Hypolympia Part 6

PHOEBUS.

Nay, then, turn once and see thy very moon.

SELENE [_turning round_].

Ah! wonder! the volcanic glare is gone.

PHOEBUS.

The wizard bird has sung the fumes away.

SELENE.

Empty it seems, and vain; but foul no more.

PHOEBUS [_approaching her, and in a confidential tone_].

I will not disguise from you, Selene, my apprehension that the hideous colour may return. Your moon is divorced from yourself, and can but be desecrated and forlorn. But at least it should be a matter of interest to you--yes, even of gratification, my sister--that this little bird, if it be a bird, has an enchanting power of temporarily relieving it and raising it.

[SELENE, _manifestly more cheerful, ascends to the wood on the left_. PHOEBUS, _turning again to the moon_,]

I have observed that this species of mysterious agency has a very salutary effect upon the more melancholy of our female divinities.

They are satisfied if they have the felicity of waiting for something which they cannot be certain of realising, and which they attribute to a cause impossible to investigate. [_To_ SELENE, _raising his voice_.] Whither do you go, my sister?

SELENE.

I am searching for this little bird. I propose to discuss with it the nature of its extraordinary, and I am ready to admit its gratifying, control over the moon. I think it possible that I may concoct with it some scheme for our return. You shall, in that case, Phoebus, be no longer excluded from my domain.

PHOEBUS.

Let me urge you to do no such thing. The action of this little bird upon your unfortunate luminary is sympathetic, but surely very obscure. It would be a pity to inquire into it so closely as to comprehend it.

[SELENE, _without listening to him, pa.s.ses up into the woods, and exit_.]

PHOEBUS [_alone_].

To comprehend it might even be to discover that it does not exist.

Whereas to come here night after night, in the fragrant darkness, to see the unhallowed lump of fire creep out of the lake, to listen for the first clucks and shakes of the sweet little purifying song, and to watch the orb growing steadily more hyaline and lucent under its sway, how delicious! The absolute harmony and concord of nature would be then patent and recurrent before us.

My poor sister! However, it is consoling to reflect that she is almost certain not to be able to find that bird.

IV

[_The same glen._ aeSCULAPIUS _alone, busily arranging a great cl.u.s.ter of herbs which he has collected. He sits on a large stone, with his treasures around him_.]

aeSCULAPIUS.

Yew--an excellent styptic. Tansy, rosemary. Spurge and marsh mallow. The best pellitory I ever plucked out of a wall. The herbs of this glen are admirable. They surpa.s.s those of the gorges of Cyllene. Is this lavender? The scent seems more acrid.

[_Enter_ PALLAS _and_ EUTERPE.]

PALLAS.

You look enviably animated, aesculapius. Your countenance is so fresh beneath that long white beard of yours, that the barbarians will suppose you to be some mad boy, masquerading.

EUTERPE.

What will you do with these plants?

aeSCULAPIUS.

These are my simples. As we shot through the Iberian narrows on our frantic voyage hither, my entire store was blown out of my hands and away to sea. The rarest sorts were flung about on rocks where nothing more valetudinarian than a baboon could possibly taste them. My earliest care on arriving here was to search these woods for fresh specimens, and my success has been beyond all hope. See, this comes from the wet lands on the hither side of the tarn----

EUTERPE.

Where Selene is now searching for the wizard who draws the smoke away from the moon's face at night.

aeSCULAPIUS.

This from the beck where it rushes down between the stems of mountain-ash, this from beneath the vast ancestral elm below the palace, this from the sea-sh.o.r.e. Marvellous! And I am eager to descend again; I have not explored the cliff which breaks the descent of the torrent, nor the thicket in the gully. There must be marchantia under the spray of the one, and possibly dittany in the peat of the other.

PALLAS.

We must not detain you, aesculapius. But tell us how you propose to adapt yourself to our new life. It seems to me that you are determined not to find it irksome.

aeSCULAPIUS.

Does it not occur to you, Pallas, that--although I should never have had the courage to adopt it--thus forced upon us it offers me the most dazzling antic.i.p.ations? Hitherto my existence has been all theory. What there is to know about the principles of health as applied to the fluctuations of mortality, I may suppose is known to me. You might be troubled, Pallas, with every conceivable malady, from elephantiasis to earache, and I should be in a position to a.n.a.lyse and to deal with each in turn. You might be obscured by ophthalmia, crippled by gout or consumed to a spectre by phthisis, and I should be able, without haste, without anxiety, to unravel the coil, to reduce the nodosities, to make the fleshy instrument respond in melody to all your needs.

PALLAS.

But you have never done this. We knew that you _could_ do it, and that has been enough for us.

aeSCULAPIUS.

It has never been enough for me. The impenetrable immortality of all our bodies has been a constant source of exasperation to me.

PALLAS.

Is it not much to know?

aeSCULAPIUS.

Yes; but it is more to _do_. The most perfect theory carries a monotony and an emptiness about with it, if it is never renovated by practice. In Olympus the unbroken health of all the inmates, which we have accepted as a matter of course, has been more advantageous to them than it has been to me.