"God only knows, Captain Giles," was my sin-
cere answer.
Mother
Ceres was exceedingly fond of her daughter Proserpina, and seldom let her go alone into the fields.
Nor did I yet perceive that she was lost, Nor never backward turned I my mind; Till we came to the hill whereon there stood The old temple dedicated to
Ceres.
He sacrifices not to
Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather.
While thus he spake, th' Angelic Squadron bright Turnd fierie red, sharpning in mooned hornes Thir Phalanx, and began to hemm him round With ported Spears, as thick as when a field Of
CERES ripe for harvest waving bends Her bearded Grove of ears, which way the wind Swayes them; the careful Plowman doubting stands Least on the threshing floore his hopeful sheaves Prove chaff.
That tribute, which it would seem nations must ever pay, by way of a weary probation, around the shrine of
Ceres, before they can be indulged in her fullest favours, is in some measure exacted in America, from the descendant instead of the ancestor.
So again when
Ceres fell in love with Iasion, and yielded to him in a thrice-ploughed fallow field, Jove came to hear of it before so very long and killed Iasion with his thunderbolts.
She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue of
Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm proud mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and sarcastic in its expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune.
And those that held Phylace and the flowery meadows of Pyrasus, sanctuary of
Ceres; Iton, the mother of sheep; Antrum upon the sea, and Pteleum that lies upon the grass lands.
All he had to shower was vegetables, and he showered them in a way that would have caused the goddess
Ceres to be talked about.
Now we learn what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed; then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora, Fauna,
Ceres, and Pomona to come in.
There is also a
Ceres. She is another very fair divinity.