Here was the secret at once of the genial, all-embracing
maternity of this new strange Artemis, and of those more dubious
tokens, the lighted torch, the winding-sheet, the arrow of death on
the string--of sudden death, truly, which may be thought after all
the kindest, as prevenient of all disgraceful sickness or waste in
the unsullied limbs. For the late birth into the world of this so
shadowy daughter was somehow identified with the sudden passing into
Hades of her first-born, Persephone. As he scans those scenes anew,
an awful surmise comes to him; his divine patroness moves there as
death, surely. Still, however, gratefully putting away suspicion, he
seized even in these ambiguous imageries their happier suggestions,
satisfied in thinking of his new mother as but the giver of sound
sleep, of the benign night, whence--mystery of mysteries!--good
things are born softly, from which he awakes betimes for his
healthful service to her. Either way, sister of Apollo or sister of
Persephone, to him she should be a power of sanity, sweet as the
flowers he offered her gathered at dawn, setting daily their purple
and white frost against her ancient marbles.
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