"Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses, Cupid pay'd.
He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
His mother's doves, and teeme of sparrows,
Looses them too; then downe he throwes
The coerall of his lippe, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how),
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe winne;
At last hee set her both his eyes;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O love! has she done this to thee?
What shall (alas) become of mee?"
XXII
There is a very old story of a woman's love for her husband and her efforts to win him back from Death which is known in every part of India. On a certain night in the year millions of Hindu women celebrate a rite in honor of Savitri. The story is told in the Mahabharata, an ancient epic of India.
Walter Pater, in "Marius the Epicurean," gives the story of Cupid and Psyche as contained in Apuleius. Many of the incidents of the story will be found in modern fairy tales and romances such as "Beauty and the Beast"; Grimm's "Twelve Brothers"; the Gaelic stories: "The Three Daughters of King O'Hara," "Fair, Brown and Trembling," "The Daughter of the Skies"; and the Norse tale, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon."
XXIII
The most amusing use made of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is in Shakespeare's "Midsummer-Night's Dream," Act III, Sc. 2, and Act V, Sc. 1, which is a burlesque of what was, in the original story in Ovid, a tragedy.
XXIV
Poems on "Hero and Leander" have been written by Chistopher Marlowe, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hood, and Thomas Moore. Keats wrote a sonnet, "On a Picture of Leander."
Byron attempted Leander's feat of swimming across the Hellespont, a thing that was considered impossible until the English poet proved its feasibility by performing it himself. The distance in the narrowest part is almost a mile, and there is a constant current setting out from the Sea of Marmora. Since Byron's time the swimming of the Hellespont has been achieved by others; but it still remains a test of strength and skill.