leiades

"Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid."

Tennyson.

"She gleans her silvan trophies; down the wold
She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee
Mixed with the music of the hunting roll'd,
But her delight is all in archery,
And naught of ruth and pity wotteth she
More than her hounds that follow on the flight;
The goddess draws a golden bow of might
And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay.
She tosses loose her locks upon the night,
And through the dim wood Dian threads her way."

Andrew Lang.

Again and again in mythological history we come on stories of the
goddess, sometimes under her best known name of Diana, sometimes under
her older Greek name of Artemis, and now and again as Selene, the
moon-goddess, the Luna of the Romans. Her twin brother was Apollo, god
of the sun, and with him she shared the power of unerringly wielding a
bow and of sending grave plagues and pestilences, while both were
patrons of music and of poetry.

When the sun-god's golden chariot had driven down into the west, then
would his sister's noiseless-footed silver steeds be driven across the
sky, while the huntress shot from her bow at will silent arrows that
would slay without warning a joyous young mother with her newly-born
babe, or would wantonly pierce, with a lifelong pain, the heart of
some luckless mortal.

Now one night as she passed Mount Latmos, there chanced to be a
shepherd lad lying asleep beside his sleeping flock. Many times had
Endymion watched the goddess from afar, half afraid of one so
beautiful and yet so ruthless, but never before had Diana realised the
youth's wonderful beauty. She checked her hounds when they would have
swept on in their chase through the night, and stood beside Endymion.
She judged him to be as perfect as her own brother, Apollo--yet more
perfect, perhaps, for on his upturned sleeping face was the silver
glamour of her own dear moon. Fierce and burning passion could come
with the sun's burning rays, but love that came in the moon's pale
light was passion mixed with gramarye. She gazed for long, and when,
in his sleep, Endymion smiled, she knelt beside him and, stooping,
gently kissed his lips. The touch of a moonbeam on a sleeping rose was
no more gentle than was Diana's touch, yet it was sufficient to wake
Endymion. And as, while one's body sleeps on, one's half-waking mind,
now and again in