Vainly she sought to descend into the
dark underworld to see her "young Persephone, transcendent queen of
shades." Not for her weary, wandering feet was a single one of the
thousand paths that lead downward to death. Her only consolation was in
the vernal flowers, which, springing from the dark earthly mould,
seemed to her to be
"heralds from the dreary deep,
Soft voices from the solemn streams,"
by whose shores, veiled in eternal twilight, wandered her sad child,
the queen of the realm of Dis, with its nine-fold river, gates of
adamant, and minarets of fire. The heartlessness of all the ethnic
deities, of whatever age or nation, is a noticeable feature, especially
when contrasted with the unfathomable pity of their Exterminator, who
wept over the chief city of his fatherland, and would have gathered it,
as a hen gathereth her chickens, under the wings of his love, though
its sons were seeking to compass his destruction. Those old ethnic
deities were cruel, inexorable, and relentless. They knew nothing of
mercy and forgiveness. They ministered no balm to human sorrow. The
daemons who wandered in human shape over the classic lands of old were
all fickle and malevolent.
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