Pluto was touched to unheard of softness and, as he granted Orpheus' plea that Eurydice be returned to him, "iron tears" rolled down the furrows of his cheeks. "But hold," said the crafty monarch, "there is one condition. If you once glance behind you to see if Eurydice is following, you must lose her again forever." Crashing chords of joyous triumph, Orpheus hurried up the rough pathway that led to the top of the world, but as he was about to pass the extreme limits of Hades and saw beyond him the opening where the sunlight reached in gently through the darkness, he grew afraid, and in order to convince himself that his beloved wife was really behind him, he turned suddenly around—only to see Eurydice, with her arms outstretched, floating slowly backwards into the drear, dead land below. The grief of Orpheus at this second loss was even more intense than before, and half-crazed with sorrow and remorse, the poor lad stumbled to the banks of the river Strymon, where he mourned for seven days with neither food nor drink. At last he wandered up into the mountains where he fell into the hands of wild, bacchanalian revelers and came to a violent end. At the intercession of Apollo and the Muses, the harp of Orpheus was placed among the stars while the youth himself was tenderly cared for and buried beneath the shadow of Mount Olympus.
Some mythologists, however, claim that Orpheus was changed into a swan and placed in the heavens as the constellation of Cygnus so that he might be near Lyra, the constellation of the Harp, although the Latin poet Ovid claims that "Cygnus" took its name from "Cycnus," a friend of Apollo's son Phæthon. It might seem strange, on the face of it, that a celebrated singer like Orpheus should be changed into a bird as lacking in song as the swan, but it should be remembered that the ancients believed that a dying swan sang very sweetly. At least we are quite certain that Lyra is the harp that Mercury invented, that the Sun-god endowed with a golden tone, and that Orpheus played upon when he held spellbound not only mankind, but beasts, rocks and trees.
This great Harp floats across the dome of the heavens on summer evenings with the blue jewel Vega blazing on its frame. Longfellow in "The Occultation of Orion" clearly visioned
"its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire."
It is easy to imagine that these twinkling chords still sigh and give forth strains of music, for an Æolian Harp is a harp that sings when a wind passes over its strings, and the music of such an instrument is of a drowsy, lulling quality which blends beautifully into dreams.
THE GREAT NORTHERN CROSS
