HOW THE ROSE BECAME RED 
293 
countenance buried within the palms of her milk-white 
hands, while sobbing as if her fond, immortal heart would 
break. Beside her was laid the dead body of Adonis, his 
face half hidden beneath the floating fall of her hair as 
she bent over him and wept. Beyond them lay the stiff- 
ened bulk of the grim and grisly boar, his hideous jaws 
flecked with blood and foam, and his terrible tusks glitter- 
ing like the heads of pointed spears as they stood out 
sharp and white in the unclouded sunset. 
Not an immortal comforter was by; for the far-seeing 
eye of Jove was fixed listlessly upon the golden nectar-cup 
as it passed from hand to hand along the rounded circle 
of the gods, whilst they were recounting the deeds of other 
days, when they waged war against the Titans. Even the 
chariot of Venus stood unyoked at the foot of the mount ; 
the silken traces lay loosely thrown together upon the 
ground, and the white doves were idly hovering round in 
the air; for the weeping goddess was so overwhelmed with 
sorrow that she had forgotten to waft her lightning- winged 
whisper to the Mount of Olympus ; nor had they received 
any summons from the charioteer Love, who with folded 
wings lay sleeping upon a bed of roses, with his bow and 
arrows by his side. 
In the glade of this vast forest of the old primeval 
world — whose echoes had never been startled by the blows 
of a descending axe, nor a branch rent from their majestic 
boles, saving by the dreaded bolts of the Thunderer, or 
some earth-shaking storm, which, in his anger, he had 
blown abroad — the Goddess of Beauty still continued to 
sit, as if unconscious of the savage solitude which sur- 
rounded her; nor did she notice the back-kneed Satyrs 
that peered upon her unrobed loveliness with burning 
eyes from many a shadowy recess in the thick - leaved 
underwood. 
Upon the trunks of the mighty and storm-tortured trees 
the sunset here and there flashed down in rays of molten 
gold, making their gnarled and twisted stems look as if 
they had just issued red-hot from the jaws of some cavern- 
like furnace, whose glare the fancy might still trace in a 
blackened avenue of trees, up which the red ranks of the 
consuming lightning had ages agone marched. Every 
way, where the lengthened shadows of evening began to 
