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It was a place where birds sang divinely, yet where obscene fowls of prey hovered in the blue or waited by the dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where dark-eyed women heard, with sidelong triumph, the whispers of passion; where sweet- faced children fled in fear from terrors undefined; where harpies and witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or scurried through the coverts where men brought things to die; or where they fled for futile refuge from armed foes.
Then Alexander's Feast the little harpies have been at that too, and it is defiled. Poor Collins' Ode to the Passions, on and off the stage, is torn to very tatters. The Seven Ages of Man, and "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women in it" gone to destruction. The quality of mercy is strained, and is no longer twice blest. We turn with disgust from "angels and ministers of grace."
Get yourself back in the shape you were this morning, and go out and try your luck. It'll just be bully if we can down this old blowhard." Shorty took off his belt and white gloves, unbuttoned his blouse, and lounged down the street to the quarter where the soldiers most congregated to be fleeced by the harpies gathered there as the best place to catch men going to or returning from the front.
But you should rather speak the truth out plainly, Curius," she continued, in an altered tone, "and confess honestly that you care for me no longer. If you loved me as once you did, you would not leave me to be goaded by these harpies. Know you not—why do I ask? you do know that my house, my slaves, nay! that my very jewels and my garments, are mine but upon sufferance.
Horrible creatures, half birds, half women, with long talons and cruel beaks, swooped down on the tables and carried off the food before the eyes of the terrified banqueters. These were the Harpies, who had once been sent to plague King Phineus, and when they were driven away by two of the Argonauts, Zetes and Calais, took refuge in these islands.
A surly guest once cut the fingers of one of these harpies when snatching his favourite morsel away untasted. I have heard a military gentleman who occasionally dined at Castle Downie describe those extraordinary repasts.
The confiscators truly have made some allowance to their victims from the scraps and fragments of their own tables, from which they have been so harshly driven, and which have been so bountifully spread for a feast to the harpies of usury. But to drive men from independence to live on alms is itself great cruelty.
The miscreants talked of five guineas, for the pretended risk they should run, in giving him a fortnight to sell his effects to the best advantage. They too could recommend a broker, a very honest fellow By what strange gradations, Oliver, can the heart of man become thus corrupt? The harpies looked hatefully.
And, as if still further to mark the continuity of thought, here in Orcagna's frescoes at Santa Maria Novella you have every horror of the heathen religion incongruously mingled with every horror of the Christian gorgons and harpies and chimæras dire are tormenting the wicked under the eyes of the Madonna; centaurs are shooting and prodding them before the God of Love from the torrid banks of fiery lakes; furies with snaky heads are directing their punishments; Minos and Æacus are superintending their tasks; and, in the centre of all, a huge Moloch demon is devouring them bodily in his fiery jaws, with hideous tusks as of a Japanese monster.
I liked the Iliad a little less, and the Odyssey a great deal more than formerly. Horace charmed me more than ever; Virgil not quite so much as he used to do. The want of human character, the poverty of his supernatural machinery, struck me very strongly. Can anything be so bad as the living bush which bleeds and talks, or the Harpies who befoul Aeneas's dinner?
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