Hypolympia; Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy

E-text prepared by Bryan Ness, C. St. Charleskindt, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
VERSE BY THE SAME AUTHOR
BY EDMUND GOSSE
The scene of this fantasy is an island, hitherto inhabited by Lutherans, in a remote but temperate province of Northern Europe. The persons are the Gods of Ancient Greece. The time is early in the Twentieth Century.

Aphrodite.
A moment, Eros. Let us sit here. What can this flutter at my girdle be? I
breathe with difficulty. Oh! Eros, can this be death?
Eros.
Death? Ah! no; you have roses in your cheeks, mother. Your lips are like blood.
Aphrodite.
It must be weariness. Ever these new sensations, these odd, exciting apprehensions! This must be mortality. I never breathed the faster as I rose from terrace to terrace in Cythera.