Psyche’s curiosity and suspicions overcame her discretion and accordingly when Cupid was asleep she took a lamp and, bending over him, beheld not a hideous monster, but the most beautiful of the gods. In the excitement of joy and fear, a drop of hot oil fell from the lamp upon his shoulder. He opened his eyes and fixed them full upon her, then spreading his white wings, flew away only stopping long enough to say:
“Farewell—what a dream thy suspicion hath broken!
Thus ever affection’s fond vision is crost.
Dissolved are her spells when a doubt is but spoken,
And love once disturbed forever is lost.”
—Moore.
Psyche, disconsolate, wandered over the earth seeking her lover, and at length came to the palace of Venus. Venus retained her as a slave and imposed upon her the hardest and most humiliating labors. She would have perished but that Cupid, who still loved her in secret, invisibly comforted her. One day he found her asleep by the roadside with the marks of grief upon her lovely face. He softly kissed her and said:
“Dear, unclose thine eyes,
Thou mayst look on me now, I go no more,
But am thine own forever.”