Happy the man who can fix his gaze on the fount of goodness, happy he who can loose the bonds of heavy Earth! Once upon a time Orpheus, the Thracian bard, mourning the death of his wife, with his sad strains made the woods shift and run and the rivers stand still: the hind stood unafraid side by side with fierce lions, and the hare saw the hound but did not fear it, lulled as it was by song. But the passion in Orpheus’s breast, blazing higher, burned him to the core, and his music, all-conquering as it was, could not bring comfort to its master, who made his way, complaining at the hardness of the gods above, to the halls of Hades. There he sang his seductive songs to the accompaniment of his lyre, and shook the underworld with a lament charged with all that he had imbibed from the marvellous springs of the Muse his mother, lamenting the effects of helpless sorrow, lamenting the sorrow for which love groans, and begged with that sweet song for mercy from the masters of the shadows. The door-keeper, threefold Cerberus, was stunned, captivated by the song; the Furies, the avengers of crime who drive the guilty before them in fear, now were wet with tears; Ixion’s head no longer hurtled round on his wheel, and Tantalus, though in extremes after so long a thirst, ignored the water, while the vulture, sated with music, no longer tore at Tityus’s liver. “We yield”, said the Lord of Shadows finally, taking pity, “we give the wife that your song has bought to you, her husband, as your companion. But let the gift be subject to one law: that until she has left the underworld behind, it shall not be lawful to turn your eyes on her.” Who can give laws to lovers? Love is a greater law unto itself. Near the boundaries of the night, alas, Orpheus looked, lost his Eurydice and was lost himself. This tale concerns you, all you who seek to bring your mind into the daylight of the Gods above, for he who yields, and turns his eyes to the abyss of Tartarus, loses all that is best in him the moment that he looks on Hell.