Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/204

 the Greeks watch the frightened Pleiades drop into the sea. It is now a dangerous time for small crafts to venture forth.

make the boats secure for the sailing season is over.

Yet the people around the Mediterranean were not the only ones who considered the importance of these stars. Spence in "Myths of Mexico and Peru" tells with what trepidation the ancient Mexican people watched, every period of 52 years, the passage of these stars across the zenith.

Perhaps the reason for periodical recurrence of this fear lay in the old Mexican tradition that the world was once destroyed when the Pleiades culminated at midnight.

Poets in all lands have sung the praises of the Pleiad stars. Probably the most quoted are those from Tennyson's "Locksley Hall." These are so truly beautiful that one almost involuntarily repeats them whenever the huge giant Orion or this lovely star group comes into view.