"By a stronger concentration, I will have sublime poems, eternal monuments; and all matter will be penetrated with the vibrations of my cithara."
He fingers its chords. They break and snap against his face. He flings down the instrument, and driving his four-horse chariot furiously:
"No! enough of forms! Farther still—to the very summit—to the world of pure thought!"
But the horses, falling back, begin to prance so that the chariot is smashed; and, entangled in the fragments of the pole and the knottings of the horses, he falls head-foremost into the abyss.
The sky is darkened. Venus, blue as a violet from the cold, shivers.
"I covered with my girdle the entire horizon of Hellas. Its fields shone with the roses of my cheeks; its shores were cut according to the form of my lips; and its mountains, whiter than my doves, palpitated under the hands of the sculptors. My spirit showed itself in the order of festivities, the arrangements of head-dresses, the dialogues of philosophers, and the constitution of republics. But I have loved men too much. It is Love that has dishonoured me!"
"The world is abominable. My bosom feels the lack of air.
"O Mercury, inventor of the lyre, and conductor of souls, bear me away!"
She places a finger upon her mouth, and, describing an immense parabola, topples over into the abyss.