Without a song; and hidden, loving dove, Stealing, when daylight's common tasks are done, While her tired husband and her children sleep. This poem by Leigh Hunt gives quite clearly and fully the services that the Dryads were supposed to render to the forests. The subject is capable of very charming poetic treatment, as may be seen in the poem called "Rhocus," by James Russell Lowell, and from which the following selection is taken. A youth named Rhocus, wandering in the wood, And, feeling pity for so fair a tree, He propped its gray trunk with admiring care, And with a thoughtless footstep loitered on. But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind * That murmured "Rhocus!" "Twas as if the leaves, What seemed the substance of a happy dream For any that were wont to mate with gods. And like a goddess all too beautiful Then Rhocus, with a flutter at the heart, But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, GROUP VI. THE BLENDING OF HISTORY AND THE story of Ariadne, through whose cleverness Theseus, the semi-mythical founder of Athens, threaded the Labyrinth and slew the Minotaur, has been written in prose repeatedly; no one has told it more acceptably than Hawthorne in "Tanglewood Tales." But the end of this story is not satisfactory so far as the heroine is concerned, for the faithless Theseus, when he and the rest of his companions are ready to sail for home, basely deserts Ariadne, leaving her asleep on the island of Naxos. The sequel to this tale is found in the writings of both Greek and Latin authors. We select the following paraphrases on some of their poems. HOW BACCHUS FINDS ARIADNE SLEEPING. [NONNUS.] MRS. BROWNING. When Bacchus first beheld the desolate And sleeping Ariadne, wonder straight Was mixed with love in his great golden eyes; |