His lyre, the medium and symbol of his art, they put in the night sky. So why do we see the lyre, and not Orpheus, in the sky? The gods so loved Orpheus that they send him to the Underworld to be with his beloved. But uncontrolled by reason, it can destroy the object of its love. However, Orpheus spurned them, and in a rage, they killed him. The local women who heard him were moved to passion themselves. Eurydice was dragged back into Hades.Īfterward, Orpheus wandered the earth, singing his plaintive song of love. Worried, he looked back at Eurydice just as they were about to reach the surface. Hades allowed Eurydice to leave the realm of death, but only on the condition that Orpheus should not look back on his beloved until they had both returned from the Underworld to the earth above.īut Orpheus’s passion was too strong. It must have been a glorious song because even the stone-cold heart of the god of death was softened. Through the glorious power of his art, he was able to sing his way past the horrible three-headed dog, Cerberus, who guarded the gates to the Underworld.Īt length, Orpheus played upon his lyre and sang of his love for Eurydice to Hades, the god of the Underworld. Orpheus’s love was so great that he determined to go to the Underworld and rescue her. But Eurydice was bitten by a serpent and died. Orpheus was deeply in love with Eurydice, and she with him. His story embodies true passion: heart-rending art, great sacrifice and perfect love. Orpheus’s singing was so powerful that it subdued even the stark forces of nature. He in turn gave it to Orpheus because of his great skill as a musician. Hermes gave the lyre we see in the sky to Apollo, god of wisdom and the arts. Hermes (Mercury to the Romans) created it from a tortoise shell to which he attached seven strings, the same as the number of stars in the Pleiades star cluster. The ancient Greeks believed that it was truly a gift from the gods. What we call lyric poetry began as songs that told the stories of great heroes as the teller played upon his lyre. The Lyre was plucked or sometimes bowed, usually as accompaniment to the singing of songs and the telling of tales. The Egyptians and Sumerians had them thousands of years before the birth of Christ. The lyre is one of the most ancient of stringed musical instruments. Look for Lyra, the Lyre, as a nearly perfect parallelogram of four stars that seem to hang from Vega, the brightest star of summer. Perhaps it is rising low in the east just after dark right now. The true meaning of passion is out there someplace. It’s one of those words fraught with deep meaning – and danger – that we use offhandedly and meaninglessly. Don’t tell.”įor the most part, few of us have experienced true passion. We need to demonstrate our passions in our actions. However, it seems disingenuous at best to write about a passion for accounting or education or, in fact, anything else we feel strongly about. I often ask the students in my business-writing class to write letters of application for potential jobs. We talk a lot about our passions these days.
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