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 deep, hidden meaning in each part of the story. So you will find that some will tell you that Orpheus is the personification of the winds which "tear up trees as they course along, chanting their wild music," and that Eurydice is the morning "with its short-lived beauty." Others say that Orpheus is "the mythological expression of the delight which music gives
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