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VENUS AND ADONIS
Venus, playing one day with her boy Cupid, wounded her bosom with
one of his arrows. She pushed him away, but the wound was deeper
than she thought. Before it healed she beheld Adonis, and was
captivated with him. She no longer took any interest in her
favorite resorts--Paphos, and Cnidos, and Amathos, rich in metals.
She absented herself even from heaven, for Adonis was dearer to
her than heaven. Him she followed and bore him company. She who
used to love to recline in the shade, with no care but to
cultivate her charms, now rambles through the woods and over the
hills, dressed like the huntress Diana; and calls her dogs, and
chases hares and stags, or other game that it is safe to hunt, but
keeps clear of the wolves and bears, reeking with the slaughter of
the herd. She charged Adonis, too, to beware of such dangerous
animals. "Be brave towards the timid," said she; "courage against
the courageous is not safe. Beware how you expose yourself to
danger and put my happiness to risk. Attack not the beasts that
Nature has armed with weapons. I do not value your glory so high
as to consent to purchase it by such exposure. Your youth, and the
beauty that charms Venus, will not touch the hearts of lions and
bristly boars. Think of their terrible claws and prodigious
strength! I hate the whole race of them. Do you ask me why?" Then
she told him the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes, who were
changed into lions for their ingratitude to her.
Having given him this warning, she mounted her chariot drawn by
swans, and drove away through the air. But Adonis was too noble to
heed such counsels. The dogs had roused a wild boar from his lair,
and the youth threw his spear and wounded the animal with a
sidelong stroke. The beast drew out the weapon with his jaws, and
rushed after Adonis, who turned and ran; but the boar overtook
him, and buried his tusks in his side, and stretched him dying
upon the plain.
Venus, in her swan-drawn chariot, had not yet reached Cyprus, when
she heard coming up through mid-air the groans of her beloved,
and turned her white-winged coursers back to earth. As she drew
near and saw from on high his lifeless body bathed in blood, she
alighted and, bending over it, beat her breast and tore her hair.
Reproaching the Fates, she said, "Yet theirs shall be but a
partial triumph; memorials of my grief shall endure, and the
spectacle of your death, my Adonis, and of my lamentations shall
be annually renewed. Your blood shall be changed into a flower;
that consolation none can envy me." Thus speaking, she sprinkled
nectar on the blood; and as they mingled, bubbles rose as in a
pool on which raindrops fall, and in an hour's time there sprang
up a flower of bloody hue like that of the pomegranate. But it is
short-lived. It is said the wind blows the blossoms open, and
afterwards blows the petals away; so it is called Anemone, or Wind
Flower, from the cause which assists equally in its production and
its decay.
Milton alludes to the story of Venus and Adonis in his "Comus":
"Beds of hyacinth and roses
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits th' Assyrian queen;" etc.
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