Never Look Back

Orpheus could charm the wild beasts, coax the trees into dance, and even arrest the course of rivers and soften the rocks with the notes he played on his lyre.

His music couldn't, however, save his love Eurydice from her terrible fate. Bitten by a snake on the day of their wedding, she died.

Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and finding all unavailing, resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead.

Demons and ghosts shed tears when he pleaded to be granted his wish of having Eurydice back in his life. "Love had led me here, Love, a god all powerful with us who dwell on the earth, and, if old traditions say true, not less so here. I implore you by these abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and uncreated things, unite again the thread of Eurydice's life", he sang.

Eurydice was called and came, limping with her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her on one condition; that he should not turn round to look at her till they should have reached the upper air.

He lead his wife through passages dark and steep in total silence. In a moment of forgetfulness and desperation, he looked back. She was instantly borne away.

Stretching out their arms to embrace one another, they grasped nothing but thin air. Dying now a second time she yet cannot reproach her husband, for how can she blame his impatience to behold her! "Farewell," she said, "a last farewell," and was hurried away so fast that the sound hardly reached his ears.