, so recurrent. "The real object of lamentation," says
Muller, "was the tender beauty of spring destroyed by the raging
heat, and other similar phenomena, which the imagination of those
early times invested with a personal form."11 All this was woven
into the Mysteries, whose great legend and drama were that every
autumn Persephone was carried down to the dark realm of the King
of Shadows, but that she was to return each spring to her mother's
arms. Thus were described the withdrawal and reappearance of
vegetable life in the alternations of the seasons. But these
changes of nature typified the changes in the human lot; else
Persephone would have been merely a symbol of the buried grain and
would not have become the Queen of the Dead.12 Her return to the
world of light, by natural analogy, denoted a new birth to men.
Accordingly, "all the testimony of antiquity concurs in saying
that these Mysteries inspired the most animating hopes with regard
to the condition of the soul after death."13 That the fate of man
should by imagination and sentiment have been so connected with
the phenomena of nature in myths and symbols embodied in pathetic
religious ceremonies was a spontaneous product. For how "Her fresh
benignant look Nature changes at that lorn season when, With
tresses drooping o'er her sable stole, She yearly mourns the
mortal doom of man, Her noblest work! So Israel's virgins erst
With annual moan upon the mountains wept Their fairest gone!"

And soon again the birds begin to warble, the leaves and blossoms
put forth, and all is new life once more. In every age the gentle
heart and meditative mind have been impressed by the mournful
correspondence and the animating prophecy.

11 History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iii. sects. 2
3.

12 For the connection of the Eleusinian goddesses with
agriculture, the seasons, the under world, death, resurrection,
etc., see "Demeter and Persephone," von Dr. Ludwig Preller, kap.
i. sects. 9 11.

13 Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit., ch. xvi. sect. 2.

But not only was the changing recurrence of dreary winter and
gladsome summer joined by affecting analogies with the human doom
of death and hope of another life. The phenomena of the skies, the
impressive succession of day and night, also were early seized
upon and made to blend their shadows and lights, by means of
imaginative suggestions, into an image of the decease and
resurrection of man. Among the Mystical Hymns of Orp