Procris

which holds in solution both the novel and the drama in the drama we shall find a thorough student of ovid in lope de vega in the work of which he himself was most fond the dorothea he harks back to celestina for the character of the go-between But besides this, the piece is crowded with reminiscences of Ovid.

Calderon appreciated the serious relief furnished by the story of Cephalus and Procris in The Art of Love and The Metamorphoses, for he made a tragedy of it in his Caelos on de l'air matin.

He also saw that it made good stuff for comedy and turned it into one, his Cephalo e Procris.

These examples will suffice to convince the Ovidian that his poet was well known to Spanish writers.

To meet Ovid's peer in narrative irony and burlesque, one has only to turn to Cervantes.

Though Aurora was the wife of Aeolus and mother of the winds, she had the usual weakness of the deities of Olympus for falling in love with mortals who won her favour.

Thus she became enamoured of the young hunter Cephalus, but was unable to gain his love, as he himself had already wedded the fair Procris, one of Diana's nymphs.

The happiness of these lovers was a maddening sight to the jealous Aurora, and she determined to find some way to end it.

Procris had brought to her husband as a dowry a hunting dog named Lelaps, who could outrun the swiftest deer, and a javelin that never missed its mark.

So all day long Cephalus hunted in the forest, and his long absences gave the malicious Aurora an excuse for whispering to the young wife that her husband spent his time in the society of a wood nymph.

For some time Procris resisted these suggestions of the goddess, but at last, overcome by jealousy, she followed Cephalus to the forest to see who the maiden was that charmed him.

At noonday the weary hunter sought his accustomed resting place, and as he lay beneath a wide-spreading tree, he called to the breeze to come and refresh him.

Believing that he referred to some wood nymph, Procris sank down among the bushes in a swoon, and her husband, hearing the leaves rustle suddenly behind him, hurled his javelin into the thicket, supposing that some wild beast was crouching near him ready to spring.

One day one of them walks in the light, and the other lies in the dark, and the next day they trade, so that neither is ever wholly lost, and both are honored like gods.

There was Iphimedea, who bore to the god of the sea two sons, the tallest and the fairest, that the grain-giving earth ever fed, after great Orion only, two boys who grew a hand wider and an arm taller with every year that passed, and who, while they were still only boys, made the bold bright boast that they would pile the tall mountains one upon another and climb them into heaven itself and would have tried it the old song say had they only lived to be men there was one whom the fire will name only softly and let go by a queen of Thebes in the deep past who was caught at last in a grief too heavy for any song to lift and her shadow passes quickly tonight honored and unspoken for this is a night of the loved and the missed and not of the old dark stories and there was Ariadne the daughter of a king of Crete, out of another bright sorrowful tale, the songs tell on other nights, and Phaedra near her, and Procris, and Maera, and Fair Clyman, name after name after name, in the old rocking rhythm, mothers of heroes, and loves of gods and daughters of kings, More of them than any listener awake or asleep was ever meant to hold, and one last shade at the very edge of the count, whom the songs remember only for taking gold to sell her own husband, let go past quickly too, into the grey.

And they rose into the little warmth of the offering, each in her turn, and spoke her name, and gave way, and sank back, a whole vanished world of women passing one at a time through a small light at the edge of everything.

And the man stood and received them, and did not try to keep them, for they could not be kept, and the counting ran on.

Though Aurora was the wife of Aeolus and mother of the winds, she had the usual weakness of the deities of Olympus for falling in love with mortals who won her favour.

Thus she became enamoured of the young hunter Cephalus, but was unable to gain his love, as he himself had already wedded the fair Procris, one of Diana's nymphs.

The happiness of these lovers was a maddening sight to the jealous Aurora, and she determined to find some way to end it.

Procris had brought to her husband as a dowry a hunting dog named Lelaps, who could outrun the swiftest deer, and a javelin that never missed its mark.

So all day long Cephalus hunted in the forest, and his long absences gave the malicious Aurora an excuse for whispering to the young wife that her husband spent his time in the society of a wood nymph.

For some time Procris resisted these suggestions of the goddess, but at last, overcome by jealousy, she followed Cephalus to the forest to see who the maiden was that charmed him.

At noonday the weary hunter sought his accustomed resting place, and as he lay beneath a wide-spreading tree, he called to the breeze to come and refresh him.

Believing that he referred to some wood nymph, Procris sank down among the bushes in a swoon, and her husband, hearing the leaves rustle suddenly behind him, hurled his javelin into the thicket, supposing that some wild beast was crouching near him ready to spring.

Though Aurora was the wife of Aeolus and mother of the winds, she had the usual weakness of the deities of Olympus for falling in love with mortals who won her favour.

Thus she became enamoured of the young hunter Cephalus, but was unable to gain his love, as he himself had already wedded the fair Procris, one of Diana's nymphs.

The happiness of these lovers was a maddening sight to the jealous Aurora, and she determined to find some way to end it.

Procris had brought to her husband as a dowry a hunting dog named Lelaps, who could outrun the swiftest deer, and a javelin that never missed its mark.

So all day long Cephalus hunted in the forest, and his long absences gave the malicious Aurora an excuse for whispering to the young wife that her husband spent his time in the society of a wood nymph.

For some time Procris resisted these suggestions of the goddess, but at last, overcome by jealousy, she followed Cephalus to the forest to see who the maiden was that charmed him.

At noonday the weary hunter sought his accustomed resting place, and as he lay beneath a wide-spreading tree, he called to the breeze to come and refresh him.

Believing that he referred to some wood nymph, Procris sank down among the bushes in a swoon, and her husband, hearing the leaves rustle suddenly behind him, hurled his javelin into the thicket, supposing that some wild beast was crouching near him ready to spring.

serve as her doctor when she is ill do everything for her except administering the medicine let your rival do that give her defects the names of proximate virtues say slender for skinny trim for puny buxom for stout it is an easy art which plato and horace had prescribed before ovid and the heroines of moliere and congreve practised after him prior sums it up in a neat couplet since become a proverb be to her virtues very kind be to her faults a little blind finally for ovid's precepts always are subject to a sudden turn it may be well to arouse your darling's jealousy and her temper now and then blessings on the amontium eri if they all the more endear oh four times blest and blest times infinite is he who wounds his love and stirs her spite when gossip simmers and she loath to hear losing all voice and color faints in fear may i be he whose locks she madly tears may i be he whose cheek her nail-prints bears at whom she looks with tearful little eyes sans whom she cannot live though hard she tries the last book of the poem is the most brilliant if anything can be more brilliant than the first two in other words the poet's climax is sustained with a complete volt fasse ovid now deserts his sex and instructs the maiden how to win a lover and how to keep him he begins with a legend of good women exactly on chaucer's plan and that of jean de meun before him it is accompanied by the same ruthless exhibition of man's shiftiness that we saw in the heroides deceive your deceivers that maxim is passed on with a courteous bow to the fair whether ovid's precepts are sound is not for a mere man to judge on the attractiveness of mourning apparel on the danger of getting mad at cards on the use of the mirror as a cure for temper on the practice of various modes of handwriting for various lovers on the advisability of completing one's toilet before leaving the house lest as the poet puts it you show yourself a work of art in the making on these and many other matters some docta puella should tell us whether ovid has hit the mark the maidens to whom the poet gives counsel are as ever those of the lower world he had intended a brief digression on the way for wives to elude their shrewd husbands and wakeful porters no no rather he had meant to pass that topic by but he will add a suggestion for the reform of the home if the wife would arouse her husband's love let her make love less easy for him shut him out let him hear the concierge say gruffly as he slams the door in his face non potes no you don't with his sense of adventure spurred the master of the house can then climb in at my lady's window Such is Ovid's art of love, being, as a French critic pithily observes, l'art d'aimer sans amour, the work of one who can apostrophize himself in Chaucer's words, and painest thee to praise love's art, although thou haddest never part.

ovid's poem is a monument of art of chiselled verses with a sparkle of diamonds it is a monument of wit and delicate travesty prompted by deviltry and restrained by no reluctance to shock the poet spares none of the mysteries of sex he shrinks from nothing but it is not prurience or morbidity but audacity to the point of blasphemy that leads him to disclose with a reckless frankness what in all decency should be left unsung matrons are warned off the field but by irony and innuendo we are constantly made aware that the world of intrigue portrayed in the art of love differs not at all from that in the amoris nor does the earlier work fail to contain pieces quite as impossible for a writer to-day as the notorious grand finales in the art of love if writing of this sort deserved exile ovid should have been banished in his early twenties towards the close of the poem ovid illustrates the evils of jealousy by the story of cephalus and procreus the young huntsman cephalus tired after the chase would rest in a grove and sing the praise of aura the breeze who came to refresh him Procris, minded of Aurora, the dawn goddess, who had once stolen him from her, goes in search of him.

He hears a rustling in the bushes, and thinking that some creature of the woods is coming towards him, shoots an arrow thither.

He rushes into the thicket, and finds that he has slain his wife.

Miss Europa gave it Minos.

Minos gave it Procris.

Procris gave it Cephalus.

He was also of the fairy kind, so that, like the lawyers of our age, he was too hard for all other sorts of creatures.

Nothing could escape the dog.

Miss Europa gave it Minos.

Minos gave it Procris.

Procris gave it Cephalus.

He was also of the fairy kind, so that, like the lawyers of our age, he was too hard for all other sorts of creatures.

Nothing could escape the dog.

The noble Vulcan here present had framed a dog of Monesian brass, and with long puffing and blowing put the spirit of life into him.

He gave it to you; you gave it your Miss Europa; Miss Europa gave it Minos; Minos gave it Procris; Procris gave it Cephalus.

He was also of the fairy kind, so that, like the lawyers of our age, he was too hard for all other sorts of creatures.

Nothing could scape the dog.