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As he thus spoke he rose from his seat and went on resolutely and decidedly: "Here I stretch out this my right hand-hear me, ye Immortals! Every city in the Empire shall raise an altar to Antinous, and the friend of whom you have robbed me I will make your equal and companion. Receive him tenderly, oh, ye undying rulers of the world!
And Jason looked and saw the plains of Thessaly, where the Lapithai breed their horses; and the lake of Boibé, and the stream which runs northward to Peneus and Tempe; and he looked north, and saw the mountain wall which guards the Magnesian shore; Olympus, the seat of the Immortals, and Ossa, and Pelion, where he stood.
So he said to Hang Siang Dsi, with a sigh: "You must be one of the Immortals, since you were able thus to foretell the future!" And thrice Hang Siang Dsi sought to deliver his wife from the bonds of earth. For when he left his home to seek the hidden wisdom, she sat all day long yearning for his presence.
He moved away, depriving the old man of the support of his shoulder, as he continued: "There, there! Is the sea sweeping over the land? Have the clouds dropped on the earth to heave to and fro? Oh, grandfather, look yonder! May the Immortals have pity on us! The under-world is yawning, and the giant serpent Apep has come forth from the realm of the dead. It is moving past the temple.
Then the young man spoke: "These sandals of mine will bear you across the seas, and over hill and dale like a bird, as they bear me all day long; for I am Hermes, the far-famed Argus-slayer, the messenger of the Immortals who dwell on Olympus."
He was then able to open his eyes, when he saw the Ancient Immortal of the South Pole. The latter arraigned him in a loud voice saying: "You as-good-as-dead charlatan, who by means of corrupt tricks try to deceive Tzu-ya and make him burn the List of Immortals and help Chou Wang against Chou, what do you mean by all this? You should be taken to the Jade Palace of Abstraction to be punished!"
For Hyperion wedded Euryphaessa, his own sister, who bore him goodly children, the rosy-armed Dawn, and fair-tressed Selene, and the tireless Helios, like unto the Immortals, who from his chariot shines on mortals and on deathless Gods, and dread is the glance of his eyes from his golden helm, and bright rays shine forth from him splendidly, and round his temples the shining locks flowing down from his head frame round his far-seen face, and a goodly garment wrought delicately shines about his body in the breath of the winds, and stallions speed beneath him when he, charioting his horses and golden-yoked car, drives down through heaven to ocean.
It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow.
To me he is, like the greater number of classics in all ages and countries, a literary Struldbrug, rather than a true ambrosia-fed immortal. There are true immortals, but they are few and far between; most classics are as great impostors dead as they were when living, and while posing as gods are, five-sevenths of them, only Struldbrugs.
They were approved English classics; honoured veterans, who have emerged from the conflict with contemporary opinion, stamped excellent, or have been pushed by the roar of contemporaneous applauses to wear the leather-and-gilt uniform of our Immortals, until a more qualmish posterity disgorges them. The books had costly bindings.
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