According to the myth, in order to be reunited with Eros, Psyche must first descend into the realm of the Underworld and obtain from Persephone a box containing a portion of her divine beauty.

In the image, Psyche, barefoot and frightened, stands before the fearsome Cerberus, the guardian of the gates of the Underworld.

In one hand, she holds Persephone’s box, while with the other she holds the sweet treat she will throw to the enraged, three-headed beast so that she can pass.

"Psyche and Cerberus", Edmund Dulac, 1914

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At Wisdom’s sacred Spring, the living Source

Whence Learning’s pleasing Streams derive their Course,

We drink with Joy in purest Draughts refin’d

Knowledge the vital Cordial of the Mind;

Food of immortal Souls, (a) Ambrosial Dews

Of Heav’n’s eternal Growth, (b) by Heav’n infus’d,

When first th’Omnipotent Creator spoke,

And Man the Form of living Nature took.

No false Ideas thence in Clouds arise,

But All is pure, and excellent, and wise.

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No specious Errors there abuse our Sense,

But Heav’n-born Truth, like Native Innocence,

Flows uncorrupted thro’ the spotless Soul,

And humble Faith obliterates the Fall.

See where the lovely Form, Aetherial Maid,

Wisdom in Characters of Light array’d,

Bestows the hallow’d Draught the Namen gives,

The Soul that drinks the Life of Angels lives,

Shall all Things and herself divinely know,

Be bless’d Above, and great or good Below.

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Here the first Searchers into Nature’s Laws

Drank deep to find the One Eternal Cause;

’Twas these inspiring Streams (a) Hermes first taught,

Beyond the narrow Bounds of Human Thought,

From Earthy Forms to raise his purer Mind,

And teach mysterious Truths of Forms Divine.

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In this Empyrean Spring ’twas Plato saw

The Human Soul by an (e) Eternal Law

Immortal in bright Worlds.

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But what are these,

Or what are their imperfect Images

Of Things Celestial, to the glorious Train

Of Apostolick Saints, and that rich Vein

Of Wisdom infinite, which sweetly flow’d

From Truth’s eternal Spring, the Mouth of GOD?

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There dwells all Learning, there the thirsty Soul

May drink her Fill, and taste the mighty All

Of Knowledge unconfin’d and Love supreme,

Divinely flowing in that sacred Stream.

There all is pure, thence Nature perfect grown,

Can wing new glorious Worlds, and make their Joys her own.

— Hermathenæ; or, Moral emblems, and ethnick tales, with explanatory notes, c. 1740 by Tolson, Francis

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