But for that, the story is one of sheer pagan terror. It came
out of the old, dark pre-Olympian mythology (for the Gorgons are the
daughters of Hades), and it embodied the ancient truth that the sorrow
of the world worketh death. It is a tragic world, and the earth-bound,
looking upon its tragedy, will see in it only the _macabre_, and feel
that graveyard and spectral air which breathes about the haunted pagan
sepulchre.
Another myth in which we see the contrast between essential paganism and
idealism is that of Orpheus. The myth appears in countless forms and
with innumerable excrescences, but in the main it is in three successive
parts. The first of these tells of the sweet singer loved by all the
creatures, the dear friend of all the world, whose charm nothing that
lived on earth could resist, and whose spell hurt no creature whom it
allured. The conception stands in sharp contrast to the ghastly statuary
that adorned Medusa's precincts. Here, with a song whose sweetness
surpassed that of the Sirens, nature, dead and living both (for all
lived unto Orpheus), followed him with glad and loving movement.
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