Pegasus

“ In the summer-time, and in the beautifullest of weather, Pegasus often alighted on the solid earth, and, closing his silvery wings, would gallop over hill and dale for pastime, as fleetly as the wind. Oftener than in any other place, he had been seen near the Fountain of Pirene, drinking the delicious water, or rolling himself upon the soft grass of the margin. ”

“ When the airy rush of the winged horse had brought him within the distance of a hundred yards, the Chimæra gave a spring, and flung its huge, awkward, venomous, and utterly detestable carcass right upon poor Pegasus, clung round him with might and main, and tied up its snaky tail into a knot! Up flew the aërial steed, higher, higher, higher, above the mountain-peak, above the clouds, and almost out of sight of the solid earth. But still the earth-born monster kept its hold, and was borne upward, along with the creature of light and air. ”

“ When backed by an intrepid spirit, like the grand heroic poets, Pegasus is the stately war-horse eager for the fray, and sniffing the battle from afar; or else, controlled by the nervous reins of genius like that of Shelley and Coleridge, he appears as the high-mettled racer, pure-blooded and finely-trained, who may win some great race, but is unfit for any ordinary work ”

“ Pegasus is a queer old nag, and many of his would-be riders find him most unruly. We mount him and are off for a wee nip of Hippocrene. We want him to lazy along like a plough horse, while we pluck daisies, but he insists on demonstrating that, like a Hambletonian, he has all of the High School gaits. And when we pass the Queen's carriage, expecting him to step stately and look like a million dollars, the old plug stumbles and limps, and is classed by all as a casual. ”

“ The Chimæra, on the other hand, raised itself up so as to stand absolutely on the tip end of its tail, with its talons pawing fiercely in the air, and its three heads sputtering fire at Pegasus and his rider. My stars, how it roared, and hissed, and bellowed! Bellerophon, meanwhile, was fitting his shield on his arm, and drawing his sword.
"Now, my beloved Pegasus," he whispered in the winged horse's ear, "thou must help me to slay this insufferable monster; or else thou shalt fly back to thy solitary mountain peak without thy friend Bellerophon. ”

“ I am frequently glad that Pegasus has lost his eyesight, my boy; for could he see the expression on the faces of some of these same crows, when they get near enough to squint along his backbone, it would wound his sensibilities fearfully.
On this occasion he carried me, at a speed of 2.40 hours a mile, to a point just this side of Alexandria, where the sound of heavy cannonading and cursing made me pause. ”

“ And what other horse, in all the world, was half so fleet as the marvellous horse Pegasus, who had wings as well as legs, and was even more active in the air than on the earth? To be sure, a great many people denied that there was any such horse with wings, and said that the stories about him were all poetry and nonsense. But, wonderful as it appeared, Bellerophon believed that Pegasus was a real steed, and hoped that he himself might be fortunate enough to find him; and, once fairly mounted on his back, he would be able to fight the Chimaera at better advantage. ”

“ For a long time Pegasus flew about Mount Helicon, adored by the Muses and admired by the gods, but finally one day, while drinking at a spring, he was captured by a Grecian youth named Bellerophon. After making him fast with a golden bridle loaned to him by Minerva, Bellerophon mounted the broad back, slipped his feet between the wings and soared to the sky. ”

“ And as Pegasus came thither so seldom in these latter years, and scarcely alighted there more than once in a lifetime, Bellerophon feared that he might grow an old man, and have no strength left in his arms nor courage in his heart, before the winged horse would appear. Oh, how heavily passes the time, while an adventurous youth is yearning to do his part in life, and to gather in the harvest of his renown! ”

“ There are writers that take Pegasus on giddier flights of fancy, and writers that sit him more grandly, and writers that put him through daintier paces, and writers that burden him with anguish nearer that of the dread Rider of the White Horse, and there are writers that make him a very bucking broncho of wit, but there is no one that turns Pegasus into just such an ambling nag of lazy peace and pastoral content as James—I had almost said Joshua Whitcomb—Riley. ”

“ A place in his palace was assigned to him by Zeus, who employed him to carry his thunder and lightning. Pegasus permitted none but the gods to mount him, except in the case of Bellerophon, whom, at the command of Athene, he carried aloft, in order that he might slay the Chimæra with his arrows.
The later poets represent Pegasus as being at the service of the Muses, and for this reason he is more celebrated in modern times than in antiquity. He would appear to represent that poetical inspiration, which tends to develop man's higher nature, and causes the mind to soar heavenwards. ”

“ Before Bellerophon had time to consider what to do next, the monster flung itself out of the cavern and sprung straight toward him, with its immense claws extended and its snaky tail twisting itself venomously behind. If Pegasus had not been as nimble as a bird, both he and his rider would have been overthrown by the Chimera's headlong rush, and thus the battle have been ended before it was well begun. ”

“ Meanwhile Pegasus had again paused in the air and neighed angrily, while sparkles of a pure crystal flame darted out of his eyes. How unlike the lurid fire of the Chimera! The aerial steed's spirit was all aroused, and so was that of Bellerophon.
"Dost thou bleed, my immortal horse?" cried the young man, caring less for his own hurt than for the anguish of this glorious creature that ought never to have tasted pain. "The execrable Chimera shall pay for this mischief with his last head." ”

“ Do not let us, however, be too prodigal of our pity upon Pegasus. There is no reason why this animal should be exempt from labour, or illness, or decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God’s world. If he gets the whip, Pegasus often deserves it, and I for one am quite ready to protest my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine which poetical sympathisers are inclined to put forward, viz., that of letters, and what is called genius, are to be exempt from prose duties of this daily, bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and not to be made to work and pay like their neighbours. ”

“ But now turning our thoughts to the constellation Pegasus, a difficulty confronts us at every date from 6000 B.C. downwards even to this present A.D. 1903: Pegasus as depicted on the globe has held and still holds a reversed position in the heavens. The very fact that for all the other ancient constellations which represent living beings, it has been possible to find some season and some date at which they could have been observed upright in the sky, makes it a more imperative need to seek for some explanation of the anomalous treatment meted out by astronomers of old to the winged steed. ”

“ It might possibly be that Pegasus, a ship, is the reduplication of Argo, the constellation Ship. In the case of Argo, we find it stranded on a rock. Pegasus is close to the stream pouring from the water-jar of Aquarius, which may represent, as has been supposed, the Flood. It certainly seems more logical to regard Pegasus as a ship rather than half a horse, inasmuch as we have two equine figures in Centaur and Sagittarius, and only one ship, Argo. Reduplication plays such an important part in the constellation designs that we might well expect to find it applicable in the case of the Ship. ”

“ It is, and has always been, the especial attribute or misfortune of genius that it should be mentally isolated and solitary, impatient 98 of and uncaring for petty domestic details and the sordid cares of housekeeping. Pegasus is a brute transcended beyond the dray-horse that pounds the earth with vibrant hoofs. He soars above the mountain-tops and breathes the rarefied air of the most Alpine heights. He does not go well in double harness and so has no companion on his journeys. ”

“ In the Denderah Zodiac there are two characters immediately below the horse, Pe and ka. Peka or Pega, is in Hebrew the chief, and Sus is horse. So that the very word (Pegasus) has come down to us and has been preserved through all the languages.
The names of the stars in this constellation declare to us its meaning. There are 89 altogether; one of the 1st magnitude, two of the 2nd, three of the 3rd, nine of the 4th, etc. And, as astronomers testify, “they render Pegasus peculiarly remarkable.” ”

“ A thousand miles a day was no more than an easy space for the fleet Pegasus to pass over. Bellerophon was delighted with this kind of life, and would have liked nothing better than to live always in the same way, aloft in the clear atmosphere; for it was always sunny weather up there, however cheerless and rainy it might be in the lower region. But he could not forget the horrible Chimera which he had promised King Iobates to slay. ”

“ They have become the vehicle for irrepressible self expression; they have followed freak paths of every variety; they have turned Pegasus into a mechanical hydro-aeroplane and have flattered themselves that, Icarus-like, they were scaling the summits to the sky and endangering their pinions near the sun, when, as a matter of fact, they were plunging through the sloughs below and the only evidence of the sun was its reflection upon the mud by which they were surrounded. With The Little Review, however, I have a fine sense of clarity. ”

“ Your Pegasus is flying away with you to-night, Ellis. Your imagination is weaving a picture which is far beside the truth. You have not guessed badly. I do love Valmai, Corwen's mistress, and I wish to God the rest of the picture were true. ”

“ Bridle in hand, Bellerophon stood pondering her words, and gradually remembered that Pegasus was a wonderful winged steed, born from the blood which fell into the foam of the sea from Medusa’s severed head (p. 244) . This horse, as white as snow, and gifted with immortal life as well as incredible speed, was the favorite mount of Apollo and the Muses, who delighted in taking aërial flights on his broad back ”

“ The practical value of knowing the mighty constellation of Pegasus is that you can always find the north, by means of its friendly stars, though the North Star, the Big and Little Dippers and Cassiopeia are hidden by clouds. To find the north you only have to wait until Pegasus gets very high in the sky and run an imaginary line through the pointer stars of Pegasus and produce it until it reaches the northern horizon. ”

“ The more he did such things as mortal horses are accustomed to do, the less earthly and the more wonderful he seemed. Bellerophon and the child almost held their breath, partly from a delightful awe, but still more because they dreaded lest the slightest stir or murmur should send him up with the speed of an arrow-flight into the farthest blue of the sky. Finally, when he had had enough of rolling over and over, Pegasus turned himself about, and, indolently, like any other horse, put out his forelegs in order to rise from the ground ”

“ When a creature is perfectly able to fly, he sometimes chooses to run, just for the pastime of the thing; and so did Pegasus, although it cost him some little trouble to keep his hoofs so near the ground. Bellerophon, meanwhile, holding the child’s hand, peeped forth from the shrubbery, and thought that never was any sight so beautiful as this, nor ever a horse’s eyes so wild and spirited as those of Pegasus. ”

“ It is hard to control the winged steed. His next flight and whereabouts of alighting are as happily unknown to the rider as to the beholder—to the writer as to the reader. However Pegasus, the real, can never fail to be interesting whether he leap over the historic ages, or play antics on an If, or neigh irreverently in the temple of Delphian Apollo, or speed to the finding of Harold Godwin amid the indistinguishably dead on the slaughter-field of Senlac-Hastings. ”

“ The Pegasus is preparing to land, and the situation is—"
"Ain't you the smart little numbskull?" snorted the skipper. "Remind me to use your brain for mattress stuffin'. No, dimwit, we ain't landin'. I ain't goin' to set down on this here outlaw planet till I learn what I'm landin' on. The Pegasus ain't goin' to be number four on the missin' list." He beamed complacently. "Me, I'm smart, I am."
Well, so is sunburn. But who loves it. Anyway, I said, "Well, if we're not going to land on Caltech, what's that big thing looming in the visiplate? Green cheese?" ”

“ If the importing of such a predicate as ‘pegasizes’ seems to commit us to recognizing that there is a corresponding attribute, pegasizing, in Plato’s heaven or in the minds of men, well and good. Neither we nor Wyman nor McX have been contending, thus far, about the being or nonbeing of universals, but rather about that of Pegasus. If in terms of pegasizing we can interpret the noun ‘Pegasus’ as a description subject to Russell’s theory of descriptions, then we have disposed of the old notion that Pegasus cannot be said not to be without presupposing that in some sense Pegasus is. ”