GEORGE DE BARNWELL

BY SIR E. L. B. L., BART.


VOL I.


In the Morning of Life the Truthful wooed the Beautiful, and their
offspring was Love. Like his Divine parents, He is eternal. He has his
Mother's ravishing smile; his Father's steadfast eyes. He rises every
day, fresh and glorious as the untired Sun-God. He is Eros, the ever
young. Dark, dark were this world of ours had either Divinity left
it--dark without the day-beams of the Latonian Charioteer, darker yet
without the daedal Smile of the God of the Other Bow! Dost know him,
reader?

Old is he, Eros, the ever young. He and Time were children together.
Chronos shall die, too; but Love is imperishable. Brightest of the
Divinities, where hast thou not been sung? Other worships pass away;
the idols for whom pyramids were raised lie in the desert crumbling
and almost nameless; the Olympians are fled, their fanes no longer rise
among the quivering olive-groves of Ilissus, or crown the emerald-islets
of the amethyst Aegean! These are gone, but thou remainest. There is
still a garland for thy temple, a heifer for thy stone. A heifer? Ah,
many a darker sacrifice. Other blood is shed at thy altars, Remorseless