The troops of warriors passed her by and embarked in the ships that waited for them there below the cliff. The sunlight faded and the moon came out, and still the stricken maiden leant against the rock where Minos had dashed all her hopes to ruin.
At length the song of the mariners came up from the sea, telling that the men were on board and the ships ready to sail, and with a cry of bitter anguish Scylla crept to the top of the rock that overlooked the sea. She saw the ship of King Minos moving slowly from the shore, and clasping her hands above her head, she leapt from the tall cliff.
And men say that the gods had pity on her, and changed her into a sea-lark. But her father was wrath with her even in death, and he craved of the infernal powers the boon of vengeance. Therefore he was turned into a sea-eagle, and still the father, with hooked hands and ravenous beak, watches from his mountain walls to swoop upon his feathered daughter, who flits along the shore and cowers in the crannies of the rocks.
THE STORY OF PYRAMUS AND THISBE
BY M. M. BIRD
"The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby."—Shakespeare.
In Babylon of old, where walls were first built of bricks, two houses had been set so close together that they shared one roof. Two families came to dwell in them, and young Pyramus of the one house soon made acquaintance with fair Thisbe of the other. Their friendship grew and ripened into love. But alas! a deathless feud had arisen to separate the two families, and the unhappy lovers were inexorably divided.
Still, though angry parents could forbid their love and could prevent them meeting, all this could not avail to kill their love. The thwarted pair could but gaze upon each other, could only look and sigh: yet that was enough to feed the flame of love. And at last they found a way to reach each other's ears, as lovers will: a chink between two bricks in the wall that divided the two houses—a little chink where the cement had crumbled away, so small it had never been noticed and filled in. Through this friendly chink young Pyramus breathed his vows, and fair Thisbe answered him with tender words. Their eager lips pressed the unresponsive brick, their hands that longed to clasp each other were kept apart by the hard, unfeeling wall. Their sighs and softly spoken words of love alone could pierce the barrier that divided them.