Source: http://images.epilogue.net/users/flasher/dryad3.jpg
Response: Music to Break Hearts
He captured her with his music - music like that of one of the gods, music to break mortals’ hearts. He captured his bride, the nymph Eurydice with his gentle touch of fingers to lyre.
And when he played, Eurydice danced. And his music - as shining and otherworldly as could be - was only improved upon by the movement of his lovely bride's body - an inheritance from her father Apollo.
He said he loved her, with all his lion heart and warrior's soul. He played for her to prove his love - music to break immortal hearts. But when she died, chased by a snake-like satyr into the jaws of a snake, he played the coward. For no matter how he vowed his love and lay in the filth of grief, his love was not enough to prompt him to follow her in death.
So Orpheus mocked the deathless gods, wading into the Underworld to plead for the return of his lover. But death cannot be cheated and no matter how he loved her, he could not resist looking back at the phantom presented to him by the gods in Eurydice's place. And so he lost the nymph captured by music through cowardice.
Notes: We're currently reading the Odyssey in one of my classes and we just finished the Iliad so if this sounds somewhere along the lines of Greek poetry, it should. This is a retelling of a little-known version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in which Orpheus' trip to Underworld to try and save Eurydice was just because he was too scared to commit suicide to be with her and when he returned he was killed by women.
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