he was to be killed.  Some say that the man was allowed to run first, and that the girl followed with a spear in her hand and killed him when she overtook him.  There are different accounts of the contest.  Many suitors lost the race and were killed.  But finally young man called Hippomenes obtained from the Goddess of Love three golden apples, and he was told that if he dropped these apples while running, the girl would stop to pick them up, and that in this way he might be able to win the race.  So he ran, and when he found himself about to be beaten, he dropped one apple.  She stopped to pick it up and thus he gained a little.  In this way he won the race and married Atalanta.  Greek mythology says that afterwards she and her husband were turned into lions because they offended the gods; however, that need not concern us here.  There is a very beautiful moral in the old Greek story, and the merit of the American composition is that its author, Maurice Thompson, perceived this moral and used it to illustrate a great philosophical truth.

  When Spring grows old, and sleepy winds
    Set from the South with odours sweet,
  I see my love, in green, cool groves,
    Speed down dusk aisles on shining feet. 
  She throws a kiss and bids me run,
    In whispers sweet as roses’ breath;
  I know I cannot win the race,
   And at the end, I know, is death.

  But joyfully I bare my limbs,
    Anoint me with the tropic breeze,
  And feel through every sinew run
    The vigour of Hippomenes.

  O race of love! we all have run
    Thy happy course through groves of Spring,
  And cared not, when at last we lost,
    For life or death, or anything!

There are a few thoughts here requiring a little comment.  You know that the Greek games and athletic contests were held in the fairest season, and that the contestants were stripped.  They were also anointed with oil, partly to protect the skin against sun and temperature and partly to make the body more supple.  The poet speaks of the young man as being anointed by the warm wind of Spring, the tropic season of life.  It is a very pretty fancy.  What he is really telling us is this: 

“There are no more Greek games, but the race of love is still run to-day as in times gone by; youth is the season, and the atmosphere of youth is the anointing of the contestant.”

But the moral of the piece is its great charm, the poetical statement of a beautiful and a wonderful fact.  In almost every life there is a time when we care for only one person, and suffer much for that person’s sake; yet in that period we do not care whether we suffer or die, and in after life, when we look back at those hours of youth, we wonder at the way in which we then felt.  In European life of to-day the old Greek fable is still true; almost everybody must run Atalanta’s race and abide by the result.