MERCURY.
Mercury, or Hermes, is a very interesting god. He is the messenger of Jupiter, and has wings on his cap and sandals. He flies swifter than the wind and wears a cloak which makes him invisible. As the wind carries things away, Mercury is sometimes called the captain of thieves, and he likes to play tricks.
While walking along a river bank one day, he carelessly hit a tortoise shell, and it gave forth a musical sound. Mercury at once fashioned it into a lyre. This musical instrument he gave to his brother Apollo, who was so delighted with it that he gave Mercury a wonderful wand called the caduceus. When animals or people quarrel, this wand will make them friends again. One day Mercury threw it upon the ground where two snakes were fighting, and at once they twined lovingly about it, and Mercury kept them there as an emblem of the power of the wand.
The caduceus represents the gift of language; for when men quarrel and are angry, if they use this wand and talk with each other, their differences will soon disappear and they will become friends.
You will recognize the statues of Mercury by his caduceus and by his winged cap and sandals. He is sometimes represented as standing upon a tongue; for he gave to man the gift of speech, and is the god of eloquence. Mercury is also the god of commerce; for if men could not speak and converse with one another, there would be no commerce in the world.
THE FINDING OF THE LYRE.
There lay upon the ocean’s shore
What once a tortoise served to cover.
A year and more, with rush and roar,
The surf had rolled it over,
Had played with it and flung it by,
As wind and weather might decide it,
Then tossed it high where sand drifts dry
Cheap burial might provide it.
It rested there to bleach or tan,
The rains had soaked, the suns had burned it;
With many a ban the fisherman
Had stumbled o’er and spurned it;
And there the fisher girl would stay,
Conjecturing with her brother
How in their play the poor estray
Might serve some use or other.
So there it lay, through wet and dry,
As empty as the last new sonnet,
Till by and by came Mercury,
And, having mused upon it,
“Why, here,” cried he, “the thing of things
In shape, material, and dimensions!
Give it but strings, and lo, it sings,
A wonderful invention!”
So said, so done; the chords he strained,
And, as his fingers o’er them hovered,
The shell disdained a soul had gained,
The lyre had been discovered.
O empty world that round us lies,
Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,
Brought we but eyes like Mercury’s,
In thee what songs should waken!