A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

was a night when the moon made for herself broad silver paths across
the sea, from far horizon to the shore where the little waves lapped and
curled in a radiant, ever-moving silver fringe. Silver also were the
leaves of the forest trees, and between the branches of the solemn
cypresses and of the stately dark pines, Diana shot her silver arrows.
No baying of hounds came then to make Endymion's flocks move
uneasily in their sleep, but the silver stars seemed to sing in unison
together. While still those gentle lips touched his, hands as gentle lifted
up the sleeping Endymion and bore him to a secret cave in Mount
Latmos. And there, for evermore, she came to kiss the mouth of her
sleeping lover. There, forever, slept Endymion, happy in the perfect
bliss of dreams that have no ugly awaking, of an ideal love that knows
no ending.
ORPHEUS
"Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing; To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their
heads, and then lay by, In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief
of heart Fall asleep, or hearing die."
Shakespeare.
"Are we not all lovers as Orpheus was, loving what is gone from us
forever, and seeking it vainly in the solitudes and wilderness of the
mind, and crying to Eurydice to come again? And are we not all foolish
as Orpheus was, hoping by the agony of love and the ecstasy of will to
win back Eurydice; and do we not all fail, as Orpheus failed, because
we forsake the way of the other world for the way of this world?"
Fiona Macleod.
It is the custom nowadays for scientists and for other scholarly people
to take hold of the old myths, to take them to pieces, and to find some