Hermes / messenger of the gods

“The Story of Aglauros, transform’d into a Statue” – Ovid

**“The Dancers” (c.1905)**

________

This done, the God flew up on high,

This done, Hermes, the God, had just

turned Battus to a Touch stone

and pass’d

O’er lofty Athens, by Minerva grac’d,

Minerva, the Latin version of Athena,

was patroness of Athens, grac’d,

indeed, by the very Parthenon, then,

and still now, her temple

And wide Munichia, whilst his eyes survey

All the vast region that beneath him lay.

Munichia, the ancient name for a steep

hill, now called Kastella, in Piraeus, the

port of Athens

‘Twas now the feast, when each Athenian maid

Her yearly homage to Minerva paid;

let me point out that during the period

when pantheism prevailed, which is to

say anything earlier than the Emperor

Constantine, 272 – 337 AD, who

established Christianity as the official

religion of the Roman Empire, and going

back to the very beginnings of recorded

history, but at the very least to the epics

**of Homer, his Iliad, his Odyssey, the 8th**

Century BC, which tell of the Trojan War

and its aftermath, from the even more

distant 12th Century BC, homage was

paid, around the Mediterranean, to gods

and goddesses of Olympus, temples

were built, rituals performed in their

honour, much as in the Christian Era,

believers attend church, build cathedrals

to their preferred deity, feasts to Minerva

were as fervent then, in other words, as,

later, were those of devotees to their own

Christmas and Easter, say, celebrations

In canisters, with garlands cover’d o’er,

High on their heads, their mystick gifts they bore:

And now, returning in a solemn train,

The troop of shining virgins fill’d the plain.

The God well pleas’d beheld the pompous show,

The God, Hermes still

And saw the bright procession pass below;

Then veer’d about, and took a wheeling flight,

And hover’d o’er them: as the spreading kite,

kite, a bird of prey

That smells the slaughter’d victim from on high,

Flies at a distance, if the priests are nigh,

And sails around, and keeps it in her eye:

her eye, the kite is given the feminine

gender here, perhaps following upon

the original Latin word’s grammar

So kept the God the virgin quire in view,

And in slow winding circles round them flew.

**quire, archaic spelling of choir, a**

group of instrumentalists or singers

As Lucifer excells the meanest star,

Or, as the full-orb’d Phoebe, Lucifer;

Lucifer, the Morning Star, the planet

Venus, as it appears in the East

before sunrise

Phoebe, pre-Olympian goddess

representative of the moon, thus

in the verse above the very moon

So much did Herse all the rest outvy,

And gave a grace to the solemnity.

Herse, a Greek princess

outvy, outvie, to surpass

Hermes was fir’d, as in the clouds he hung:

fir’d, inflamed, aroused, thus

flung as would be a missile,

**the word fir’d here shimmers**

with both meanings

So the cold bullet, that with fury slung

From Balearick engines mounts on high,

Glows in the whirl, and burns along the sky.

Balearick engines, slingshots,

the people of the Balearic Islands,

off the coast of Spain, were famous

in ancient times for their use of the

slingshot, or sling, especially as a

weapon

At length he pitch’d upon the ground, and show’d

The form divine, the features of a God.

He knew their vertue o’er a female heart,

***their vertue,* the virtues of both *[t]he***

***form divine* and *the features of a***

God, however be these identical,

allow grammatically for the

**possessive adjective their to be**

used here

And yet he strives to better them by art.

Hermes would rather seduce with

art, which is to say with charm

and artistry, than by his august

credentials merely

He hangs his mantle loose, and sets to show

The golden edging on the seam below;

Adjusts his flowing curls, and in his hand

Waves, with an air, the sleep-procuring wand;

The glitt’ring sandals to his feet applies,

And to each heel the well-trim’d pinion ties.

pinion, the outer part of a bird’s wing,

including the flight feathers, which

**Hermes applies to his sandals**

His ornaments with nicest art display’d,

He seeks th’ apartment of the royal maid.

to be continued

R ! chard

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“The Eyes of Argus transform’d into a Peacock’s Train” – Ovid

**“Juno and Argus“ (c.1611)**

______

While Hermes pip’d, and sung, and told his tale,
The keeper’s winking eyes began to fail,

The keeper, Argus, of Io, nymph

become heifer

And drowsie slumber on the lids to creep;
‘Till all the watchman was at length asleep.

all the watchman, all of Argus‘ eyes,

**were closed, asleep, at length, after**

a time

Then soon the God his voice, and song supprest;

the God, Hermes, messenger of the

gods, on a mission from Jove /

Jupiter / Zeus to save Io, nymph

become heifer

his voice, and song supprest, Hermes

stopped talking, stopped playing his

song, his music

And with his pow’rful rod confirm’d his rest:

his powerful rod, the caduceus, with

which Hermes could both waken those

asleep as well lull the wakeful to

slumber

Without delay his crooked faulchion drew,

***faulchion,* now spelled *falchion,***

is a short sword with only one

sharp edge, a sort of sickle

since falchions go back only to the

13th Century, Dryden‘s translation

from the Latin has to be an

anachronism

just saying

And at one fatal stroke the keeper slew.
Down from the rock fell the dissever’d head,
Opening its eyes in death; and falling, bled;
And mark’d the passage with a crimson trail:
Thus Argus lies in pieces, cold, and pale;
And all his hundred eyes, with all their light,
Are clos’d at once, in one perpetual night.
These Juno takes, that they no more may fail,
And spreads them in her peacock’s gaudy tail.

Juno, wife of Jove / Jupiter / Zeus,
queen, therefore, of the gods and

goddesses

Impatient to revenge her injur’d bed,

Juno had been offended by the fact

that Jove / Jupiter / Zeus had

transgressed

She wreaks her anger on her rival’s head;

her rival, Io

With Furies frights her from her native home;

Furies, also known as Erinyes,

goddesses of vengeance, the

oldest of all the deities, they live

in Erebus, the Underworld, look

frightful, snakes in their hair, bat’s

wings, and haunt, unsettle, the

disrespectful, the insolent, those

who betray, are not true to, their

word

frights, frightens

And drives her gadding, round the world to roam:

her, Io, nymph become heifer

to gad, to wander

Nor ceas’d her madness, and her flight, before
She touch’d the limits of the Pharian shore.

Pharian, relating to Pharos, island off

the coast of Alexandria, notable for

its lighthouse, itself called Pharos,

one of the Seven Wonders of the

At length, arriving on the banks of Nile,
Wearied with length of ways, and worn with toil,
She laid her down;

She laid her down, she laid herself

down, stopped, stayed in place

and leaning on her knees,
Invok’d the cause of all her miseries:

the cause of all her miseries, Jove /

Jupiter / Zeus, who’d abandoned

her, Io, to the wrath of Juno, his

wife, when she’d discovered him

to be unfaithful

And cast her languishing regards above,
For help from Heav’n, and her ungrateful Jove.
She sigh’d, she wept, she low’d; ’twas all she cou’d;
And with unkindness seem’d to tax the God.

to tax, to accuse, to make

responsible for

Last, with an humble pray’r, she beg’d repose,
Or death at least, to finish all her woes.

repose, relief, Io, nymph become

heifer, has completely had it

Jove heard her vows, and with a flatt’ring look,
In her behalf to jealous Juno spoke,

a flatt’ring look, a seductive approach,

toward Juno, his reproachful wife

He cast his arms about her neck, and said,
Dame, rest secure; no more thy nuptial bed
This nymph shall violate;

Dame, or Madam

by Styx I swear,

Styx, one of the five rivers that

separate Earth from the

Underworld, also one of the

earliest goddesses, after whom

the river itself was named, who

had, significantly, sided with Jove /

Jupiter / Zeus during the Giants’

War, for which, upon having won,

Jove / Jupiter / Zeus ordained that

all oaths be sworn upon her, Styx,

much as we, in our own day, swear

upon Bibles

this all precedes, note, Bibles

And every oath that binds the Thunderer.

the Thunderer, Jove / Jupiter, Zeus,

god, indeed, of Thunder

The Goddess was appeas’d;

The Goddess, Juno

and at the word
Was Io to her former shape restor’d.
The rugged hair began to fall away;
The sweetness of her eyes did only stay,
Tho’ not so large; her crooked horns decrease;
The wideness of her jaws and nostrils cease:
Her hoofs to hands return, in little space:

little space, the blink of an eye

The five long taper fingers take their place,
And nothing of the heyfer now is seen,
Beside the native whiteness of the skin.
Erected on her feet she walks again:
And two the duty of the four sustain.

rather than walk on four feet, Io

**now stands erect, [e]rected, on**

two

She tries her tongue; her silence softly breaks,
And fears her former lowings when she speaks:

she can hardly believe she’s

become, not just a nymph,

but indeed

A Goddess now, through all th’ Aegyptian State:
And serv’d by priests, who in white linnen wait.

Io has become the Egyptian

goddess Isis

but that’s an entirely other story

stay tuned

R ! chard

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“The Afternoon of a Faun” – Debussy / Nijinsky / Nureyev

**“Faun and Nymph“ (1867)**

________

to take a break, for a moment, from the

travails of Io, a heifer still, though her

father, Inachus, is aware of the situation,

and Hermes, messenger of the gods, is

out, on the orders of Jove/ Jupiter / Zeus,

to save her, and, at the same time,

inspired by the music Hermes tells Argus,

her many-eyed keeper, Pan, god of the

wilds, has been playing, with reeds he’s

been left with of Syrinx, the nymph he

would’ve loved had she not been

transformed into rushes, as imagined by

**Debussy in his evocative Syrinx for solo**

flute, as highlighted in my last instalment,

I could not not remember Debussy‘s

other similarly mythological, and intimately

related, work, his Prelude to the Afternoon

of a Faun, as modified itself by Vaslav

Nijinsky, legendary dancer and

choreographer, into an event that verily

shook the early 20th Century

retitled, L’après-midi d’un faune, The

Afternoon of a Faun in English, the

performance captures everything one

would gather from Ovid’s myths of its

primitive, primal, sensibilities

the faun, needless to say, is representative

of Pan, god of the wild, woodlands, a satyr,

part instinct, part man, see above

watch Rudolf Nureyev, then, his equally

celebrated successor, take on the role

Nijinsky made famous, without any

alterations made to the original 1912

production, however improbably,

though entirely successfully, we’re in

Paris, May 29, though transposed,

faithfully and superbly, to New York,

Broadway, 1979

proceed, however, at your own discretion,

The Afternoon of a Faun is steaming, it’s

about what happens when a young buck’s

fancies, implacable and irrepressible, turn

to love, not for the scrupulous, where does

love begin, it asks, and lust retire, or is it

the other way around, where does yin, in

other words, meet, become, yang

these are questions that more and more

begin to come up, you’ll find, in Greek

and Roman, and most other ancient,

for that matter, mythologies, something

that isn’t at all touched upon in the

Abrahamic traditions, Christanity, Islam,

Judaism, monotheistic, though they’re

at least as old, where nature, the place

of animals, vegetation, land, water, our

intimate interconnection with them,

don’t much, for better or for worse,

come up

I miss the wonder of the more

pantheistic, the pagan, perspective

R ! chard

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The Transformation of Syrinx into Reeds

**“Pan and Syrinx“ (1617 – 1619)**

__________

Then Hermes thus:

Hermes, messenger of the gods,

addresses Argus, keeper of Io,

who’s been transformed by Jove,

god of gods, into a heifer, though

she remains daughter, ever, of

Inachus, river god, to tell the

story of his rare, beguiling reeds

A nymph of late there was
Whose heav’nly form her fellows did surpass.

here we go again with nymphs,

beautiful, irresistible, however

ever innocent, prey, due, indeed,

to their very beauty, their very

innocence, to lustful, inordinate

desires, in these instances,

markedly divine

deities, I point out again, make

up their own rules

The pride and joy of fair Arcadia’s plains,

Arcadia, apart from being an

actual area of Greece, is also

the ideal, in our historical

imagination, of an utopia,

much as is the lost island of

Belov’d by deities, ador’d by swains:
Syrinx her name, by Sylvans oft pursu’d,

Sylvans, could only be, though

I’ve been unable to find actual

confirmation of my opinion,

wood spirits, forest entities,

satyrs, goat men, and such

As oft she did the lustful Gods delude:

Syrinx could often, or oft, delude,

or fool, ward off, the lustful Gods

The rural, and the woodland Pow’rs disdain’d;

satyr yourself, Syrinx would’ve

impudently taunted

With Cynthia hunted, and her rites maintain’d:
Like Phoebe clad, even Phoebe’s self she seems,

Cynthia, is Phoebe, both also known

as Diana, goddess of the Hunt, you’ll

remember Phoebe / Diana from her

connection to Daphne, who earlier

here was transformed into a laurel

Syrinx sounds an awful lot, incidentally,

like another version of Daphne

So tall, so streight, such well-proportion’d limbs:
The nicest eye did no distinction know,
But that the goddess bore a golden bow:

the only difference between Syrinx

and Cynthia / Phoebe / Diana was

that Syrinx didn’t have, bear, a

***golden* *bow***

Distinguish’d thus, the sight she cheated too.

**had she borne a golden bow, Syrinx,**

***[d]istinguish’d thus,* would’ve *cheated***

the sight, looked identical, to the

beautiful, it is inferred, goddess

Descending from Lycaeus, Pan admires
The matchless nymph, and burns with new desires.

Pan, god of the wild, woodlands

Lycaeus, Latin spelling of Lykaion,

is a mountain in Arcadia

A crown of pine upon his head he wore;
And thus began her pity to implore.
But e’er he thus began, she took her flight
So swift, she was already out of sight.
Nor stay’d to hear the courtship of the God;
But bent her course to Ladon’s gentle flood:

Ladon, a river in Arcadia

***flood,* rushing, though *gentl[y],***

water, rhymes in the preceding

verse, you’ll note, with God

There by the river stopt, and tir’d before;
Relief from water nymphs her pray’rs implore.

**Syrinx, once by the river stopt, seeks**

the help of, assistance, [r]elief from,

**the nearby water nymphs, her**

consorts

Now while the lustful God, with speedy pace,
Just thought to strain her in a strict embrace,

Pan, like Phoebus / Apollo, or

Jove / Jupiter / Zeus before him,

is, as well, and characteristically,

a lustful God

He fill’d his arms with reeds, new rising on the place.
And while he sighs, his ill success to find,

his ill success, his thwarted,

ineffective, enterprise

The tender canes were shaken by the wind;
And breath’d a mournful air, unheard before;

the reeds that Pan gathered in his arms,

***shaken by the* wind, create *a mournful***

air, a melancholy music

That much surprizing Pan, yet pleas’d him more.

though Pan might’ve been much

surpriz[ed] by the sorrowful sounds

**he heard, he was more pleas’d by**

them than startled

Admiring this new musick, Thou, he said,
Who canst not be the partner of my bed,
At least shall be the confort of my mind:

And often, often to my lips be joyn’d.

in a kiss of consolation

He form’d the reeds, proportion’d as they are,
Unequal in their length, and wax’d with care,
They still retain the name of his ungrateful fair.

the instrument Pan devised from

the tender canes he fashioned

from the unaccommodating reeds,

what we now name the Pan flute,

was called in Ancient Greece a

syrinx, in honour of the

recalcitrant nymph

listen, coincidentally, to Debussy

tell the story, for solo flute,

however, which is to say, on a

modern instrument, for our having

long ago abandoned at a

professional level the original pipe,

though it remains, apparently, as a

folk instrument in more agrarian,

communities around the world, for

shepherds, one would imagine, to

while away the hours while tending

to their, however wayward, sheep

R ! chard

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“The Transformation of Io into a Heyfer” (V) – Ovid

Statue of Hermes (Vatican Museums)

___________________

though Io might still have been “not

out of the woods”, when last we saw

her, there remained nevertheless

her original suitor, Jove, god of gods

Now Jove no longer cou’d her suff’rings bear;
But call’d in haste his airy messenger,
The son of Maia, with severe decree
To kill the keeper, and to set her free.

The son of Maia, Hermes, messenger

of the gods

Maia, one of the Pleiades, playmates

of Artemis, goddess of the Hunt,

daughters, also, of Atlas, famously

condemned, he, to hold up the

heavens for eternity

With all his harness soon the God was sped,

Hermes, no sooner equipped,

[w]ith all his harness, livery,

attire, was sped, got under

way

His flying hat was fastned on his head,
Wings on his heels were hung, and in his hand
He holds the vertue of the snaky wand.

vertue, virtue, but having retained,

**still in 1717, its root, vertu, French**

for virtue, benefit

Hermes is usually shown wearing

***[h]is* *flying hat, [w]ings on his heels,***

**a snaky wand, identifying accessories**

snaky wand, his caduceus

The liquid air his moving pinions wound,

pinions, the feathers of a bird’s wing

wound, to injure, but also to wrap

around, according to its two

differing pronunciations

And, in the moment, shoot him on the ground.

**to rhyme with wound, note**

Hermes has landed, but apparently

uncomfortably

Before he came in sight, the crafty God
His wings dismiss’d, but still retain’d his rod:

dismiss’d, put aside, made invisible,

[h]is wings

That sleep-procuring wand wise Hermes took,
But made it seem to sight a sherpherd’s hook.

**though Hermes kept his rod, he made**

**it look, seem to sight, like a shepherd’s**

staff, hook

With this, he did a herd of goats controul;

controul, control

Which by the way he met, and slily stole.

by the way, as he walked along

slily stole, deities make up their

own rules

Clad like a country swain, he pip’d, and sung;
And playing, drove his jolly troop along.

swain, young man

With pleasure, Argus the musician heeds;

Argus heeds the musician, again

an inverted sentence, in order to

rhyme with

But wonders much at those new vocal reeds.

vocal reeds suggests Pan pipes

here, a wind instrument consisting

of several tubes of increasing length

placed side by side, where the piper

creates the melody by moving his

lips, her lips, from embouchure to

embouchure, the openings through

which to blow

And whosoe’er thou art, my friend, said he,
Up hither drive thy goats, and play by me:

Argus asks Hermes to stay, drive thy

goats away, [u]p hither, he directs,

**and play thy instrument, keep him**

company

This hill has browz for them, and shade for thee.

browz, browse, matter, twigs, shoots,

upon which goats might graze

The God, who was with ease induc’d to climb,

to climb, [u]p hither, in order to drive

the goats

Began discourse to pass away the time;
And still betwixt, his tuneful pipe he plies;

betwixt, meanwhile

plies, continues

And watch’d his hour, to close the keeper’s eyes.

his hour, his opportune moment

the keeper, Argus, over Io

With much ado, he partly kept awake;

the calming effect of the Pan pipes

**was making it hard, much ado, for**

Argus to stay awake

Not suff’ring all his eyes repose to take:

**never allowing, suff’ring, all his eyes**

**to close, repose to take, at the same**

time

And ask’d the stranger, who did reeds invent,
And whence began so rare an instrument?

how do you do that, Argus asks,

which leads to an interpolated story,

wherein Hermes, before we learn

much more about Io, answers the

questions

stay tuned

R ! chard

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“Syrinx” – Claude Debussy‏

“Syrinx“ (1892)

Arthur Hacker

__________

though Debussy would’ve called his

“Syrinx“ “Flûte de Pan”, “Pan Flute”,

alas, the name had already been

taken, he therefore came up with the

much more inspired “Syrinx“

Syrinx, with the help of other nymphs,

who’d come at her cry for help as she

fled the god Pan, a pursuer, had been

turned into a bush of reeds, its canes

producing a song so sweet as to

confound and disarm him, impelling

him to create of them that sublime

instrument

Hermes had been telling Argus, Argus

Panoptes, the giant with the hundred

eyes, the story about the pipes he

was playing, an implement received

from Jove, apparently, god of all the

gods, who wanted him to kill Argus,

for confining Io, who’d been turned

into a heifer by Juno, Jove’s wife,

who’d caught him chasing her, Io’s

plaintive lows had been getting to

Juno as Io fretted unfettered through

the fields too close to Olympus

when Hermes’ music finally closed the

giant’s last two eyes, he beheaded him,

but Juno, in merciful recognition of his

service, however ultimately ineffectual,

set them into the variegated tail of the

peacock

are you kidding me, I always think when

I read Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, and am

ever nevertheless entirely enchanted

a flute solo had not been composed in

over 150 years when Debussy composed

his “Syrinx“, 1913, after C.P.E. Bach’s not

at all unimpressive “Sonata in A Minor“

of 1747, it duly set off a new life for the

long overlooked flute, a reed which

Mozart famously didn’t like

note the tonal, rhythmic, and repetition

shifts from the rigid Classical model,

where these are much more strict,

Impressionism was not only breaking

down pictures, the pictorial arts, but its

sound world as well, it was an utterly

new era, new sensibility, new zeitgeist,

and you can feel it, though you might

not be quite able to immediately

verbalize it, the arts were again, as

they ever ‘ve been, the canary in the

gold mine

Richard

psst:

The Transformation of Syrinx into Reeds

Then Hermes thus: A nymph of late there was
Whose heav’nly form her fellows did surpass.
The pride and joy of fair Arcadia’s plains,
Belov’d by deities, ador’d by swains:
Syrinx her name, by Sylvans oft pursu’d,
As oft she did the lustful Gods delude:
The rural, and the woodland Pow’rs disdain’d;
With Cynthia hunted, and her rites maintain’d:
Like Phoebe clad, even Phoebe’s self she seems,
So tall, so streight, such well-proportion’d limbs:
The nicest eye did no distinction know,
But that the goddess bore a golden bow:
Distinguish’d thus, the sight she cheated too.
Descending from Lycaeus, Pan admires
The matchless nymph, and burns with new desires.
A crown of pine upon his head he wore;
And thus began her pity to implore.

Now while the lustful God, with speedy pace,
Just thought to strain her in a strict embrace,
He fill’d his arms with reeds, new rising on the place.
And while he sighs, his ill success to find,
The tender canes were shaken by the wind;
And breath’d a mournful air, unheard before;
That much surprizing Pan, yet pleas’d him more.
Admiring this new musick, Thou, he said,
Who canst not be the partner of my bed,
At least shall be the confort of my mind:
And often, often to my lips be joyn’d.
He form’d the reeds, proportion’d as they are,
Unequal in their length, and wax’d with care,
They still retain the name of his ungrateful fair.

Ovid

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Tag: Hermes / messenger of the gods

October 13, 2020

“The Story of Aglauros, transform’d into a Statue” – Ovid

“The Dancers” (c.1905)

Maurice Denis

________

This done, the God flew up on high,

This done, Hermes, the God, had just

turned Battus to a Touch stone

and pass’d

O’er lofty Athens, by Minerva grac’d,

Minerva, the Latin version of Athena,

was patroness of Athens, grac’d,

indeed, by the very Parthenon, then,

and still now, her temple

And wide Munichia, whilst his eyes survey

All the vast region that beneath him lay.

Munichia, the ancient name for a steep

hill, now called Kastella, in Piraeus, the

port of Athens

‘Twas now the feast, when each Athenian maid

Her yearly homage to Minerva paid;

let me point out that during the period

when pantheism prevailed, which is to

say anything earlier than the Emperor

Constantine, 272 – 337 AD, who

established Christianity as the official

religion of the Roman Empire, and going

back to the very beginnings of recorded

history, but at the very least to the epics

of Homer, his Iliad, his Odyssey, the 8th

Century BC, which tell of the Trojan War

and its aftermath, from the even more

distant 12th Century BC, homage was

paid, around the Mediterranean, to gods

and goddesses of Olympus, temples

were built, rituals performed in their

honour, much as in the Christian Era,

believers attend church, build cathedrals

to their preferred deity, feasts to Minerva

were as fervent then, in other words, as,

later, were those of devotees to their own

Christmas and Easter, say, celebrations

In canisters, with garlands cover’d o’er,

High on their heads, their mystick gifts they bore:

And now, returning in a solemn train,

The troop of shining virgins fill’d the plain.

see above

The God well pleas’d beheld the pompous show,

The God, Hermes still

And saw the bright procession pass below;

Then veer’d about, and took a wheeling flight,

And hover’d o’er them: as the spreading kite,

kite, a bird of prey

That smells the slaughter’d victim from on high,

Flies at a distance, if the priests are nigh,

And sails around, and keeps it in her eye:

her eye, the kite is given the feminine

gender here, perhaps following upon

the original Latin word’s grammar

So kept the God the virgin quire in view,

And in slow winding circles round them flew.

quire, archaic spelling of choir, a

group of instrumentalists or singers

As Lucifer excells the meanest star,

Or, as the full-orb’d Phoebe, Lucifer;

Lucifer, the Morning Star, the planet

Venus, as it appears in the East

before sunrise

Phoebe, pre-Olympian goddess

representative of the moon, thus

in the verse above the very moon

So much did Herse all the rest outvy,

And gave a grace to the solemnity.

Herse, a Greek princess

outvy, outvie, to surpass

Hermes was fir’d, as in the clouds he hung:

fir’d, inflamed, aroused, thus

flung as would be a missile,

**“The Dancers” (c.1905)**

**of Homer, his Iliad, his Odyssey, the 8th**

**quire, archaic spelling of choir, a**

**the word fir’d here shimmers**

***their vertue,* the virtues of both *[t]he***

***form divine* and *the features of a***

**possessive adjective their to be**

**Hermes applies to his sandals**