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104 Phorkos, and to Polydektes' bridal brought a grievous gift, and grievous eternally he made for that man his mother's slavery and ravished bed: for this he won the fair-faced Medusa's head, he who was the son of Danaë, and sprung, they say, from a living stream of gold.

But the Maiden, when that she had delivered her well-beloved from these toils, contrived the manifold music of the flute, that with such instrument she might repeat the shrill lament that reached her from Euryale's ravening jaws.

A goddess was the deviser thereof, but having created it for a possession of mortal men, she named that air she played the many-headed air, that speaketh gloriously of folk-stirring games, as it issueth through the thin-beat bronze and the reeds which grow by the Graces' city of goodly dancing-ground in the precinct of Kephisos' nymph, the dancers' faithful witnesses.

But if there be any bliss among mortal men, without labour it is not made manifest: it may be that God will accomplish it even to-day, yet the thing ordained is not avoidable: yea, there shall be a time that shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall give him one thing beyond his hope, but another it shall bestow not yet.