type of Iris as the messenger of Zeus and Hera, trained to swift movement. The head may have been half turned back towards the central group, but too little remains of the neck to make this certain. From the rapid movement of the figure in a direction turned away from the centre of the composition, archæologists have been nearly unanimous in thinking that the figure is Iris on her way to announce the event of the birth to the world outside Olympos. ”

“ And so Iris—having thrown off that first lasso which not only fetters, but chokes those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by the windpipe had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of the neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of the Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround us in our early years. ”

“ It is enough for thee to beguile weak women."
Wildly did the goddess rush from the battle. And Iris, swift as the winds, took her by the hand, and led her out of the press, for she was tormented with the pain. She found Ares on the left of the field, and knelt before him, begging for his horses with many prayers. "Help me, dear brother," she said, "and lend me thy horses to carry me to Olympus, for I am tormented with a wound which a mortal man gave me, even Diomed, who would fight with Father Zeus himself." ”

“ I rang Iris up at about lunch time, and a tired voice from her bed told me to go about my business and "come to dinner to-night, if you like. Roger's asked Antony...." I didn't go simply because my constitution is of this and not the eighteenth century. But I would have liked to, if only to see what those two might be at, or if they were at anything at all. And as for Iris—well, thought I (those late nights never really agreed with me, you understand) , a wiser than I has said that it's in the nature of women and cats to scratch the hand that tries to free them from a trap. ”