THE THREE GRAY SISTERS.

HER chariot, set with many a gem,

Drawn by two horses silver-white

Along their heavenly path of light,

Selene, goddess with the diadem

Of stars, Selene, Queen of Night,

Was driving in calm majesty.

The earth was glorified by her.

Like liquid light its rivers rolled;

Its grass-clad hills and mountains bold

Stood grandly forth, as though they monarchs were,

With coronets of living gold,

Ruling the valleys silently.

The breezes slept among the trees,

Sometimes their sighing could be heard;

Sometimes the soft note of a bird

Would break the silence, or the restless sea's

Low moaning, as the wavelets stirred

'Mong weed-fringed rocks along the shore.

Across the waste of waters gleamed

A glorious, diamond-paved way.

Where'er one went, it always lay

Sparkling before him, and, unless he dreamed,

Poseidon's chariot and the play

Of Tritons would he see at times!

Olympus, where the immortals dwell,

Looks down upon the radiant sea.

The gods were holding revelry

In Zeus the father's splendid citadel;

The nectar flowed right merrily,

And merrily flowed the ruby wine.

One only of the immortals blest,

The goddess Aphrodite seemed

Unhappy, and she sat and schemed,

Scowling, apart from all the joyful rest.

Why was it that fierce anger gleamed

In the soft eyes of beauty's queen?

As in a palace spiders spin

Their dust-collecting webs, and grow

Monstrous on luckless flies, e'en so

Did Jealousy dwell spiderlike within

The goddess' breast, and feed with slow,

Unpitying ravage on her mind.

Pephredo had she seen on earth, -

The fairest of the daughters three

Of Phorkos, "Old Man of the Sea," -

So fair, that, midst the others' song and mirth,

Remembrance of her constantly,

Like bitterness, mixed in her thoughts.

E'en now she saw her by the shore

O' the placid sea, her song she heard, -

Her song of joy, - and every word

Rang louder than the reckless revel's roar,

And jealous hatred in her stirred

'Gainst beauty which excelled her own.

Will powers of hatred and revenge,

Will ministers of wrath and spite,

Aid Aphrodite, lend their might

To ruin fair Pephredo, help her quench

Her fire of beauty, put a blight

Upon her source of joyousness?

No filthy Harpies need she send,

No Furies need she call to aid;

But misdirected love is made

To work its ruin to the hateful end.

Deep is the plot the goddess laid, -

Simple, yet deep, the goddess' plan.

For Aphrodite knows men's hearts,

Their inmost secrets she can read,

No key the Queen of Love doth need

To penetrate the soul's most hidden parts;

And cruelly she makes to bleed

The hearts of mortals whom she hates.

O cruel gods of lust and hate, -

Reputed happy, - armed with power

To make poor men beneath you cower

To the ground with fear, must ye need satiate

Your envy on an earthly flower,

Because more beautiful than heaven's?

Pephredo, singing by the sea,

Beware, beware, - foresee the doom

Which on thee, on thy loves will come, -

Thy sisters, thy two only loves, and thee!

Canst thou not pierce the future's gloom?

Sing on, then, till thy fate draws nigh.

No other love can separate

Pephredo from her sisters twain;

Lovers would always sue in vain;

This is the woof-thread of Pephredo's fate;

For no god ever can constrain

The fair nymph to a heavenly home.

Flushed with the joyous ruby wine,

Apollo played his golden lute.

But now, while it is resting mute,

Him Aphrodite beckons with a sign,

And shows Pephredo, - that fair fruit

Watched by no Argus, hundred-eyed.

What was the song Apollo sung

After he left the rapturous feast,

When ruddy 'gan to grow the east,

The morn to pale, the gates to be open flung

For the flocking stars, - when he had ceased

His swift flight to Pephredo's feet?

'T would take a poet's divinest art

To reproduce Apollo's song!

To try does not to me belong.

But song and god moved not Pephredo's heart;

And so the god fulfilled the wrong

Against her which the goddess planned.

Because she refused to follow him,

Apollo's love to hot rage turned, -

Pale grew his face, his dark eye burned,

The fountain of his wrath boiled o'er the brim, -

That he, the Glorious One, was spurned

Contemptuously by a nymph!

The words he spake were words of fire:

"Boast no more of thy beauty's bloom!

Cursed be thy charms, and in their room

Come haggardness, old age, and vain desire

For death's release from fitting doom;

Thou and thy sisters, cursed be ye!

And Aphrodite exulted loud,

When she saw the wrecks Apollo left, -

The daughters of Phorkos quite bereft

O' the wondrous beauty of which they been so proud;

Haggard, white-haired, forced to make shift

With but one eye, with but one tooth!

The sisters long sat by the shore,

Wrinkled old women, forlorn and sad;

Only each other to make them glad

They mourned aloud together when waves would roar,

Wept for the beauty which once they had, -

The Graiai, - those white-haired women gray.

Long years they sat on the sandy shore,

Growing more wretched, their joy all fled,

Till finally they were visited

By Perseus, Medusa's mighty conqueror,

Who bore the Gorgon's snaky head.

With him and it came their relief.

O, how they begged him to end their woe,

To turn them into senseless stone,

To show them the face of the terrible one,

And then on his avenging course to go,

Leaving them there forever alone,

All feeling and all sorrow gone.

Three rocks lie on the sea-beat shore.

Unseen are they when tides are high;

At ebb, half out o' the waves they lie,

And over them the white-haired billows pour

Their cataract thunder, and sea-birds cry

And wail above them wild and sad.

N. H. D.