In this streamlined, lightly modernized version of an ancient legend, Cupid, the eternal God of Love, himself falls in love with the human Psyche. The tale can be enjoyed at many levels: as an exciting adventure, a romantic love story, a mystical parable of humanity’s quest for union with the divine, an expression of the troubled Irish political situation in the early nineteenth century, and for the unfailing beauty and musicality of its verse. Originally issued only as an anonymous private edition of fifty copies, it attracted an unexpected amount of attention and influenced a whole generation of poets, from Keats and Thomas Moore to Byron and Felicia Hemans.