[268] So having said, he withdrew from his lovely limbs the mantle with both bands, and bound it on his head, and leaped from the shore, and cast his body on the sea, and ever fared face-forward to the burning lamp, himself the oarsman, self-impelled, a self-directed ship.
[269] From the door she passed, and silently embraced her panting bridegroom, dripping with the foamy sprinklings of the sea, and led him to the bride-adorning chamber of her maiden hours.
[270] There was wedding, but without the ball; there was bedding but without the hymn: no singer invoked bridal Here; no blaze of torches lit the nuptial couch, nor did the youths and maidens move in myriad mazes of the dance: father and mother sang no marriage chant. But silence spread the bed and strewed the couch, and darkness decked the bride; without hymns of Hymen was the wedding. Night was their bridesmaid, nor did dawning see Leander in the husband's room. He swam again across the straits to Abydos, still breathing of bridal in his soul unsatisfied of joy. Hero, meanwhile, by day a maid, at night a wife, escaped her parents' eyes: both bride and bridegroom oftentimes desired that day should set.
[271] And so the bitter blast extinguished the faithless lamp and the life and love of suffering Leander.
[272] They enjoyed each other even thus in the last straits of doom.
[273] Marlowe lived to write only the first two sestiads.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART.
Separation between the Greeks and us.—Criticism.—Greek Sense of Beauty.—Greek Morality.—Greece, Rome, Renaissance, the Modern Spirit.
The Greeks had no past, "no hungry generations trod them down;" whereas the multitudinous associations of immense antiquity envelop all our thoughts and feelings.[274] "O Solon, Solon," said the priest of Egypt, "you Greeks are always children!" The world has now grown old; we are gray from the cradle onwards, swathed with the husks of outworn creeds, and rocked upon the lap of immemorial mysteries. The travail of the whole earth, the unsatisfied desires of many races, the anguish of the death and birth of successive civilizations, have passed into our souls. Life itself has become a thousandfold more complicated and more difficult for us than it was in the spring-time of the world. With the increase of the size of nations, poverty and disease and the struggle for bare existence have been aggravated. How can we, then, bridge over the gulf which separates us from the Greeks? How shall we, whose souls are aged and wrinkled with the long years of humanity, shake hands across the centuries with those young-eyed, young-limbed, immortal children? Can we make criticism our Medea—bid the magnificent witch pluck leaves and flowers of Greek poetry and art and life, distilling them for us to bathe therein and regenerate our youth like Æson?