A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

so fair. She had only tasted the joy of living, and fain she would drink
deeper in the coming years. Her mother must surely save her--her
mother who had never yet failed her--her mother, and the gods.
But ruthless as the mower whose scythe cuts down the seeded grass and
the half-opened flower and lays them in swathes on the meadow, Pluto
drove on. His iron-coloured reins were loose on the black manes of his
horses, and he urged them forward by name till the froth flew from
their mouths like the foam that the furious surf of the sea drives before
it in a storm. Across the bay and along the bank of the river Anapus
they galloped, until, at the river head, they came to the pool of Cyane.
He smote the water with his trident, and downward into the blackness
of darkness his horses passed, and Proserpine knew no more the
pleasant light of day.
"What ails her that she comes not home? Demeter seeks her far and
wide, And gloomy-browed doth ceaseless roam From many a morn till
eventide. 'My life, immortal though it be, Is nought,' she cries, 'for want
of thee, Persephone--Persephone!'"
So, to the great Earth Mother came the pangs that have drawn tears of
blood from many a mortal mother's heart for a child borne off to the
Shades.
"'My life is nought for want of thee,-- Persephone! Persephone!'" ...
The cry is borne down through the ages, to echo and re-echo so long as
mothers love and Death is still unchained.
Over land and sea, from where Dawn, the rosy-fingered, rises in the
East, to where Apollo cools the fiery wheels of his chariot in the waters
of far western seas, the goddess sought her daughter. With a black robe
over her head and carrying a flaming torch in either hand, for nine
dreary days she sought her loved one. And yet, for nine more weary
days and nine sleepless nights the goddess, racked by human sorrow,
sat in hopeless misery. The hot sun beat upon her by day. By night the
silver rays from Diana's car smote her more gently, and the dew
drenched her hair and her black garments and mingled with the saltness