, and her eyes
opened wide in amazed gladness, when she looked on the perfect beauty
of the fleet-footed hunter, who was only a little less swift than the
shining spear that sped from his hand with the sureness of a bolt from
the hand of Zeus. And she knew that this must be none other than
Adonis, son of the king of Paphos, of whose matchless beauty she had
heard not only the dwellers on earth, but the Olympians themselves
speak in wonder. While gods and men were ready to pay homage to his
marvellous loveliness, to Adonis himself it counted for nothing. But
in the vigour of his perfect frame he rejoiced; in his fleetness of
foot, in the power of that arm that Michael Angelo has modelled, in
the quickness and sureness of his aim, for the boy was a mighty hunter
with a passion for the chase.

Aphrodite felt that her heart was no longer her own, and knew that the
wound that the arrow of Eros had dealt would never heal until she knew
that Adonis loved her. No longer was she to be found by the Cytherian
shores or in those places once held by her most dear, and the other
gods smiled when they beheld her vying with Diana in the chase and
following Adonis as he pursued the roe, the wolf, and the wild boar
through the dark forest and up the mountain side. The pride of the
goddess of love must often have hung its head. For her love was a
thing that Adonis could not understand. He held her "Something better
than his dog, a little dearer than his horse," and wondered at her
whim to follow his hounds through brake and marsh and lonely forest.
His reckless courage was her pride and her torture. Because he was to
her so infinitely dear, his path seemed ever bestrewn with dangers.
But when she spoke to him with anxious warning and begged him to
beware of the fierce beasts that might one day turn on him and bring
him death, the boy laughed mockingly and with scorn.

There came at last a day when she asked him what he did on the morrow,
and Adonis told her with sparkling eyes that had no heed for her
beauty, that he had word of a wild boar, larger, older, more fierce
than any he had ever slain, and which, before the chariot of Diana
next passed over the land of Cyprus, would be lying dead with a
spear-wound through it.

With terrible foreboding, Aphrodite tried to dissuade him from his
venture.

"O, be advised: thou know'st not what it is
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never sheathed he whet