Eight Brief tales of Lovers
PYRAMUS AND THISBE
This story is fund only in Ovid.
It is quite characteristic of him at his best; well-told; several rhetorical monologues; a little essay on Love by the way.
Once upon a time the deep red berries of the mulberry tree were white as snow.
The change in color came about strangely and sadly.
The death of two young love wes was the cause.
Pyramus and Thisbe, he the most beautiful youth and she the loveliest maiden of all the East, lived in Babylon, the city of Queen Semiramis, in houses so close together that one wall was common to both Growing up thus side by side they learned to love each other.
They longed to marry, but their parents forbade Love, however, cannot be forbidden.
The more the flame is covered up, the hotter it burns.
Also love car always find a way.
It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire shared there was a little chink.
No one before had noticed it, but there is nothing a lover does not through it they were able to whisper meetly back and forth.
Thisbe on one side, Pyramus on he other.
The hateful wall that separated them had become their means of reaching each say.
"But at least you let us speak together.
You give a passage for loving words to reach loving ears.
We are not ungrateful."
So they would talk, and as night came on and they must bart, each would press on the kisses that could not go through to the lips on the other side.
Every morning when the dawn had put out the stars, and the san's rays had dried the hoarfrost on the grass, they would steal to the crack and, standing there, now utter words of burning love and now lament their hard fate, but always in softest whispers.
Finally a day came when they could endure on longer.
They decided chat that very night they would try to slip away and steal out through the city into the open country where at last they could be together in freedom.
They agreed to meet at a well- know place, the Tomb of Ninus, under tree there, a tall mulberry full of snow-white berries, near which a cool spring bubbled up.
The plan pleased them and it seemed to them the day would never end.
.๋ซ.๗ษ..
ง่วงจางง
At last the sun sank into the sea and night arose.
In the darkness Thisbe crept out and made her way in all secrecy to the tomb.
Pyramus had not come; still she waited for him, her love making her bold.
But of a sudden she saw by the light of the moon a lioness.
The fierce beast had made a kill; her jaws were bloody and she was coming to slake her thirst in the spring.
She was still far away for Thisbe to escape, but as she fled she dropped her cloak.
The lioness came upon it on her way back to her lair and she mouthed it and tore it before disappearing into the woods.
That is what Pyramus saw when he appeared a few minutes later.
Before him lay the bloodstained shreds of the cloak and clear in the dust were the tracks of the lioness.
The conclusion was inevitable.
He never doubted that he knew all.
Thisbe was dead.
He had let his love, a tender maiden, come alone to a place full of danger, and not been there first to protect her.
"It is i who killed you," he said.
He lifted up from the trampled dust what was left of the cloak and kissing it again and again carried it to the mulberry tree.
"Now," he said, " you shall drink my blood too."
He drew his sword and plunged it into his side.
The blood spurted up over the berries and dyed them a dark red.