Out from the back of which, as Death sate down, "Ho! I am ready now," quoth Sisyphus, Saying, "Dear guest, compose thyself; reflect, Dabbling thy feet in gore; "Floundering in stormy seas; inhaling plague; "Sole robber, without profit in the spoil; "Sit and grow fat. What is it unto thee "Thy priests would die of hunger, could they die; To feed on herbs, like slugs. "All men submit to him who captures Death, "Alas, for men, if Death has this repose, "Think they, poor fools, in worshiping no more, And if the gods were not, "Man would invent them, tho' they godded stones. But in compassion for this race of clay, Thou hast no grudge against them: Good or bad, Who else would make an Erebus of earth, 'Tis all the same to Death." Death must be freed, and straight. The Spectre soothed by these well-reasoned words, "Seek thou our brother Pluto: Death, of right, And feeling really livelier in repose, Little by little humanized himself, And grinned upon his host, Who, in his craft, deeming it best to make With many a merry tale, And jocund song and flattering compliment, Night after night a cheerful sight it was Boon comrades, Man and Death. Meanwhile some private business of his own, Absorbed the cares of Zeus: Veiled in opaque Olympus, this low earth And not a single voice from Man arose, "Is it since Death rid earth of Sisyphus, The winged Caducean answered, "Sire of Gods, And keeps him safely caged. "Since then, these mortals, fearing Death no more, Is in his service, and at his command; Reope the way to Styx." Down through the upper air into the realms He found the King of Hades half asleep; "Ho, up! Aidoneus," cried the lithesome god, Is earth sponged out of space? "Or are men made immortals? Days and weeks "Well mayst thou ask?" said Hermes, and in brief And donned the helm wherewith, on entering light, And upon earth came storm. Ships rocked on whitening waves; the seamen laughed; "Death is bound fast," they cried; "no wave can Red lightnings wrapt the felon plundering shrines, "Blaze on," the felon said; "ye can not kill." "Brats do not need a mother; there's no Death." | As all wise knaves make sure of honest wives, The adulteress starting cried, "Forgive me, Zeus!" So the good woman, swearing to obey, "Tut," quoth the gallant, "let the storm rave on. Sisyphus trusted to her love-of pearls, Kiss me. No Death, no Zeus!" "Laugh, kiss, sin on; ere night I have ye all," Burst through closed doors the blåst. Suddenly round about him and around He did not see the Hell-King's horrent shape, "Find I the slave of Life "In mine own viceroy, Life's supremest lord? "Bring me the sailor chuckling in his ship, "And seize,, and seize, and seize, for Hell cries So the voice went receding down the storm; Death clutched him by the throat. "How cam'st thou free?" gasped out the thief of "My chains were molten at the breath of Dis. "But as I've been a kindly host to thee, "Ho, sweet-heart!" Death still had him in his But, not unwilling that his host should save "Hark ye, dear love," unto her ear the thief "The sweetest, gentlest, loveliest of thy sex, "Must quit my body; Zeus needs my advice. "Death is set free; slay a fat capon, love, When I come back, are thine." And left the hall with Death. Death straightway gave to Hermes at the door And the next morning all the altars smoked, Meanwhile adown the infinite descent Thus hurried off to everlasting night. Thou might'st have lived as long "As that yet blacker thief, the solemn crow; But 'tis too much to cheat the Sire of Gods, And forge his oracles to sell the beef Thou hadst the wit to steal." "True," sighed the ghost; "let me but live again, "Not for myself I speak; I think of Zeus. "Sound truth," said Hermes; "but, like other truths, Before it profits the discoverer dies. 'Tis now too late for such kind hints to Zeus." "Is not Zeus mild to sinners who repent?" "That's all I ask. If I escape the Shades, "One doubt disturbs me still," resumed the ghost. Dead once is dead for good!" "If so," said Hermes, "having supped, and proved And inly said, "A rogue like this would make "Thy fee!" said Charon. "Where's thine obolus ?" "Obolus, stupidest of ferrymen! Let souls made unctuous by funereal nard "There is no house-tax where there is no house; Nought goes for nothing, churl." Charon shoved off in growling "Hang thyself." "Lend me thy throat," replied the ghost, "I will." Thereat the ghosts, unburied like himself, Laughed out a dreary laugh. "To fright her soul its duty to discharge, And by interment fit me for the Styx, Most gladly I will face thy Judges three, And prove my blameless life." "Go then, nor tarry. Let me not again Send Death to fetch thee. Frighten well thy wife.” Swift into upper air sped Sisyphus, Slid through his household doors, And his own body entered in a trice, That done, cried "Hermes," thrice. Dense was that crowd, the wrong side of the Styx Saying, "The Thunderer hath vouchsafed reprieve, Back-looking, lest the Furies were behind, And now from judgment kept On the slow stream's bleak margin, side by side. There, cast by shipwreck on untrodden sands, Where never sailor came, o'er bleaching skulls To sprinkle pious dust, Lovers, whose kisses had been meeting fires, Unsevered still, clasped hands without a throb, Staring on waves whose oozing dullness gave No shadow back to shades. Eft-soons a sound strange to the realms of Dis, Roll'd o'er the Ninefold River to the hall Wherein, returned, sate Pluto; loathed sound Of laughter mocking woe. "What daring ghosts by impious mirth profane The sanctity of Hades?" asked the King. Answered a Shape that just before the Three Had brought a conqueror's soul, "Upon the earthward margin of the Styx, Merry as goat-song makes wine-tippling boors, Shoulder on shoulder pressing, the pale mob Drink into greedy ears Striding the Ninefold stream, to Sisyphus. "There are no torments, by thy righteous law, "Tis not my fault, but that of my base wife; As ghosts, when wronged, have done; Nor shall Death take thee till thyself dost call; And what in life men covet will be thineHonors, and feasts, and gear: "Hold these as perfumes on an altar burned; At morn woke Sisyphus; and of that dream "What! call on Death, 'mid honors, feasts, and gear! Hermes, indeed thou art the god of thieves; And all things prospered well with Sisyphus: And with the gold he hired himself armed men, Temples with priests austere : And from a petty hamlet Corinth rose, The boor in safety caroled at his plow, Order arose to harmonize brute force; As tyrants sow the harvest freemen reap. But as the forts of thrones. So he lived long 'mid honors, feasts, and gear; And weary, weary seemed the languid days, He lacked not, this time, funeral obsequies; Stored in a porphyry tomb. And for a while, because his children reigned, Men praised his fortunes, nor condemned his sins; Wise bards but called him "Craftiest of mankind," Proud rulers "The most blest." But when his line was with the things no more, And awful legends of some sentence grim, But, by a priest in Saïs, I was told A tale, not known in Greece, of this man's doom, That when the Thracian Orpheus, in the Shades, Sought his Eurydice, He heard, though in the midst of Erebus, Heaved a huge stone that came rebounding back, The Thracian asked in wonder, "Who art thou, Voiced like Heaven's lark amidst the night of Hell ?" "My name on earth was Sisyphus," replied The phantom. "In the Shades "I keep mine earthly wit; I have duped the Three. They gave me work for torture; work is joy. Slaves work in chains, and to the clank they sing." Said Orpheus, "Slaves still hope!" "And could I strain to heave up the huge stone Did I not hope that it would reach the height? There penance ends, and dawn Elysian fields." "But if it never reach ?" The Thracian sighed, as looming through the mist The stone came whirling back. "Fool," said the ghost, "Then mine, at worst, is everlasting hope." Again uprose the stone. DREAM-READING. Dr. | helm? Are dreams ruled by WHEN Dng Watts describes the leaders is there a law which regulates their occurren, or er loves thinking," we recognize at a glance the dear old innocent who in another popular hymn assures us that "little birds"-the most pugnacious creatures alive-"in their little nests agree." The fact is, heavy sleepers, like the Doctor's typical sluggard, are seldom conscious of their dreams, and rarely remember them. What is a dream? Philosophers define it as "the intellectual activity of a sleeping person which leaves its traces in the waking consciousness." Not very lucid certainly. Byron is much more graphic: "Dreams do divide our being; they become From the discovery of the independent existence of the mind or soul to the discovery of the laws governing the operations of that mind when disengaged from the body, an interval gapes which even modern science has been unable to bridge. In a state of sleep the power of volition does not exist. What then rules the mind? The pilot gone, who takes the It must be confessed that to these queries we can give no better answer than might have been offered by Socrates. For two thousand years or more the phenomena of dreams have been studied, and the result of these studies is a mass of theories, all vague and unsupported by evidence, and a mass of evidence, from which as yet no philosopher has been keen enough to extract theories governing the subject. In the course of comparisons of evidence we arrive at a few formulas, determining incidental questions, and a few generalizations on secondary points. But the grand principle which rules the working of the imagination, when it is set free from the control of the will and unchecked by the judgment, remains undetected. Nobody can tell us why we dream of mashed potatoes and lamb chops when we ought to dream of Charlotte's bright eyes; of climbing a precipice when the thought nearest our heart is whether Jones will ask for his money or not; of stabbing Smith under the fourth rib when we are really thinking of dining with him, and drinking some more of "that La Tour blanche" next Sunday. That there is a law, deeply hidden as it seems, which governs dreams, seems so probable that it may be assumed to exist. But, vast as our progress has been of late years in discovering laws in the material world, we have made no progress worth mentioning toward the discovery of metaphysical laws, and on the subject of dreams we are about as ignorant as Cicero. Our forefathers, three or four thousand years ago, referred every thing which they could not understand to the gods-just as old fishermen ers." Nowadays physiologists generally agree that dreams may be referred, directly or indirectly, to certain conditions of the mind or body existing immediately before the dream, or at the time it occurs. The stomach is probably the source of most dreams. A man drinks too much porter, and dreams of rolling over a precipice. He eats pork-chops in the evening, and dreams that Captain Wirz has got him at Andersonville, and is setting on the blood-hounds to tear his flesh from his bones. He eats sweet-breads à la financiere, and dreams that his enemy is kneeling on his chest, and feeling for a soft place in which to insert the deadly knife. He has walked rapidly just after dinner, and dreams that he is going to protest, and that some irresistible power prevents his reaching the bank with the funds to protect his credit. He has supped on clams, and dreams that brutal burglars are throttling him, while he can not so much as whisper or groan. In all these cases the suffering of the body suggests suffering to the mind, and the latter invents an imaginary cause for its woe. Pain in every organ produces the like effect. A hot bottle to the feet has suggested dreams of a visit to Vesuvius, or of a conflagration in the house, from which the dreamer tries vainly to escape. refer every poor season to the "darned steam- | a friend of his through a dream. How was a It was an angry god who flashed the poor man to know, in these days, whether his lightning; a jealous goddess who raised the dream came from heaven or the other place? storm; a pleased deity who poured copious rain on parched fields; a friendly god who hatched an eclipse to warn the Spartans not to march during this moon; watchful divinities who whispered dreams to warn their devout worshipers what to do and what to forbear. In these days dream-interpreting became a lucrative trade, and men fattened on it as they do now on vegetable pills (selling, not taking them, be it understood) and ready reliefs. When the rogues guessed aright the fact was advertised in the largest letters and most prominent places. When they blundered the blunder was forgotten, as the failures of patent medicines are to-day. When the dreamer was a king it did not answer to blunder. So Pharaoh's dream-readers, seeing him even graver than usual, gave up the dream of the seven lean kine, and left the coast clear for Joseph. Not only did the ancients regard casual dreams as direct revelations from Heaven, but they conceived that the advice of the gods might be obtained by dreaming to order. In Greece were two dreaming temples. The inquirer after divine guidance first feed the priests, then sacrificed an animal. All edible parts of the sacrifice having been carefully secured in the priest's larder, the supplicant wrapped himself in the skin of the dead beast, and slept near the altar: on this occasion his dreams were sure to be suggestive, and we should think, on the whole, he was likely enough to have nightmare. Homer, Hesiod, and all the old, old poets are full of dreams, accidental and express. Their hearers were evident believers in the divine origin of dreams, and would have eschewed a doubter on the subject just as our respectable classes eschew free-thinkers. It is well known that the Fathers of the Church shared the same belief. St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom abound in references to dreams, which they regard as revelations from God. In a much later age the pious Bishop Ken wrote a poem of great length to prove the divine origin of dreams. When he says: "I, waking, called my dream to mind Which to instruct me Heaven designed"one can not tell which to admire most, the poet or the philosopher. Catherine of Medicis declared that Heaven had foretold to her in a dream every important event of her life; what a frightful nightmare she must have had before St. Bartholomew's massacre! Another great lady dreamed of the death of a noble friend of dissolute character. She was sure it was a warning from above, but in reply to observations of sympathy touching his future fate, characteristically remarked that "Heaven would hesitate before it decided to damn a man of that quality." There were some among the early Fathers who held that the devil could prompt dreams as well as the deity. St. Augustine admits that the devil imparted some very useful information to A very common category of dreams at the North is referable to cold. A man sleeps in a very cold room with one shoulder uncovered; he dreams that he is engaged in a conflict with a spadassin, and has been shot or stabbed in the shoulder. He will feel the smart of the wound long after he wakes. A distinguished writer displaced the bed-clothes one cold night, so to leave his feet and legs bare. He dreamed that he was going to the butchers to give some orders when he found that he was followed by a wondering crowd. Cries of "What does he mean?" "How dare he appear in public without trowsers and barefoot ?" "Is he mad?" etc., etc., reached his ear. Presently, meeting some girls, he noticed that they tittered, then ran away. The dreamer thus realized that he was taking a morning walk in a state of indecent dishabille, and was so overwhelmed by mortification that he awoke, and found his lower extremities benumbed. In the case of a well-known author, who was familiar with the doings of the Spanish Inquisition, physical pain gave rise to a protracted dream of torture. Happening to lie with his right arm twisted under him in such wise as to impede the circulation, the dreamer realized that he had been arrested for heresy, and was being put through by the Grand Inquisitor. A rope was bound round his arm, and tightened gradually by pulleys until the blood gushed through the skin. The kind of rope, the arrangement of the pulleys, the features of the Inquisitor, and the brutal countenances of his familiars were distinctly remembered after the dream ended. |