And after him the strength of Heracles

I gazed on, a mere shadowy counterfeit (He, the true form, among the gods of ease, Wed to fair-ankled Hebe, still doth sit,

Feasting). While round him the dead phantoms flit, Like of bewildered birds a clang there came.

He, dark as Night, with bent bow, seems to fit Shaft to the naked nerve, and eyes his game, Dreadfully crouching down, as one in act to aim.

Also a wondrous sword belt, all of gold,

Gleamed like a fire athwart his ample breast,
Whereon were shapes of creatures manifold,
Boar, bear, and lion sparkling-eyed, expressed,
With many a bloody deed and warlike gest.
Whoso by art that wondrous zone achieved,
Let him forever from art's labors rest!

Soon as the shade my nearing form perceived,
He knew me, and thus spake in winged words, sore-grieve

"Zeus-born Laértiades, Odysseus wise,

Is thy life sad like mine beneath the sun?
I was the child of Zeus, but miseries

Bore without number, the bondslave of one
Far meaner, who much task work, hardly done,
Laid on me, and to these realms of the dead

Sent me to fetch the dog (for task seemed none
Heavier than this), whom yet to the air I led
From Hades, save by Hermes and Athene sped."

This spoken, he within the portals went

Of Hades, but I lingering stood my ground
To watch if any other his dark steps bent
Thither- some hero of the names renowned
Who died in the old time. Then had I found

Whomso I wished, Pirithous, Theseus dread,
Children of gods; but with portentous sound
Ev'n then the thousand thousands of the dead

Flocked thickening, and pale fear possessed me, and I fled

THE WOMEN OF HOMER.

BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

[JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, English man of letters, was born October 5, 1840; graduated at Balliol College, Oxford. He wrote " Introduction to the Study of Dante" (1872), "Studies of the Greek Poets" (1873-1876), "The Renaissance in Italy" (six volumes, 1875–1886), "Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama" (1884), "Life of Michelangelo" (1892), several volumes of poetry, translated Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, etc. He died April 18, 1893, at Rome.]

HELEN OF TROY is one of those ideal creatures of the fancy over which time, space, and circumstance, and moral probability exert no sway. It would be impossible to conceive of her except as inviolably beautiful and young, in spite of all her wanderings and all she suffered at the hands of Aphrodite and of men. She moves through Greek heroic legend as the desired of all men and the possessed of many. Theseus bore her away while yet a girl from Sparta. Her brethren, Castor and Polydeukes, recovered her from Athens by force, and gave to her Æthra, the mother of Theseus, for bondwoman. Then all the youths of Hellas wooed her in the young world's prime. She was at last assigned in wedlock to Menelaus, by whom she conceived her only earthly child, Hermione. Paris, by aid of Aphrodite, won her love and fled with her to Egypt and to Troy. In Troy she abode more than twenty years, and was the mate of Deiphobus after the death of Paris. When the strife raised for her sake was ended, Menelaus restored her with honor to his home in Lacedæmon. There she received Telemachus and saw her daughter mated to Neoptolemus. But even after death she rested not from the service of love. The great Achilles, who in life had loved her by hearsay, but had never seen her, clasped her among the shades upon the island Leuké, and begat Euphorion. Through all these adventures Helen maintains an ideal freshness, a mysterious virginity of soul. She is not touched by the passion she inspires, or by the wreck of empires ruined in her cause. Fate deflours her not, nor do years impair the magic of her charm. Like beauty, she belongs alike to all and none. She is not judged as wives or mothers are, though she is both; to her belong soul-wounding blossoms of inexorable love, as well as pain-healing poppy

The Abduction of Helen

From the painting by Rudolph von Deutsch