A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

spear-wound through it.
With terrible foreboding, Aphrodite tried to dissuade him from his
venture.
"O, be advised: thou know'st not what it is With javelin's point a
churlish swine to gore, Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.
* * * * *
Alas, he naught esteems that face of thine, To which love's eyes pay
tributary gazes; Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne, Whose
full perfection all the world amazes; But having thee at
vantage--wondrous dread!-- Would root these beauties as he roots the
mead."
Shakespeare.
To all her warnings, Adonis would but give smiles. Ill would it become
him to slink abashed away before the fierceness of an old monster of
the woods, and, laughing in the pride of a whole-hearted boy at a
woman's idle fears, he sped homewards with his hounds.
With the gnawing dread of a mortal woman in her soul, Aphrodite
spent the next hours. Early she sought the forest that she might again
plead with Adonis, and maybe persuade him, for love of her, to give up
the perilous chase because she loved him so.
But even as the rosy gates of the Dawn were opening, Adonis had
begun his hunt, and from afar off the goddess could hear the baying of
his hounds. Yet surely their clamour was not that of hounds in full cry,
nor was it the triumphant noise that they so fiercely make as they pull
down their vanquished quarry, but rather was it baying, mournful as
that of the hounds of Hecate. Swift as a great bird, Aphrodite reached
the spot from whence came the sound that made her tremble.
Amidst the trampled brake, where many a hound lay stiff and dead,