Once upon a time there was a Princess.  Now, this Princess dwelt in a far-off and beautiful world beyond the sunset, and she had immortal youth and an ancestry of glorious name.  Very rich, too, she was, and the palace in which she lived was made all of marble and alabaster and things precious and wonderful.  But that which was most wonderful about her was her exceeding beauty,—­a beauty not like that one sees in the world this side of the sunset.  For the beauty of the Princess was the bright-shining of a lovely spirit; her body was but the veil of her soul that shone through all her perfect form as the radiance of the sun shines through clear water.  I cannot tell you how beautiful this Princess was, nor can I describe the color of her hair and her eyes, or the aspect of her face.  Many men have seen her and tried to give an account of her; but though I have read several of these accounts, they differ so greatly from one another that I should find it hard indeed to reproduce her picture from the records of it which her lovers have left.

For all these men who have written about the Princess loved her; none, indeed, could help it who ever looked on her face.  And to some she has seemed fair as the dawn, and to others dark as night; some have found her gay and joyous as Allegro, and others sad and silent and sweet as Penseroso.  But to every lover she has seemed the essence and core of all beauty; the purest, noblest, highest, and most regal being that he has found it possible to conceive.  I am not going to tell you about all the lovers of the Princess, for that would take many volumes to rehearse, but only about three of them, because these three were typical personages, and had very remarkable histories.

Like all the lovers of the Princess, these three men were travelers, coming from a distant country to the land beyond the sunset on purpose to see the beautiful lady of whom their fathers and grandfathers had told them; the lady who never could outlive youth because she belonged to the race of the everlasting Gods who ruled the earth in the old far-off Hellenic times.

I do not know how long these three men stayed in the country of the Princess; but they stayed quite long enough to be very, very much in love with her, and when at last they had to come away—­for no man who is not “dead” can remain long beyond the sunset—­she gave to each of them a beautiful little bird, a tiny living bird with a voice of sweetest music, that had been trained and tuned to song by Phoebus Apollo himself.  And I could no more describe to you the sweetness of that song than I could describe the beauty of the Princess.