14 A REMINDER TO PLANT TO HELP 



"High Juno from the realms of air, 

 Secret, dispatch'd her trusty messenger. 

 The various goddess of the showery bow, 

 Shot in a whirlwind to the shore below ; 

 To great Achilles at his ships she came, 



And thus began the many-colored dame : 



* * * * 



'Who sends thee goddess, from the ethereal skies?' 

 Achilles thus. And Iris thus replies : 

 'I come, Pelides from the queen of Jove 

 The immortal empress of the realms above'." 



Homer( Iliad (Pope's) XVIII. 



"Then Juno, pitying her long pain, 



And all that agony of death, 

 Sent Iris down to part in twain 



The clinging limbs and struggling breath. 



* * * * 



So down from Heaven fair Iris flies 



On saffron wings impearled with dews, 

 That flash against the sunlit skies 



A thousand variegated hues." 



Virgil: Aeneid (Conington's) IV. (Death of Dido.) 



"The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound, 

 And showers enlarged, come pouring on the ground; 

 Then, clad in colors of a various dye, 

 Junonian Iris breeds a new supply 

 To feed the clouds." 



Ovid: Metamorphoses, V. 



"But light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve." 

 Tennyson: Oenone. 



. 



She is generally represented as using the rainbow as her path- 

 way from the heavens. 



"While elsewhere thus the war proceeds, 

 Saturnian Juno swiftly speeds 

 Her Iris from above 

 To valiant Turnus: 

 And thus the child of Thaumas speaks, 



Heaven's beauty flushing in her cheeks: 



* * * * 



E'en as she spoke, her wings she spread, 

 And skyward on her rainbow fled." 



Virgil: Aeneid (Conington's) IX. 



