Chapter II

She reigns upon her dusky throne,
'Mid shades of heroes dread to see;
Among the dead she breathes alone,
Persephone--Persephone!
Or seated on the Elysian hill
She dreams of earthly daylight still,
And murmurs of the daffodil.

A voice in Hades soundeth clear,
The shadows mourn and flit below;
It cries--"Thou Lord of Hades, hear,
And let Demeter's daughter go.
The tender corn upon the lea
Droops in her golden gloom when she
Cries for her lost Persephone.

"From land to land she raging flies,
The green fruit falleth in her wake,
And harvest fields beneath her eyes
To earth the grain unripened shake.
Arise and set the maiden free;
Why should the world such sorrow dree[2]
By reason of Persephone?"

[2] _Dree_ means endure or bear.

He takes the cleft pomegranate seeds,
"Love, eat with me this parting day;"
Then bids them fetch the coal-black steeds--
"Demeter's daughter, wouldst away?"
The gates of Hades set her free;
"She will return full soon," saith he--
"My wife, my wife Persephone."

Low laughs the dark king on his throne--
"I gave her of pomegranate seeds;"
Demeter's daughter stands alone
Upon the fair Eleusian meads.
Her mother meets her. "Hail!" saith she;
"And doth our daylight dazzle thee,
My love, my child Persephone?

"What moved thee, daughter, to forsake
Thy fellow-maids that fatal morn,
And give thy dark lord power to take
Thee living to his realm forlorn?"
Her lips reply without her will,
As one address who slumbereth still--
"The daffodil, the daffodil!"

Her eyelids droop with light oppressed,
And sunny wafts that round her stir,
Her cheek is on her mother's breast,
Demeter's kisses comfort her.
Calm Queen of Hades, art thou she
Who stepped so lightly on the lea--
Persephone, Persephone?

When, in her destined course, the moon
Meets the deep shadow of this world,
And labouring on doth seem to swoon
Through awful wastes of dimness whirled--
Emerged at length, no trace hath she
Of that dark hour of destiny,
Still silvery sweet--Persephone.

The greater world may near the less,
And draw it through her weltering shade,
But not one biding trace impress
Of all the darkness that she made;
The greater soul that draweth thee
Hath left his shadow plain to see
On thy fair face, Persephone!

Demeter sighs, but sure 'tis well
The wife should love her destiny;
They part, and yet, as legends tell,
She mourns her lost Persephone;
While chant the maids of Enna still--
"O fateful flower, beside the rill--
The daffodil, the daffodil!"

JEAN INGELOW (1820-89).

*THE WRITER OF THE STORY OF BEE*

The best way to learn something about the author of _Bee_ is to study with care the portrait given as the frontispiece of this book. You shall form your own opinion of the man from the artist's drawing and that opinion will depend greatly upon the amount of enjoyment and the number of ideas you have got from his story.

His name is sufficient guide to his nationality, and you will know by easy guesswork that you have been reading a translation of his tale; but the change from French to English is so well made that not much is lost of the charm of the story as Anatole France wrote it. The best way to judge his work is, of course, to read it in French.

Anatole France is not, like Hans Andersen, a recognised fairy-tale writer, which from our point of view seems a pity, because he has the light touch which does not crush the gossamer or brush the dust from the wings of the butterfly. It is of no use having a heavy touch if you are dealing with things like Queen Mab's Wagon.

Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs.
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
Her traces of the smallest spider's web,
Her whip of crickets' bone, the lash of film;

Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coach-makers.

One of our own writers, John Ruskin, wrote one fairy tale called _The King of the Golden River_, and the rest of his writings, like those of Anatole France, were for grown-up readers. There are some people who think that Ruskin's fairy tale is one of the best of its kind ever written, and _Bee: the Princess of the Dwarfs_ is quite worthy to stand beside it. You may care to compare the two in matters of detail and style, and will find the work very interesting indeed; and you will remember that it is quite fair to compare these two stories, for they were both _invented_ or "made-up" by their authors all out of their own heads.

Most of the old fairy tales, like Cinderella, seem to have grown like the cabbages, or, shall we say, the roses. They have been told again and again by one person after another as the years rolled by and they were well known before anyone set them down in print. In a sense, _Bee_ and _The King of the Golden River_ are not true fairy tales, but you will agree that they are very good imitations of the old models.

Anatole France, whose real surname is Thibault, was the son of a bookseller in Paris, and was born so long ago as 1844. He was brought up among books and among clever men who came to his father's shop not only to buy books but to discuss them. It is not surprising that when he grew up he should begin to write books.

As for his thoughts about things in general, you will find them all in the pages of _Bee: the Princess of the Dwarfs_.

THE TEMPLE PRESS
LETCHWORTH ENGLAND