Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/133

 while playing, he watched amazed as a whole forest marched up to a level place on a hill where it made a shade for a large assemblage of wild animals and the multitudes of birds who sat as if enchanted while he played.

This gay and happy musician had a lovely bride named Eurydice, daughter of the Sea-god Nereus, whom he fondly loved. One day while wandering in the fields, Eurydice was fatally bitten by a viper which lay concealed in the long grass. Orpheus filled the groves and valleys with his piteous lamentations and finally, unable to live without her any longer, he boldly walked into the cave that led to Pluto's realm, and braved the horrors of the steep, dark path which led to the lower world. After a difficult journey he arrived among the Shades, and wandered playing and singing among the admiring throng. The ancients claim that the power of his music arrested for a while the torments of the damned, that his "golden tones" seemed so heavenly in these gloomy depths that the stone of Sisyphus remained motionless, the Danaides stopped their wearisome task of pouring water through a sieve, and the Furies withheld their persecutions.

Pluto was touched to unheard of softness and, as he granted Orpheus' plea that Eurydice be returned to him, "iron tears" rolled down the furrows of his cheeks. "But hold," said the crafty monarch, "there is one condition. If you once glance behind you to see if Eurydice is following, you must lose her again forever." Crashing chords of joyous triumph, Orpheus hurried up the rough pathway that led to the top of the world, but as he was about to pass the extreme limits of Hades and saw beyond him the opening where the sunlight reached in gently through the darkness,