Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/41

 so great a radiance that it blinded the eyes of any one but the gods. Every morning Apollo put the sun in this chariot and drove to the eastern gates where Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, flung down the bars for her Sun-god, who penned up the stars, collected his Hours about him and drove out along the pathway of the Heaven with the brilliant light of the sun.

Phaethon, an ambitious son of Apollo, watched his father day after day, and wished that he, too, might ride in such radiant splendor above the clouds. At last he made his way to the sun-palace and begged his father that he might show his comrades in Greece that he was truly the child of so glorious a god by being privileged to drive the sun. Apollo was horrified, but Phaethon persisted and at last he gave his reluctant consent. The headstrong youth then jumped into the chariot, grasped the reins of the celestial steeds and started along the zodiac. Ancient poets assert that the Earth looked up and trembled as she watched the snow-white horses of the Sun-god tear wildly up the steep slope in the east. The constellations shook with terror as they swerved from the beaten pathway, the Serpent twined about the icy Pole grew warm and began to writhe, and the Bear's stars fluttered and "wished to dip in the forbidden sea." Half dead with fear, Phaethon saw the shadowy star-decked forms of wild beasts scattered about the heavens and shuddered as the fierce Scorpion moved his claws and brandished his sting. Now beyond all control, the horses veered aside from the "heat vex't creatures" and rushed straight toward the earth, but, just in time, Jupiter hurled a tremendous thunderbolt and knocked Phaethon out of his chariot into a nearby river. The horses now turned toward the horizon which rested beyond the waters in the west, but the burning sunball had been drawn so close to the earth that the Nile had fled in fright and hid its head, which still remains hidden, and over a great area now known as the African desert, the moisture had