Hypolympia Part 5

Ah! there was pursuit in Ladon, but it was pursuit which always closed easily in capture. What I am afraid of is that here capture may prove the exception. Your Highness ... but a slight family connection and our adversities are making me strangely familiar....

PHOEBUS.

Speak on, my good Pan.

PAN.

Your Highness was once something of a botanist?

PHOEBUS.

A botanist? Ah, scarcely! A little arboriculture, the laurel; a little horticulture, the sun-flower. Those varieties seem entirely absent here, and I have no thought of replacing them.

PAN.

The last thing I should dream of suggesting would be a _hortus siccus_....

PHOEBUS.

And I was never a consistent collector. There are reeds everywhere, you fortunate goat-foot, but even in Olympus I was the creature of a fastidious selection.

PAN.

The current of the thick and punctual blood never left me liable to the distractions of choice.

PHOEBUS.

I congratulate you, Pan, upon your temperament, and I recommend to you a further pursuit of the attainable.

[PAN _makes a profound obeisance and disappears in the woodland_.

PHOEBUS _watches him depart, and then turns to the moon_.]

PHOEBUS [_alone_].

His familiarity was not distasteful to me. It reminded me of days out hunting, when I have come suddenly upon him at the edge of the watercourse, and have shared his melons and his conversation. I antic.i.p.ate for him some not unagreeable experiences. The lower order of divinities will probably adapt themselves with ease to our new conditions. They despaired the most suddenly, with wringing of hands as we raced to the sea, with interminable babblings and low moans and screams, as they cl.u.s.tered on the deck of that extraordinary vessel. But the science of our new life must be to forget or to remember. We must live in the past or forego the past. For Pan and his likes I conceive that it will largely resolve itself into a question of temperature--of temperature and of appet.i.te. That orb is of a sinister appearance, but to do it justice it looks heated. My sister had a pa.s.sion for coldness; she would never permit me to lend her any of my warmth. I cannot say that it is chilly here to-night. I am agreeably surprised.

[_The veiled figure flits across again, and_ PAN _once more crosses in close pursuit_.]

PHOEBUS [_as they vanish_].

What an amiable vivacity! Yes; the lower order of divinities will be happy, for they will forget. We, on the contrary, have the privilege of remembering. It is only the mediocre spirits, that cannot quite forget nor clearly remember, which will have neither the support of instinct nor the solace of a vivid recollection.

[_He seats himself. A noise of laughter rises from the marsh, and dies away. In the silence a bird sings._]

PHOEBUS.

Not the Daulian nightingale, of course, but quite a personable subst.i.tute: less prolongation of the triumph, less insistence upon the agony. How curiously the note breaks off! Some pleasant little northern bird, no doubt. I experience a strange and quite unprecedented appet.i.te for moderation. The absence of the thrill, the shaft, the torrent is not disagreeable. The actual Phocian frenzy would be disturbing here, out of place, out of time. I must congratulate this little, doubtless brown, bird on a very considerable skill in warbling. But the moon--what is happening to _it_? It is not merely climbing higher, but it is manifestly clarifying its light. When I came, it was copper-coloured, now it is honey-coloured, the horn of it is almost white like milk. This little bird's incantation has, without question, produced this fortunate effect. This little bird, halfway on the road between the nightingale and the cicada, is doubtless an enchanter, and one whose art possesses a more than respectable property. My sister's attention should be drawn to this highly interesting circ.u.mstance.

Selene! Selene!

[_He calls and waits. From the upper woods_ SELENE _slowly descends, wrapped in long white garments_.]

PHOEBUS.

Sister, behold the throne that once was thine.

SELENE.

And now, a rocking cinder, fouls the skies.

PHOEBUS.

A magian sweeps its filthy ash away.

SELENE.

There is no magic in the bankrupt world.

PHOEBUS.

Nay, did'st thou hear this twittering peal of song?

SELENE.

Some noise I heard; this glen is full of sounds.

PHOEBUS.

Fling back thy veil, and staunch thy tears, and gaze.

SELENE.

At thee, my brother, not at my darkened orb.

PHOEBUS.

Gaze then at me. What seest thou in mine eyes?

SELENE.

Foul ruddy gleams from what was lately pure.

PHOEBUS.

Nay, but thou gazest not. Look up, look at me!

SELENE.

But on thy sacred eyeb.a.l.l.s fume turns fire.