Whose love had dared the steep descent of hell?
Had faced the Furies and the tongues of fire,
The reek of torment, rising high and higher,
Proserpina’s sad woe and Pluto’s ire?
It seemed a little thing to hope and ask
That the glad wife, just rescued from the dead,
Should go unquestioning where her Orpheus led.
But no; for woman’s strength too hard the task.
“Why dost thou turn thine eyes away from me?
Am I grown ugly, then, unfit to see?