CHAPTER X.
VERTUMNUS AND POMONA.
THE Hamadryads were Wood-nymphs. Pomona was of this class. and
no one excelled her in love of the garden and the culture of
fruit. She cared not for forests and rivers, but loved the
cultivated country, and trees that bear delicious apples. Her
right hand bore for its weapon not a javelin, but a
pruning-knife. Armed with this, she busied herself at one time
to repress the too luxuriant growths: and curtail the branches
that straggled out of place; at another, to split the twig and
insert therein a graft, making the branch adopt a nursling not
its own. She took care, too, that her favourites should not
suffer from drought, and led streams of water by them, that the
thirsty roots might drink. This occupation was her pursuit, her
passion; and she was free from that which Venus inspires. She
was not without fear of the country people, and kept her orchard
locked, and allowed not men to enter. The Fauns and Satyrs would
have given all they possessed to win her, and so would old
Sylvanus, who looks young for his years, and Pan, who wears a
garland of pine leaves around his head. But Vertumnus loved her
best of all; yet he sped no better than the rest. O how often,
in the disguise of a reaper, did he bring her corn in a basket,
and looked the very image of a reaper! With a hay band tied
round him, one would think he had just come from turning over
the grass. Sometimes he would have an ox-goad in his hand, and
you would have said he had just unyoked his weary oxen. Now he
bore a pruning-hook, and personated a vine-dresser; and again,
with a ladder on his shoulder, he seemed as if he was going to
gather apples. Sometimes he trudged along as a discharged
soldier, and again he bore a fishing-rod, as if going to fish.
In this way he gained admission to her again and again, and fed
his passion with the sight of her.
One day he came in the guise of an old woman, her grey hair
surmounted with a cap, and a staff in her hand. She entered the
garden and admired the fruit. "It does you credit, my dear," she
said, and kissed her not exactly with an old woman's kiss. She
sat down on a bank, and looked up at the branches laden with
fruit which hung over her. Opposite was an elm entwined with a
vine loaded with swelling grapes. She praised the tree and its
associated vine, equally. "But," said she, "if the tree stood
alone, and had no vine clinging to it, it would have nothing to
attract or offer us but its useless leaves. And equally the
vine, if it were not twined round the elm, would lie prostrate
on the ground. Why will you not take a lesson from the tree and
the vine, and consent to unite yourself with some one? I wish
you would. Helen herself had not more numerous suitors, nor
Penelope, the wife of shrewd
Ulysses. Even while you spurn them,
they court you,- rural deities and others of every kind that
frequent these mountains. But if you are prudent and want to
make a good alliance, and will let an old woman advise you,- who
loves you better than you have any idea of,- dismiss all the
rest and accept Vertumnus, on my recommendation. I know him as
well as he knows himself. He is not a wandering deity, but
belongs to these mountains. Nor is he like too many of the
lovers nowadays, who love any one they happen to see; he loves
you, and you only. Add to this, he is young and handsome, and
has the art of assuming any shape he pleases, and can make
himself just what you command him. Moreover, he loves the same
things that you do, delights in gardening, and handles your
apples with admiration. But now he cares nothing for fruits nor
flowers, nor anything else, but only yourself. Take pity on him,
and fancy him speaking now with my mouth. Remember that the gods
punish cruelty, and that Venus hates a hard heart, and will
visit such offences sooner or later. To prove this, let me tell
you a story, which is well known in Cyprus to be a fact; and I
hope it will have the effect to make you more merciful.
"Iphis was a young man of humble parentage, who saw and loved
Anaxarete, a noble lady of the ancient family of Teucer. He
struggled long with his passion, but when he found he could not
subdue it, he came a suppliant to her mansion. First he told his
passion to her nurse, and begged her as she loved her
foster-child to favour his suit. And then he tried to win her
domestics to his side. Sometimes he committed his vows to
written tablets, and often hung at her door garlands which he
had moistened with his tears. He stretched himself on her
threshold, and uttered his complaints to the cruel bolts and
bars. She was deafer than the surges which rise in the November
gale; harder than steel from the German forges, or a rock that
still clings to its native cliff. She mocked and laughed at him,
adding cruel words to her ungentle treatment, and gave not the
slightest gleam of hope.
"Iphis could not any longer endure the torments of hopeless
love, and, standing before her doors, he spake these last words:
'Anaxarete, you have conquered, and shall no longer have to bear
my importunities. Enjoy your triumph! Sing songs of joy, and
bind your forehead with laurel,- you have conquered! I die;
stony heart, rejoice! This at least I can do to gratify you, and
force you to praise me; and thus shall I prove that the love of
you left me but with life. Nor will I leave it to rumour to tell
you of my death. I will come myself, and you shall see me die,
and feast your eyes on the spectacle. Yet, O ye Gods, who look
down on mortal woes, observe my fate! I ask but this: let me be
remembered in coming ages, and add those years to my fame which
you have reft from my life.' Thus he said, and, turning his pale
face and weeping eyes towards her mansion, he fastened a rope to
the gate-post, on which he had often hung garlands, and putting
his head into the noose, he murmured, 'This garland at least
will please you, cruel girl!' and falling hung suspended with
his neck broken. As he fell he struck against the gate, and the
sound was as the sound of a groan. The servants opened the door
and found him dead, and with exclamations of pity raised him and
carried him home to his mother, for his father was not living.
She received the dead body of her son, and folded the cold form
to her bosom, while she poured forth the sad words which
bereaved mothers utter. The mournful funeral passed through the
town, and the pale corpse was borne on a bier to the place of
the funeral pile. By chance the home of Anaxarete was on the
street where the procession passed, and the lamentations of the
mourners met the ears of her whom the avenging deity had already
marked for punishment.
"'Let us see this sad procession,' said she, and mounted to a
turret, whence through an open window she looked upon the
funeral. Scarce had her eyes rested upon the form of Iphis
stretched on the bier, when they began to stiffen, and the warm
blood in her body to become cold. Endeavouring to step back, she
found she could not move her feet; trying to turn away her face,
she tried in vain; and by degrees all her limbs became stony
like her heart. That you may not doubt the fact, the statue
still remains, and stands in the temple of Venus at Salamis, in
the exact form of the lady. Now think of these things, my dear,
and lay aside your scorn and your delays, and accept a lover. So
may neither the vernal frosts blight your young fruits, nor
furious winds scatter your blossoms!"
When Vertumnus had spoken thus, be dropped the disguise of an
old woman, and stood before her in his proper person, as a
comely youth. It appeared to her like the sun bursting through a
cloud. He would have renewed his entreaties, but there was no
need; his arguments and the sight of his true form prevailed,
and the Nymph no longer resisted, but owned a mutual flame.
Pomona was the especial patroness of the Apple-orchard, and
as such she was invoked by Phillips, the author of a poem on
Cider, in blank verse. Thomson in the "Seasons" alludes to him:
"Phillips, Pomona's bard, the second thou
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered verse,
With British freedom, sing the British song."
But Pomona was also regarded as presiding over other fruits,
and as such is invoked by Thomson:
"Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron groves,
To where the lemon and the piercing lime,
With the deep orange, glowing through the green,
Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined
Beneath the spreading tamarind, that shakes,
Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit."
