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Whither they sailed, my children, I cannot clearly tell. It
all happened long ago; so long that it has all grown dim,
like a dream which you dreamt last year. And why they went I
cannot tell: some say that it was to win gold. It may be
so; but the noblest deeds which have been done on earth have
not been done for gold. It was not for the sake of gold that
the Lord came down and died, and the Apostles went out to
preach the good news in all lands. The Spartans looked for
no reward in money when they fought and died at Thermopylae;
and Socrates the wise asked no pay from his countrymen, but
lived poor and barefoot all his days, only caring to make men
good. And there are heroes in our days also, who do noble
deeds, but not for gold. Our discoverers did not go to make
themselves rich when they sailed out one after another into
the dreary frozen seas; nor did the ladies who went out last
year to drudge in the hospitals of the East, making
themselves poor, that they might be rich in noble works. And
young men, too, whom you know, children, and some of them of
your own kin, did they say to themselves, 'How much money
shall I earn?' when they went out to the war, leaving wealth,
and comfort, and a pleasant home, and all that money can
give, to face hunger and thirst, and wounds and death, that
they might fight for their country and their Queen? No,
children, there is a better thing on earth than wealth, a
better thing than life itself; and that is, to have done
something before you die, for which good men may honour you,
and God your Father smile upon your work.
Therefore we will believe - why should we not? - of these
same Argonauts of old, that they too were noble men, who
planned and did a noble deed; and that therefore their fame
has lived, and been told in story and in song, mixed up, no
doubt, with dreams and fables, and yet true and right at
heart. So we will honour these old Argonauts, and listen to
their story as it stands; and we will try to be like them,
each of us in our place; for each of us has a Golden Fleece
to seek, and a wild sea to sail over ere we reach it, and
dragons to fight ere it be ours.
And what was that first Golden Fleece? I do not know, nor
care. The old Hellens said that it hung in Colchis, which we
call the Circassian coast, nailed to a beech-tree in the war-God's
wood; and that it was the fleece of the wondrous ram
who bore Phrixus and Helle across the Euxine sea. For
Phrixus and Helle were the children of the cloud-nymph, and
of Athamas the Minuan king. And when a famine came upon the
land, their cruel step-mother Ino wished to kill them, that
her own children might reign, and said that they must be
sacrificed on an altar, to turn away the anger of the Gods.
So the poor children were brought to the altar, and the
priest stood ready with his knife, when out of the clouds
came the Golden Ram, and took them on his back, and vanished.
Then madness came upon that foolish king, Athamas, and ruin
upon Ino and her children. For Athamas killed one of them in
his fury, and Ino fled from him with the other in her arms,
and leaped from a cliff into the sea, and was changed into a
dolphin, such as you have seen, which wanders over the waves
for ever sighing, with its little one clasped to its breast.
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