The Lyre
To holy ears.
Lowell.
In mythology Lyra is the celestial harp invented by Hermes, which Apollo or Mercury gave to Orpheus, the skilled musician of the Argonautic expedition.
There are many references among the poets to the wonderful talent of this harpist. Shakespeare says of him:
Even the billows of the sea
Hung their heads and then lay by.
And again in the Two Gentlemen of Verona we read:
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stone,
Made tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.
It is related that Orpheus even descended to the infernal regions, and charmed Pluto, the King of Hell, with the music of his harp, so that he won from Pluto his lost bride, Eurydice; but as the legend goes, lost her again, by looking backward which he had been forbidden to do as he emerged from Hades. After his death he received divine honours, and his lyre became one of the constellations.
Max Miiller identifies Orpheus with the Sanscrit "Arbhu," used as a title for the sun. According to this explanation, the sun follows Eurydice, "the wide-spreading flush of the dawn, who has been stung by the serpent
