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Around all, embracing all, lies Oceanus Procellarum, the Ocean of Tempests, where, engaged in one continuous struggle with the gusty whirlwinds, excited by our own passions or those of others, so few of us escape shipwreck. And, when disgusted by the difficulties of life, its deceptions, its treacheries and all the other miseries "that flesh is heir to," where do we too often fly to avoid them?
It would have gone hardly with me had not Eurynome, daughter of the ever-encircling waters of Oceanus, and Thetis, taken me to their bosom.
To Barbicane and Nicholl the "Sea of Clouds" was an immense depression of ground, with circular mountains scattered about on it; covering a great part of the western side of the southern hemisphere, it covered 184,800 square leagues, and its centre was in south latitude 15°, and west longitude 20°. The Ocean of Tempests, Oceanus Procellarum, the largest plain on the lunar disc, covered a surface of 328,300 square leagues, its centre being in north latitude 10°, and east longitude 45°. From its bosom emerge the admirable shining mountains of Kepler and Aristarchus.
Clouds glide along the hills, soft and sinuous, snow-white with rosy reflexions, which are the flanks and bosoms and loins of immortal nymphs, divine daughters of the rivers and the sky, maidens of the morn old Oceanus leads forth along the heights, a flock multiform as his waves, and who welcome to their cool, fresh arms, on a couch of hyacinths and anemones, the gods, masters of the world, and the shepherd swains loved of goddesses.
She made a stream of fire flare from his shield and helmet like the star that shines most brilliantly in summer after its bath in the waters of Oceanus even such a fire did she kindle upon his head and shoulders as she bade him speed into the thickest hurly-burly of the fight. Now there was a certain rich and honourable man among the Trojans, priest of Vulcan, and his name was Dares.
A brother of the Oceanides, the prudent Nereus, used to reign in the depths of the Mediterranean. This son of Oceanus had a blue beard, green eyes, and bunches of sea rushes on his eyebrows and breast. His fifty daughters, the Nereids, bore his orders across the waves or frolicked around the ships, splashing in the faces of the rowers the foam tossed up by their arms.
Now the sun was but just striking on the fields, and was come forth from the soft flowing stream of deep Oceanus. Then the beaters reached a glade of the woodland, and before them went the hounds tracking a scent, but behind came the sons of Autolycus, and among them goodly Odysseus followed close on the hounds, swaying a long spear.
While Dionysus, Demeter, Hades, and Persephone remained earthly, and Helios, Eos, Iris, and Hecate, heavenly divinities, and Oceanus, Poseidon, Amphitrite, Proteus, and Nereus ruled the waters, Zeus was conceived as the god of the sky and of thunder, who hurled the bolts, the great king and lawgiver, the father of men, and Hera, originally the air, became the protecting goddess of married life; Apollo, the god of light, who shot forth his arrows, not at first identified with Helios, became the god of divination and poetry, who led the choir of the muses; the goddess of light, Athene, became the contentious goddess of wisdom; Aphrodite, born of the foam of the sea, once the symbol of the fruitful power of nature, later, encircled by the Graces, became the type of womanly beauty and charm, to which the strength of man, personified in Ares, corresponds.
Just before the Oceanus left the dock in New York we received a despatch from the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, that Lee with his entire army had surrendered to Grant. Our steamer was the first one to carry the news of Lee's surrender to the people of the South.
Were life, friends, love, the light of the sun, eternally lost, and nothing left save the endless sleep in the unsunned caves of Oceanus? With one surge the desire to live, to bear hard things, to conquer them, returned. He dashed the water from his eyes. What he did next was more by instinct than by reason.
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