A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

hiding-place. The trees and shrubs and flowering things seemed to
shake in cruel mockery. Back to his court he went and sent for the court
hairdresser, that he might bribe him to devise a covering for these long,
peaked, hairy symbols of his folly. Gladly the hairdresser accepted
many and many oboli, many and many golden gifts, and all Phrygia
wondered, while it copied, the strange headdress of the king.
But although much gold had bought his silence, the court barber was
unquiet of heart. All day and all through the night he was tormented by
his weighty secret. And then, at length, silence was to him a torture too
great to be borne; he sought a lonely place, there dug a deep hole, and,
kneeling by it, softly whispered to the damp earth: "King Midas has
ass's ears."
Greatly relieved, he hastened home, and was well content until, on the
spot where his secret lay buried, rushes grew up. And when the winds
blew through them, the rushes whispered for all those who passed by to
hear: "King Midas has ass's ears! King Midas has ass's ears!" Those
who listen very carefully to what the green rushes in marshy places
whisper as the wind passes through them, may hear the same thing to
this day. And those who hear the whisper of the rushes may, perhaps,
give a pitying thought to Midas--the tragic comedian of mythology.
CEYX AND HALCYONE
"St. Martin's summer, halcyon days."
King Henry VI, i. 2, 131.
"Halcyon days"--how often is the expression made use of, how seldom
do its users realise from whence they have borrowed it.
"These were halcyon days," says the old man, and his memory wanders
back to a time when for him
"All the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every
goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen."