I am a shade, in the fields of asphodel. To the living, we shades appear to flit and twitter like pallid anomalous bats, wingless and humanoid. To us, the motions of the living seem suspended in unreality, stretched almost to eternity; floating and formal; their voices drag and drone and dawdle in lunatic languor. Any living creature who can please the ears of shades has performed a feat as miraculous as touching the hearts of rocks and trees with music, so that they sidle down from the mountains to listen; as touching the heart of King Hades. Orpheus and his lyre, alone, could move all these. Orpheus, alone.

Do not suppose that we fail to mourn for the living, when the motions and sounds of their bodies have become displeasing, any more than the living cease their mourning when our own bodies alter. Do not suppose that it is not our beloveds’ deaths we grieve for, exiled though they are in the realms of the living. Death is harder to bear within the living flesh, with its own exigencies and hazards still unended; yet it was my case that Orpheus thought pitiable — my tragedy that he lamented.