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In the letter of June 18, 1822, again he says: "The 'Epipsychidion' I cannot look at; the person whom it celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are curious, however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings.
The wheel of Ixion might whirl, and the pitchy depths blaze with the fires of indignation, but all this did not dry the tears of the nymph, nor soothe her bitterness of woe. Every tenderness that could reconcile, every enjoyment that could wean, was vainly essayed; mourning for her Orpheus, she would not be comforted. At last the Plutonian shadows opened to receive the matchless man.
Robert Burns could sing as he drove his ploughshare through the fields of Ayr. To-day millions who simply watch an automatic infallible machine, which requires neither strength nor skill, do not sing at their work but too many curse the fate, which has chained them, like Ixion, to a soulless machine. The evil is even greater.
Ixion forgot his labors at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus ceased from their hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, even Pluto smiled, and, for the first time in the history of hell, the eyes of the Furies were wet with tears.
She was of noble form, with delicate youthful face, so beautiful that all the guests praised Pirithous for his good fortune. The assembled princes of Thessaly were at the wedding feast, and also the Centaurs, relatives of Pirithous. The Centaurs were half men, the offspring which a cloud, assuming the form of the goddess Hera, had born to Ixion, the father of Pirithous.
But to me, considering how great must be the condescension of Zeus in unveiling to any man, even the worthiest, the least portion of his own loveliness, there has come at times a sort of dream, that the divine splendour will at last pierce through and illumine all dark souls, even in the house of Hades, showing them, as by a great sunrise, both what they themselves, and what all other things are, really and in the sight of Zeus; which if it happened, even to Ixion, I believe that his wheel would stop, and his fetters drop off of themselves, and that he would return freely to the upper air, for as long as he himself might choose."
We all resemble Ixion; he thought he was kissing Juno, and all that he possessed was a cloud. NATURE: Since I am all that is, how can a being such as you, so small a part of myself, seize me?
His strength in this volume of 1883 is put into that protest of human righteousness against immoral conceptions of the Deity uttered by Ixion from his wheel of torture. Rather than obey an immoral supreme Power, as John Stuart Mill put it, "to Hell I will go" and such is the cry of Browning's victim of Zeus.
"Ixion" plain wholemeal biscuits, 1/2 lb. dates, 2 ozs. nutter, 1 heaped tablespoon wholemeal flour, grated rind of 2 lemons, water. Grind the biscuits to flour in the food-chopper. Wash, stone, and chop the dates. Grate off the yellow part of the lemon rinds. Rub the nutter into the biscuit-powder. Add dates, lemon peel, and flour.
Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still, Ixion rests upon his wheel, And the pale spectres dance; The Furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurled hang listening round their heads.