"Take This white robe. It is costly. See, my blood Has stained it but a little. I did wrong; I know it, and repent me. If there come A time when he grows cold--for all the race Of heroes wander, nor can any love Fix theirs for long--take it and wrap him in it, And he shall love again."
"The Isles of the Blest, they say, The Isles of the Blest, Are peaceful and happy, by night and by day, Far away in the glorious west.
They need not the moon in that land of delight They need not the pale, pale star; The sun is bright, by day and night, Where the souls of the blessed are.
They till not the ground, they plow not the wave, They labor not, never! oh, never! Not a tear do they shed, not a sigh do they heave, They are happy forever and ever!"
The chosen device of Charles V. of Germany represented the Pillars of Hercules entwined by a scroll that bore his motto "Plus Ultra." This device, represented on the German dollar, has been adopted as the sign of the American dollar ($).
The Pygmies were a nation of dwarfs, so called from a Greek word meaning the cubit or measure of about thirteen inches, which was said to be the height of these people. They lived near the sources of the Nile, or, according to others, in India. Homer tells us that the cranes used to migrate every winter to the Pygmies' country, where they occasioned a fierce warfare. H. M. Stanley, in his last African expedition, discovered a race of diminutive men that correspond very well in appearance to those mentioned by Homer.
Terra is the same goddess as Gæa (the Earth).
Battle of Pygmies and Cranes JAMES BEATTIE
The Apples of the Hesperides may have been suggested by the oranges of Spain.
See the poem "The Golden Apples," in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise."
Two poems on the Medusa which are well worth reading are "The Doom of King Acrisius" in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise," and Shelley's lines "On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery."
There are translations of Simonides's "Lament of Danaë" by William C. Bryant and John H. Frere.
Tennyson has a singular use of the proper noun in the "Princess" when he says:--
"Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me."