{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_38011/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_38011","id":"gutenberg_38011","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38011","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","Gods, Greek -- Poetry","Mythology, Greek -- Poetry"],"text":"Produced by Paul Murray, Rory OConor and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n THE POETICAL WORKS OF\n MR. LEWIS MORRIS.\n\n I.\n SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. With Portrait.\n Eleventh Edition, price 5_s._\n II.\n THE EPIC OF HADES. With an Autotype\n Illustration, Nineteenth Edition, price 5_s._\n III.\n GWEN and THE ODE OF LIFE. With\n Frontispiece. Sixth Edition, price 5_s._\n\n THE EPIC OF HADES. Third Illustrated\n Edition. With Sixteen Autotype Plates after the\n Drawings by the late GEORGE R. CHAPMAN, 4to,\n cloth extra, gilt edges, price 21_s._\n\n THE EPIC OF HADES. The Presentation\n Edition. 4to, cloth extra, price 10_s._ 6_d._\n\n SONGS UNSUNG. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo,\n cloth, 6_s._\n\n ** _For Notices of the Press, see end of this Volume._\n *\n LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO.\n\n\n\n\n THE POETICAL WORKS OF\n LEWIS MORRIS\n\n\n\n\n _VOLUME TWO_\n\n THE EPIC OF HADES\n\n\n\n\n LONDON\n KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE\n 1885\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: _Then with wings\n Of gold we soared, I looking in his eyes\n Over yon dark broad river, and this dim land._\n Page 228.]\n\n\n\n\n THE EPIC OF HADES\n\n IN THREE BOOKS\n\n BY\n\n LEWIS MORRIS\n\n M.A.; HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD\n KNIGHT OF THE REDEEMER OF GREECE, ETC., ETC.\n\n\n \"DIFFICILE EST PROPRIE COMMUNIA DICERE\"\n\n\n NINETEENTH EDITION.\n\n LONDON\n\n KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE\n 1885\n\n\n\n\n \"The three excellences of Poetry: simplicity of language,\n simplicity of subject, and simplicity of invention\"--\n _The Welsh Triads_.\n\n\n (_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._)\n\n\n\n\n TO ALL\n\n WHO LOVE THE LITERATURE OF GREECE\n\n THIS POEM IS DEDICATED\n\n BY\n\n THE AUTHOR.\n\n\n\n\n CONTENTS.\n\n\n BOOK I.\n\n TARTARUS.\n\n PAGE\n TANTALUS 7\n\n PHAEDRA 23\n\n SISYPHUS 40\n\n CLYTAEMNESTRA 55\n\n\n BOOK II.\n\n HADES.\n\n MARSYAS 82\n\n ANDROMEDA 95\n\n ACTAEON 110\n\n HELEN 120\n\n EURYDICE 145\n\n ORPHEUS 150\n\n DEIANEIRA 154\n\n LAOCOON 166\n\n NARCISSUS 175\n\n MEDUSA 188\n\n ADONIS 198\n\n PERSEPHONE 202\n\n ENDYMION 211\n\n PSYCHE 219\n\n\n BOOK III.\n\n OLYMPUS.\n\n ARTEMIS 237\n\n HERAKLES 244\n\n APHRODITE 248\n\n ATHENE 255\n\n HERE 261\n\n APOLLO 267\n\n ZEUS 273\n\n\n\n\n BOOK I.\n\n TARTARUS.\n\n\n\n\n THE EPIC OF HADES.\n\n\n\n\nIn February, when the dawn was slow,\nAnd winds lay still, I gazed upon the fields\nWhich stretched before me, lifeless, and the stream\nWhich laboured in the distance to the sea,\nSullen and cold. No force of fancy took\nMy thought to bloomy June, when all the land\nLay deep in crested grass, and through the dew\nThe landrail brushed, and the lush banks were set\nWith strawberries, and the hot noise of bees\nLulled the bright flowers. Rather I seemed to move\nThro' that weird land, Hellenic fancy feigned,\nBeyond the fabled river and the bark\nOf Charon; and forthwith on every side\nRose the thin throng of ghosts.\n First thro' the gloom\nOf a dark grove I strayed--a sluggish wood,\nWhere scarce the faint fires of the setting stars,\nOr some cold gleam of half-discovered dawn,\nMight pierce the darkling pines. A twilight drear\nBrooded o'er all the depths, and filled the dank\nAnd sunken hollows of the rocks with shapes\nOf terror,--beckoning hands and noiseless feet\nFlitting from shade to shade, wide eyes that stared\nWith horror, and dumb mouths which seemed to cry,\nYet cried not. An ineffable despair\nHung over them and that dark world and took\nThe gazer captive, and a mingled pang\nOf grief and anger, grown to fierce revolt\nAnd hatred of the Invisible Force which holds\nThe issue of our lives and binds us fast\nWithin the net of Fate; as the fisher takes\nThe little quivering sea-things from the sea\nAnd flings them gasping on the beach to die\nThen spreads his net for more. And then again\nI knew myself and those, creatures who lie\nSafe in the strong grasp of Unchanging Law,\nEncompassed round by hands unseen, and chains\nWhich do support the feeble life that else\nWere spent on barren space; and thus I came\nTo look with less of horror, more of thought,\nAnd bore to see the sight of pain that yet\nShould grow to healing, when the concrete stain\nOf life and act were purged, and the cleansed soul,\nRenewed by the slow wear and waste of time,\nSoared after aeons of days.\n They seemed alone,\nThose prisoners, thro' all time. Each soul shut fast\nIn its own jail of woe, apart, alone,\nFor evermore alone; no thought of kin,\nOr kindly human glance, or fellowship\nOf suffering or of sin, made light the load\nOf solitary pain. Ay, though they walked\nTogether, or were prisoned in one cell\nWith the partners of their wrong, or with strange souls\nWhich the same Furies tore, they knew them not,\nBut suffered still alone; as in that shape\nOf hell fools build on earth, where hopeless sin\nRots slow in solitude, nor sees the face\nOf men, nor hears the sound of speech, nor feels\nThe touch of human hand, but broods a ghost,\nHating the bare blank cell--the other self,\nWhich brought it thither--hating man and God,\nAnd all that is or has been.\n\n\n\n\n A great fear\nAnd pity froze my blood, who seemed to see\nA half-remembered form.\n An Eastern King\nIt was who lay in pain. He wore a crown\nUpon his aching brow, and his white robe\nWas jewelled with fair gems of price, the signs\nOf pomp and honour and all luxury,\nWhich might prevent desire. But as I looked\nThere came a hunger in the gloating eyes,\nA quenchless thirst upon the parching lips,\nAnd such unsatisfied strainings in the hands\nStretched idly forth on what I could not see,\nSome fatal food of fancy; that I knew\nThe undying worm of sense, which frets and gnaws\nThe unsatisfied stained soul.\n Seeing me, he said:\n\"What? And art thou too damned as I? Dost know\nThis thirst as I, and see as I the cool\nLymph drawn from thee and mock thy lips; and parch\nFor ever in continual thirst; and mark\nThe fair fruit offered to thy hunger fade\nBefore thy longing eyes? I thought there was\nNo other as I thro' all the weary lengths\nOf Time the gods have made, who pined so long\nAnd found fruition mock him.\n Long ago,\nWhen I was young on earth, 'twas a sweet pain\nTo ride all day in the long chase, and feel\nToil and the summer fire my blood and parch\nMy lips, while in my father's halls I knew\nThe cool bath waited, with its marble floor;\nAnd juices from the ripe fruits pressed, and chilled\nWith snows from far-off peaks; and troops of slaves;\nAnd music and the dance; and fair young forms.\nAnd dalliance, and every joy of sense,\nThat haunts the dreams of youth, which strength and ease\nCorrupt, and vacant hours. Ay, it was sweet\nFor a while to plunge in these, as fair boys plunge\nNaked in summer streams, all veil of shame\nLaid by, only the young dear body bathed\nAnd sunk in its delight, while the firm earth,\nThe soft green pastures gay with innocent flowers,\nOr sober harvest fields, show like a dream;\nAnd nought is left, but the young life which floats\nUpon the depths of death, to sink, maybe,\nAnd drown in pleasure, or rise at length grown wise\nAnd gain the abandoned shore.\n Ah, but at last\nThe swift desire waxed stronger and more strong,\nAnd feeding on itself, grows tyrannous;\nAnd the parched soul no longer finds delight\nIn the cool stream of old; nay, this itself,\nSmitten by the fire of sense as by a flame,\nHolds not its coolness more; and fevered limbs,\nSeeking the fresh tides of their youth, may find\nNo more refreshment, but a cauldron fired\nWith the fires of nether hell; and a black rage\nUsurps the soul, and drives it on to slake\nIts thirst with crime and blood.\n Longing Desire!\nUnsatisfied, sick, impotent Desire!\nOh, I have known it ages long. I knew\nIts pain on earth ere yet my life had grown\nTo its full stature, thro' the weary years\nOf manhood, nay, in age itself; I knew\nThe quenchless weary thirst, unsatisfied\nBy all the charms of sense, by wealth and power\nAnd homage; always craving, never quenched--\nThe undying curse of the soul! The ministers\nAnd agents of my will drave far and wide\nThrough all the land for me, seeking to find\nFresh pleasures for me, who had spent my sum\nOf pleasure, and had power, not even in thought,\nNor faculty to enjoy. They tore apart\nThe sacred claustral doors of home for me,\nDefiled the inviolate hearth for me, laid waste\nThe flower of humble lives, in hope to heal\nThe sickly fancies of the king, till rose\nA cry of pain from all the land; and I\nGrew happier for it, since I held the power\nTo quench desire in blood.\n But even thus\nThe old pain faded not, but swift again\nRevived; and thro' the sensual dull lengths\nOf my seraglios I stalked, and marked\nThe glitter of the gems, the precious webs\nPlundered from every clime by cruel wars\nThat strewed the sands with corpses; lovely eyes\nThat looked no look of love, and fired no more\nThoughts of the flesh; rich meats, and fruits, and wines\nGrown flat and savourless; and loathed them all,\nAnd only cared for power; content to shed\nRivers of innocent blood, if only thus\nI might appease my thirst. Until I grew\nA monster gloating over blood and pain.\n\n Ah, weary, weary days, when every sense\nWas satisfied, and nothing left to slake\nThe parched unhappy soul, except to watch\nThe writhing limbs and mark the slow blood drip,\nDrop after drop, as the life ebbed with it;\nIn a new thrill of lust, till blood itself\nPalled on me, and I knew the fiend I was,\nYet cared not--I who was, brief years ago,\nOnly a careless boy lapt round with ease,\nStretched by the soft and stealing tide of sense\nWhich now grew red; nor ever dreamed at all\nWhat Furies lurked beneath it, but had shrunk\nIn indolent horror from the sight of tears\nAnd misery, and felt my inmost soul\nSicken with the thought of blood. There comes a time\nWhen the insatiate brute within the man,\nWeary with wallowing in the mire, leaps forth\nDevouring, and the cloven satyr-hoof\nGrows to the rending claw, and the lewd leer\nTo the horrible fanged snarl, and the soul sinks\nAnd leaves the man a devil, all his sin\nGrown savourless, and yet he longs to sin\nAnd longs in vain for ever.\n Yet, methinks,\nIt was not for the gods to leave me thus.\nI stinted not their worship, building shrines\nTo all of them; the Goddess of Love I served\nWith hecatombs, letting the fragrant fumes\nOf incense and the costly steam ascend\nFrom victims year by year; nay, my own son\nPelops, my best beloved, I gave to them\nOffering, as he must offer who would gain\nThe great gods' grace, my dearest.\n I had gained\nThrough long and weary orgies that strange sense\nOf nothingness and wasted days which blights\nThe exhausted life, bearing upon its front\nCounterfeit knowledge, when the bitter ash\nOf Evil, which the sick soul loathes, appears\nLike the pure fruit of Wisdom. I had grown\nAs wizards seem, who mingle sensual rites\nAnd forms impure with murderous spells and dark\nEnchantments; till the simple people held\nMy very weakness wisdom, and believed\nThat in my blood-stained palace-halls, withdrawn,\nI kept the inner mysteries of Zeus\nAnd knew the secret of all Being; who was\nA sick and impotent wretch, so sick, so tired,\nThat even bloodshed palled.\n For my stained soul,\nKnowing its sin, hastened to purge itself\nWith every rite and charm which the dark lore\nOf priestcraft offered to it. Spells obscene,\nThe blood of innocent babes, sorceries foul\nMuttered at midnight--these could occupy\nMy weary days; till all my people shrank\nTo see me, and the mother clasped her child\nWho heard the monster pass.\n They would not hear.\nThey listened not--the cold ungrateful gods--\nFor all my supplications; nay, the more\nI sought them were they hidden.\n At the last\nA dark voice whispered nightly: 'Thou, poor wretch,\nThat art so sick and impotent, thyself\nThe source of all thy misery, the great gods\nAsk a more precious gift and excellent\nThan alien victims which thou prizest not\nAnd givest without a pang. But shouldst thou take\nThy costliest and fairest offering,\n'Twere otherwise. The life which thou hast given\nThou mayst recall. Go, offer at the shrine\nThy best beloved Pelops, and appease\nZeus and the averted gods, and know again\nThe youth and joy of yore.'\n Night after night,\nWhile all the halls were still, and the cold stars\nWere fading into dawn, I lay awake\nDistraught with warring thoughts, my throbbing brain\nFilled with that dreadful voice. I had not shrunk\nFrom blood, but this, the strong son of my youth--\nHow should I dare this thing? And all day long\nI would steal from sight of him and men, and fight\nAgainst the dreadful thought, until the voice\nSeared all my burning brain, and clamoured, 'Kill!\nZeus bids thee, and be happy.' Then I rose\nAt midnight, when the halls were still, and raised\nThe arras, and stole soft to where my son\nLay sleeping. For one moment on his face\nAnd stalwart limbs I gazed, and marked the rise\nAnd fall of his young breast, and the soft plume\nWhich drooped upon his brow, and felt a thrill\nOf yearning; but the cold voice urging me\nBurned me like fire. Three times I gazed and turned\nIrresolute, till last it thundered at me,\n'Strike, fool! thou art in hell; strike, fool! and lose\nThe burden of thy chains.' Then with slow step\nI crept as creeps the tiger on the deer,\nRaised high my arm, shut close my eyes, and plunged\nMy dagger in his heart.\n And then, with a flash,\nThe veil fell downward from my life and left\nMyself to me--the daily sum of sense--\nThe long continual trouble of desire--\nThe stain of blood blotting the stain of lust--\nThe weary foulness of my days, which wrecked\nMy heart and brain, and left me at the last\nA madman and accursed; and I knew,\nFar higher than the sensual slope which held\nThe gods whom erst I worshipped, a white peak\nOf Purity, and a stern voice pealing doom--\nNot the mad voice of old--which pierced so deep\nWithin my life, that with the reeking blade\nWet with the heart's blood of my child I smote\nMy guilty heart in twain.\n Ah! fool, to dream\nThat the long stain of time might fade and merge\nIn one poor chrism of blood. They taught of yore,\nMy priests who flattered me--nor knew at all\nThe greater God I know, who sits afar\nBeyond those earthly shapes, passionless, pure,\nAnd awful as the Dawn--that the gods cared\nFor costly victims, drinking in the steam\nOf sacrifice when the choice hecatombs\nWere offered for my wrong. Ah no! there is\nNo recompense in these, nor any charm\nTo cleanse the stain of sin, but the long wear\nOf suffering, when the soul which seized too much\nOf pleasure here, grows righteous by the pain\nThat doth redress its ill. For what is Right\nBut equipoise of Nature, alternating\nThe Too Much and Too Little? Not on earth\nThe salutary silent forces work\nTheir final victory, but year on year\nPasses, and age on age, and leaves the debt\nUnsatisfied, while the o'erburdened soul\nUnloads itself in pain.\n Therefore it is\nI suffer as I suffered ere swift death\nSet me not free, no otherwise; and yet\nThere comes a healing purpose in my pain\nI never knew on earth; nor ever here\nThe once-loved evil grows, only the tale\nOf penalties grown greater hourly dwarfs\nThe accomplished sum of wrong. And yet desire\nPursues me still--sick, impotent desire,\nFiercer than that of earth.\n We are ourselves\nOur heaven and hell, the joy, the penalty,\nThe yearning, the fruition. Earth is hell\nOr heaven, and yet not only earth; but still,\nAfter the swift soul leaves the gates of death,\nThe pain grows deeper and less mixed, the joy\nPurer and less alloyed, and we are damned\nOr blest, as we have lived.\"\n He ceased, with a wail\nLike some complaining wind among the pines\nOr pent among the fretful ocean caves,\nA sick, sad sound.\n Then as I looked, I saw\nHis eyes glare horribly, his dry parched lips\nOpen, his weary hands stretch idly forth\nAs if to clutch the air--infinite pain\nAnd mockery of hope. \"Seest thou them now?\"\nHe said. \"I thirst, I parch, I famish, yet\nThey still elude me, fair and tempting fruit\nAnd cooling waters. Now they come again.\nSee, they are in my grasp, they are at my lips,\nNow I shall quench me. Nay, again they fly\nAnd mock me. Seest thou them, or am I shut\nFrom hope for ever, hungering, thirsting still,\nA madman and in Hell?\"\n And as I passed\nIn horror, his large eyes and straining hands\nFroze all my soul with pity.\n\n\n\n\n Then it was\nA woman whom I saw: a dark pale Queen,\nWith passion in her eyes, and fear and pain\nHolding her steadfast gaze, like one who sees\nSome dreadful deed of wrong worked out and knows\nHimself the cause, yet now is powerless\nTo stay the wrong he would.\n Seeing me gaze\nIn pity on her woe, she turned and spake\nWith a low wailing voice--\n \"Thou well mayst gaze\nWith horror on me, sir, for I am lost;\nI have shed the innocent blood, long years ago,\nNay, centuries of pain. I have shed the blood\nOf him I loved, and found for recompense\nBut self-inflicted death and age-long woe,\nWhich purges not my sin. And yet not I\nIt was who did it, but the gods, who took\nA woman's loveless heart and tortured it\nWith love as with a fire. It was not I\nWho slew my love, but Fate. Fate 'twas which brought\nMy love and me together, Fate which barred\nThe path of blameless love, yet set Love's flame\nTo burn and smoulder in a hopeless heart,\nWhere no relief might come.\n The King was old,\nAnd I a girl. 'Tis an old tale which runs\nThro' the sad ages, and 'twas mine. He had spent\nHis sum of love long since, and I--I knew not\nA breath of Love as yet. Ah, it is strange\nTo lose the sense of maidenhood, drink deep\nOf life to the very dregs, and yet not know\nA flutter of Love's wing. Love takes no thought\nFor pomp, or palace, or respect of men;\nNor always in the stately marriage bed,\nClosed round by silken curtains, laid on down,\nNestles a rosy form; but 'mid wild flowers\nOr desert tents, or in the hind's low cot,\nBeneath the aspect of the unconscious stars,\nDwells all night and is blest.\n My love, my life!\nHe was the old man's son, a fair white soul--\nNot like the others, whom the fire of youth\nBurns like a flame and hurries unrestrained\nThro' riotous days and nights, but virginal\nAnd pure as any maid. No wandering glance\nHe deigned for all the maidens young and fair\nWho sought their Prince's eye. But evermore,\nUpon the high lawns wandering alone,\nHe dwelt unwed; weaving to Artemis,\nFairest of all Olympian maids, a wreath\nFrom the unpolluted meads, where never herd\nDrives his white flock, nor ever scythe has come,\nBut the bee sails upon unfettered wing\nOver the spring-like lawns, and Purity\nWaters them with soft dews;[1] and yet he showed\nOf all his peers most manly--heart and soul\nA very man, tender and true, and strong\nAnd pitiful, and in his limbs and mien\nFair as Apollo's self.\n It was at first\nIn Troezen that I saw him, when he came\nTo greet his sire. Amid the crowd of youths\nHe showed a Prince indeed; yet knew I not\nWhom 'twas I saw, nor that I held the place\nWhich was his mother's, only from the throng\nLove, with a barbed dart aiming, pierced my heart\nEre yet I knew what ailed me. Every glance\nFired me; the youthful grace, the tall straight limbs,\nThe swelling sinewy arms, the large dark eyes\nTender yet full of passion, the thick locks\nTossed from his brow, the lip and cheek which bore\nThe down of early manhood, seemed to feed\nMy heart with short-lived joy.\n For when he stood\nForth from the throng and knelt before his sire,\nThen raised his eyes to mine, I felt the curse\nOf Aphrodite burn me, as it burned\nMy mother before me, and I dared not meet\nHis innocent, frank young eyes.\n Said I then young?\nAy, but not young as mine. For I had known\nThe secret things of life, which age the soul\nIn a moment, writing on its front their mark\n'Too early ripe;' and he was innocent,\nMy spouse in fitted years, within whose arms\nI had defied the world.\n I turned away\nLike some white bird that leaves the flock, which sails\nHigh in mid air above the haunts of men,\nFeeling some little dart within her breast,\nNot death, but like to death, and slowly sinks\nDown to the earth alone, and bears her hurt\nUnseen, by herbless sand and bitter pool,\nAnd pines until the end.\n Even from that day\nI strove to gain his love. Nay, 'twas not I,\nBut the cruel gods who drove me. Day by day\nWe were together; for in days of old\nWomen were free, not pent in gilded jails\nAs afterwards, but free to walk alone,\nFor good or evil, free. I hardly took\nThought for my spouse, the King. For I had found\nMy love at last: what matter if it were\nA guilty love? Yet love is love indeed,\nStronger than heaven or hell. Day after day\nI set myself to tempt him from his proud\nAnd innocent way, for I had spurned aside\nCare for the gods or men--all but my love.\n\n What need to tell the tale? Was it a sigh,\nA blush, a momentary glance, which brought\nAssurance of my triumph? It is long\nSince I have lived, I cannot tell; I know\nOnly the penalty of death and hell\nWhich followed on my sin. I knew he loved.\nIt was not wonderful, seeing that we dwelt\nA boy and girl together. I was fair,\nAnd Eros fired my eyes and lent my voice\nHis own soft tremulous tones. But when our souls\nTrembled upon the verge, and fancy feigned\nHis arms around me as we fled alone\nTo some free land of exile, lo! a scroll:\n'Dearest, it may not be; I fear the Gods;\nWe dare not do this wrong. I go from hence\nAnd see thy face no more. Farewell! Forget\nThe love we may not own; go, seek for both\nForgiveness from the gods.'\n When I read the words,\nThe cruel words, methought my heart stood still,\nAnd when the ebbing life returned I seemed\nTo have lost all thought of Love. Only Revenge\nDwelt with me still, the fiercer that I knew\nMy long-prized hope, which came so near success,\nSnatched from me and for ever.\n When I rose\nFrom my deep swoon, I bade a messenger\nGo, seek the King for me. He came and sate\nBeside my couch, and all the doors were closed,\nAnd all withdrawn. Then with the liar's art,\nAnd hypocrite tears, and feigned reluctancy,\nAnd all the subtle wiles a woman draws\nFrom the armoury of hate, I did instil\nThe poison to his soul. Cunning devices,\nFeigned sorrow, mention of his son, regrets,\nAnd half confessions--these, with hateful skill\nConfused together, drove the old man's soul\nTo frenzy; and I watched him, with a sneer,\nTurn to a dotard thirsting for the life\nOf his own child. But how to do the deed,\nYet shed no blood, nor know the people's hate,\nWho loved the Prince, I knew not.\n Till one day\nThe old man, looking out upon the sea,\nBesought the dread Poseidon to avenge\nThe treachery of his son. Even as we stood\nGazing upon the breathless blue, a cloud\nRose from the deep, a little fleecy cloud,\nWhich sudden grew and grew, and turned the blue\nTo purple; and a swift wind rose and sang\nHigher and higher, and the wine-dark sea\nGrew ruffled, and within the circling bay\nThe tiny ripples, stealing up the sand,\nPlunged loud with manes of foam, until they swelled\nTo misty surges thundering on the shore.\n\n Then at the old man's elbow as I stood,\nA deep dark thought, sent by the powers of ill,\nAnswering, as now I know, my own black hate\nAnd not my poor dupe's anger, fired my soul\nAnd bade me speak. 'The god has heard thy prayer,'\nI whispered; 'See the surge which wakes and swells\nTo fury; well I know what things shall be.\nIt is Poseidon's voice sounds in the storm\nAnd sends thy vengeance. Young Hippolytus\nLoves, as thou knowest, on the yellow sand,\nHard by the rippled margin of the wave,\nTo urge his flying steeds. Bid him go forth--\nHe will obey--and see what recompense\nThe god will send his wrong.'\n In the old man's eyes\nA watery gleam of malice played awhile--\nI hated him for it--and he bade his son\nDrive forth his chariot on the sand, and yoke\nHis three young fiery steeds.\n And still the storm\nBlew fiercer and more fierce, and the white crests\nPlunged on the strand, and the high promontories\nResounded counter-stricken, and a mist\nOf foam, blown landward, hid the sounding shore.\n\n Then saw I him come forth and bid them yoke\nHis untamed colts. I had not seen his face\nSince that last day, but, seeing him, I felt\nThe old love spring anew, yet mixed with hate--\nA storm of warring passions. Tho' I knew\nWhat end should come, yet would I speak no word\nThat might avert it. The old man looked forth;\nI think he had well-nigh forgotten all\nThe wrong he fancied and the doom he prayed,\nAll but the father's pride in the strong son,\nWho was so young and bold. I saw a smile\nUpon the dotard's face, when now the steeds\nWere harnessed and the chariot, on the sand\nAlong the circling margin of the bay,\nFlew, swift as light. A sudden gleam of sun\nFlashed on the silver harness as it went,\nBurned on the brazen axles of the wheels,\nAnd on the golden fillets of the Prince\nDoubled the gold. Sometimes a larger wave\nWould dash in mist around him, and in fear\nThe rearing coursers plunged, and then again\nThe strong young arm constrained them, and they flashed\nTo where the wave-worn foreland ends the bay.\n\n And then he turned his chariot, a bright speck\nNow seen, now hidden, but always, tho' the surge\nBroke round it, safe; emerging like a star\nFrom the white clouds of foam. And as I watched,\nSpeaking no word, and breathing scarce a breath,\nI saw the firm limbs strongly set apart\nUpon the chariot, and the reins held high,\nAnd the proud head bent forward, with long locks\nStreaming behind, as nearer and more near\nThe swift team rushed--until, with a half joy,\nIt seemed as if my love might yet elude\nThe slow sure anger of the god, dull wrath\nSwayed by a woman's lie.\n But on the verge,\nAs I cast my eyes, a vast and purple wall\nSwelled swiftly towards the land; the lesser waves\nSank as it came, and to its toppling crest\nThe spume-flecked waters, from the strand drawn back,\nLeft dry the yellow shore. Onward it came,\nHoarse, capped with breaking foam, lurid, immense,\nRearing its dreadful height. The chariot sped\nNearer and nearer. I could see my love\nWith the light of victory in his eyes, the smile\nOf daring on his lips: so near he came\nTo where the marble palace-wall confined\nThe narrow strip of beach--his brave young eyes\nFixed steadfast on the goal, in the pride of life,\nWithout a thought of death. I strove to cry,\nBut terror choked my breath. Then, like a bull\nUpon the windy level of the plain\nLashing himself to rage, the furious wave,\nPoising itself a moment, tossing high\nIts wind-vexed crest, dashed downward on the strand\nWith a stamp, with a rush, with a roar.\n And when I looked,\nThe shore, the fields, the plain, were one white sea\nOf churning, seething foam--chariot and steeds\nGone, and my darling on the wave's white crest\nTossed high, whirled down, beaten, and bruised, and flung,\nDying upon the marble.\n\n My great love\nSprang up redoubled, and cast out my hate\nAnd spurned all thought of fear; and down the stair\nI hurried, and upon the bleeding form\nI threw myself, and raised his head, and clasped\nHis body to mine, and kissed him on the lips,\nAnd in his dying ear confessed my wrong,\nAnd saw the horror in his dying eyes\nAnd knew that I was damned. And when he breathed\nHis last pure breath, I rose and slowly spake--\nTurned to a Fury now by love and pain--\nTo the old man who knelt, while all the throng\nCould hear my secret: 'See, thou fool, I am\nThe murderess of thy son, and thou my dupe,\nThou and thy gods. See, he was innocent;\nI murdered him for love. I scorn ye all,\nThee and thy gods together, who are deceived\nBy a woman's lying tongue! Oh, doting fool,\nTo hate thy own! And ye, false powers, which punish\nThe innocent, and let the guilty soul\nEscape unscathed, I hate ye all--I curse,\nI loathe you!'\n Then I stooped and kissed my love,\nAnd left them in amaze; and up the stair\nSwept slowly to my chamber, and therein,\nHating my life and cursing men and gods,\nI did myself to death.\n But even here,\nI find my punishment. Oh, dreadful doom\nOf souls like mine! To see their evil done\nAlways before their eyes, the one dread scene\nOf horror. See, the dark wave on the verge\nTowers horrible, and he---- Oh, Love, my Love!\nSafety is near! quick! quicker! urge them on!\nThou wilt 'scape it yet!--Nay, nay, it bursts on him!\nI have shed the innocent blood! Oh, dreadful gaze\nWithin his glazing eyes! Hide them, ye gods!\nHide them! I cannot bear them. Quick! a dagger!\nI will lose their glare in death. Nay, die I cannot;\nI must endure and live--Death brings not peace\nTo the lost souls in Hell.\"\n And her eyes stared,\nRounded with horror, and she stooped and gazed\nSo eagerly, and pressed her fevered hands\nUpon her trembling forehead with such pain\nAs drives the gazer mad.\n\n\n\n\n Then as I passed,\nI marked against the hardly dawning sky\nA toilsome figure standing, bent and strained,\nBefore a rocky mass, which with great pain\nAnd agony of labour it would thrust\nUp a steep hill. But when upon the crest\nIt poised a moment, then I held my breath\nWith dread, for, lo! the poor feet seemed to clutch\nThe hillside as in fear, and the poor hands\nWith hopeless fingers pressed into the stone\nIn agony, and the limbs stiffened, and a cry\nLike some strong swimmer's, whom the mightier stream\nSweeps downward, and he sees his children's eyes\nUpon the bank; broke from him; and at last,\nAfter long struggles of despair, the limbs\nRelaxed, and as I closed my fearful eyes,\nSeeing the inevitable doom--a crash,\nA horrible thunderous noise, as down the steep\nThe shameless fragment leapt. From crag to crag\nIt bounded ever swifter, striking fire\nAnd wrapt in smoke, as to the lowest depths\nOf the vale it tore, and seemed to take with it\nThe miserable form whose painful gaze\nI caught, as with the great rock whirled and dashed\nDownward, and marking every crag with gore\nAnd long gray hairs, it plunged, yet living still,\nTo the black hollow; and then a silence came\nMore dreadful than the noise, and a low groan\nWas all that I could hear.\n When to the foot\nOf the dark steep I hurried, half in hope\nTo find the victim dead--not recognizing\nThe undying life of Hell--I seemed to see\nAn aged man, bruised, bleeding, with gray hairs,\nAnd eyes from which the cunning leer of greed\nWas scarcely yet gone out.\n A crafty voice\nIt was that answered me, the voice of guile\nPart purified by pain:\n \"There comes not death\nTo those who live in Hell, nor hardly pause\nOf suffering longer than may serve to make\nThe pain renewed, more piercing. Long ago,\nI thought that I had cheated Death, and now\nI seek him; but he comes not, nor know I\nIf ever he will hear me. Whence art thou?\nComest thou from earthly air, or whence? What power\nHas brought thee hither? For I know indeed\nThou art not lost as I; for never here\nI look upon a human face, nor see\nThe ghosts who doubtless here on every side\nSuffer a common pain, only at times\nI hear the echo of a shriek far off,\nLike some faint ghost of woe which fills the pause\nAnd interval of suffering; but from whom\nThe voice may come, or whence, I know not, only\nThe air teems with vague pain, which doth distract\nThe ear when for a moment comes surcease\nOf agony, and the sense of effort spent\nIn vain and fruitless labour, and the pang\nOf long-deferred defeat, which waits and takes\nThe world-worn heart, and maddens it when all--\nHeaven, conscience, happiness, are staked and lost\nFor gains which still elude it.\n Yet 'twas sweet,\nA King in early youth, when pleasure is sweet,\nTo live the fair successful years, and know\nThe envy and respect of men. I cared\nFor none of youth's delights: the dance, the song,\nAllured me not; the smooth soft ways of sense\nTempted me not at all. I could despise\nThe follies that I shared not, spending all\nThe long laborious days in toilsome schemes\nTo compass honour and wealth, and, as I grew\nIn name and fame, finding my hoarded gains\nTransmuted into Power. The seas were white\nWith laden argosies, and all were mine.\nThe sheltering moles defied the wintry storms,\nAnd all were mine. The marble aqueducts,\nThe costly bridges, all were mine. Fair roads\nWound round and round the hills--my work. The gods\nAlone I heeded not, nor cared at all\nFor aught but that my eyes and ears might take,\nSpurning invisible things, nor built I to them\nTemple or shrine, wrapt up in life, set round\nWith earthly blessings like a god. I rose\nTo such excess of weal and fame and pride,\nMy people held me god-like. I grew drunk\nWith too great power, scoffing at men and gods,\nCareless of both, but not averse to fling\nTo those too weak themselves, what benefits\nMy larger wisdom spurned.\n Then suddenly\nI knew the pain of failure. Summer storms\nSucked down my fleets even within sight of port.\nA grievous blight wasted the harvest-fields,\nMocking my hopes of gain. Wars came and drained\nMy store, and I grew needy, knowing now\nThe hell of stronger souls, the loss of power\nWherein they exulted once. There comes no pain\nDeeper than to have known delight of power,\nAnd then to lose it all. But I, I would not\nSit tame beneath defeat, trimming my sails\nTo wait the breeze of Fortune--fickle breath\nWhich perhaps might breathe no more--but chose instead\nBy rash conceit and bolder enterprise\nTo win her aid again. I had no thought\nOf selfish gain, only to be and act\nAs a god to those, feeding my sum of pride\nWith acted good.\n But evermore defeat\nDogged me, and evermore my people grew\nTo doubt me, seeing no more the wealth, the force,\nWhich once they worshipped. Then the lust of power\nLoved, not for sake of others, but itself,\nGrew on me, and the pride which can dare all,\nSave failure only, seized me. Evil finds\nIts ready chance. There were rich argosies\nUpon the seas: I sank them, ship and crew,\nIn the unbetraying ocean. Wayfarers\nCrossing the passes with rich merchandise\nMy creatures, hid behind the crags, o'erwhelmed\nWith rocks hurled downward. Yet I spent my gains\nFor the public weal, not otherwise; and they,\nThe careless people, took the piteous spoils\nWhich cost the lives of many, and a man's soul,\nAnd blessed the giver. Empty venal blessings,\nWhich sting more deep than curses!\n For awhile\nI was content with this, but at the last\nA great contempt and hatred of them took me,\nThe base, vile churls! Why should I stain my soul\nFor such as those--dogs that would fawn and lick\nThe hand that fed them, but, if food should fail,\nWould turn and rend me? I would none of them;\nI would grow rich and happy, being indeed\nGodlike in brain to such. So with all craft,\nAnd guile, and violence I enriched me, loading\nMy treasuries with gold. My deep-laid schemes\nOf gain engrossed the long laborious days,\nStretched far into the night. Enjoy, I might not,\nSeeing it was all to do, and life so brief\nThat ere a man might gain the goal he would,\nLo! Age, and with it Death, and so an end!\nFor all the tales of the indignant gods,\nWhat were they but the priests'? I had myself\nBroken all oaths; long time deceived and ruined\nWith every phase of fraud the pious fools\nWhom oath-sworn Justice bound; battened on blood\nAnd what was I the worse? How should the gods\nBear rule if I were happy? Death alone\nWas certain. Therefore must I haste to heap\nTreasure sufficient for my need, and then\nEnjoy the gathered good.\n But gradually\nThere came--not great disasters which might crush\nAll hope, but petty checks which did decrease\nMy store, and left my labour vain, and me\nUnwilling to enjoy; and gradually\nI felt the chill approach of age, which stole\nHigher and higher on me, till the life,\nAs in a paralytic, left my limbs\nAnd heart, and mounted upwards to my brain,\nIts last resort, and rested there awhile\nEre it should spread its wings. But even thus,\nTho' powerless to enjoy, the insatiate greed\nAnd thirst of power sustained me, and supplied\nLife's spark with some scant fuel, till it seemed,\nYear after year, as if I could not die,\nHolding so fast to life. I grew so old\nThat all the comrades of my youth, my prime,\nMy age, were gone, and I was left alone\nWith those who knew me not, bereft of all\nExcept my master passion--an old man\nForlorn, forgotten of the gods and Death.\n\n So all the people, seeing me grow old\nAnd prosperous, held me wise, and spread abroad\nStrange fables, growing day by day more strange--\nHow I deceived the very gods. They thought\nThat I was blest, remembering not the wear\nOf anxious thought, the growing sum of pain,\nThe failing ear and eye, the slower limbs,\nWhose briefer name is Age: and yet I trow\nI was not all unhappy, though I knew\nIt was too late to enjoy, and though my store\nIncreased not as my greed--nay, even sunk down\nA little, year by year. Till, last of all,\nWhen now my time was come and I had grown\nA little tired of living, a trivial hurt\nLaid me upon my bed; and as I mused\nOn my long life and all its villanies,\nThe wickedness I did, the blood I shed,\nThe guile, the frauds of years--they came with news,\nOne now, and now another; how my schemes\nWere crushed, my enterprises lost, my toil\nAnd labour all in vain. Day after day\nThey brought these tidings, while I longed to rise\nAnd stay the tide of ill, and raved to know\nI could not. At the last the added sum\nOf evil, like yon great rock poised awhile\nUncertain, gathered into one, o'erwhelmed\nMy feeble strength, and left me ruined and lost,\nAnd showed me all I was, and all the depth\nAnd folly of my sin, and racked my brain,\nAnd sank me in despair and misery,\nAnd broke my heart and slew me.\n Therefore 'tis\nI spend the long, long centuries which have come\nBetween me and my sin, in such dread tasks\nAs that thou sawest. In the soul I sinned:\nIn body and soul I suffer. What I bade\nMy minions do to others, that of woe\nI bear myself; and in the pause of ill,\nAs now, I know again the bitter pang\nOf failure, which of old pierced thro' my soul\nAnd left me to despair. The pain of mind\nIs fiercer far than any bodily ill,\nAnd both are mine--the pang of torture-pain\nAlways recurring; and, far worse, the pang\nOf consciousness of black sins sinned in vain--\nThe doom of constant failure.\n Will, fierce Will!\nThou parent of unrest and toil and woe,\nMeasureless effort! growing day by day\nTo force strong souls along the giddy steep\nThat slopes to the pit of Hell, where effort serves\nOnly to speed destruction! Yet I know\nThou art not, as some hold, the primal curse\nWhich doth condemn us; since thou bearest in thee\nNo power to satisfy thyself; but rather,\nThe spring of act, whereby in earth and heaven\nBoth men and gods do breathe and live and are,\nSince Life is Act and not to Do is Death--\nI do not blame thee: but to work in vain\nIs bitterest penalty: to find at last\nThe soul all fouled with sin and stained with blood\nIn vain; ah, this is hell indeed--the hell\nOf lost and striving souls!\"\n Then as I passed,\nThe halting figure bent itself again\nTo the old task, and up the rugged steep\nThrust the great rock with groanings. Horror chained\nMy parting footsteps, like a nightmare dream\nWhich holds us that we flee not, with wide eyes\nThat loathe to see, yet cannot choose but gaze\nTill all be done. Slowly, with dreadful toil\nAnd struggle and strain, and bleeding hands and knees,\nAnd more than mortal strength, against the hill\nHe pressed, the wretched one! till with long pain\nHe trembled on the summit, a gaunt form,\nWith that great rock above him, poised and strained,\nNow gaining, now receding, now in act\nTo win the summit, now borne down again,\nAnd then the inevitable crash--the mass\nLeaping from crag to crag. But ere it ceased\nIn dreadful silence, and the low groan came,\nMy limbs were loosed with one convulsive bound;\nI hid my face within my hands, and fled,\nSurfeit with horror.\n\n\n\n\n Then it was again\nA woman whom I saw, pitiless, stern,\nBearing the brand of blood--a lithe dark form,\nAnd cruel eyes which glared beneath the gems\nThat argued her a Queen, and on her side\nAn ancient stain of gore, which did befoul\nHer royal robe. A murderess in thought\nAnd dreadful act, who took within the toils\nHer kingly Lord, and slew him of old time\nAfter burnt Troy. I had no time to speak\nWhen she shrieked thus:\n \"It doth repent me not\nI would 'twere yet to do, and I would do it\nAgain a thousand times, if the shed blood\nMight for one hour restore me to the kisses\nOf my AEgisthus. Oh, he was divine,\nMy hero, with the godlike locks and eyes\nOf Eros' self! What boots it that they prate\nOf wifely duty, love of spouse or child,\nHonour or pity, when the swift fire takes\nA woman's heart, and burns it out, and leaps\nWith fierce forked tongue around it, till it lies\nIn ashes, a dead heart, nor aught remains\nOf old affections, naught but the new flame\nWhich is unquenched desire?\n It did not come,\nMy blessing, all at once, but the slow fruit\nOf solitude and midnight loneliness,\nAnd weary waiting for the tardy news\nOf taken Troy. Long years I sate alone,\nWidowed, within my palace, while my Lord\nWas over seas, waging the accursed war,\nFirst of the file of Kings. Year after year\nCame false report, or harder, no report\nOf the great fleet. The summers waxed and waned,\nThe wintry surges smote the sounding shores,\nAnd yet there came no end of it. They brought\nNow hopeless failure, now great victories;\nAnd all alike were false, all but delay\nAnd hope deferred, which cometh not, but breaks\nThe heart which suffering wrings not.\n So I bore\nLong time the solitary years, and sought\nTo solace the dull days with motherly cares\nFor those my Lord had left me. My firstborn,\nIphigeneia, sailed at first with him\nUpon that fatal voyage, but the young\nOrestes and Electra stayed with me--\nNot dear as she was, for the firstborn takes\nThe mother's heart, and, with the milk it draws\nFrom the mother's virgin breast, drains all the love\nIt bore, ay, even tho' the sire be dear;\nMuch more, then, when he is a King indeed,\nMighty in war and council, but too high\nTo stoop to a woman's love. But she was gone,\nNor heard I tidings of her, knowing not\nIf yet she walked the earth, nor if she bare\nThe load of children, even as I had borne\nHer in my opening girlhood, when I leapt\nFrom child to Queen, but never loved the King.\n\n Thus the slow years rolled onward, till at last\nThere came a dreadful rumour--'She is dead,\nThy daughter, years ago. The cruel priests\nClamoured for blood; the stern cold Kings stood round\nWithout a tear, and he, her sire, with them,\nTo see a virgin bleed. They cut with knives\nThe taper girlish throat; they watched the blood\nDrip slowly on the sand, and the young life\nMeek as a lamb come to the sacrifice\nTo appease the angry gods.' And he, the King,\nHer father, stood by too, and saw them do it,\nThe wickedness, breathing no word of wrath,\nTill all was done! The cowards! the dull cowards!\nI would some black storm, bursting suddenly,\nHad whelmed them and their fleets, ere yet they dared\nTo waste an innocent life!\n I had gone mad,\nI know it, but for him, my love, my dear,\nMy fair sweet love. He came to comfort me\nWith words of friendship, holding that my Lord\nWas bound, perhaps, to let her die--'The gods\nWere ofttimes hard to appease--or was it indeed\nThe priests who asked it? Were there any gods?\nOr only phantoms, creatures of the brain,\nBorn of the fears of men, the greed of priests,\nUseful to govern women? Had he been\nLord of the fleet, not all the soothsayers\nWho ever frighted cowards should have brought\nHis soul to such black depths.' I hearkening to him\nAs 'twere my own thought grown articulate,\nFound my grief turn to hate, and hate to love--\nHate of my Lord, love of the voice which spoke\nSuch dear and comfortable words. And thus,\nLove to a storm of passion growing, swept\nMy wounded soul and dried my tears, as dries\nThe hot sirocco all the bitter pools\nOf salt among the sand. I never knew\nTrue love before; I was a child, no more,\nWhen the King cast his eyes on me. What is it\nTo have borne the weight of offspring 'neath the zone,\nIf Love be not their sire; or live long years\nOf commerce, not of love? Better a day\nOf Passion than the long unlovely years\nOf wifely duty, when Love cometh not\nTo wake the barren days!\n And yet at first\nI hesitated long, nor would embrace\nThe blessing that was mine. We are hedged round,\nWe women, by such close-drawn ordinances,\nSet round us by our tyrants, that we fear\nTo overstep a hand's breadth the dull bounds\nOf custom; but at last Love, waking in me,\nBurst all my chains asunder, and I lived\nFor naught but Love.\n My son, the young Orestes,\nI sent far off; my girl Electra only\nRemained, too young to doubt me, and I knew\nAt last what 'twas to live.\n So the swift years\nFleeted and found me happy, till the dark\nIll-omened day when Rumour, thousand-tongued,\nWhispered of taken Troy; and from my dream\nOf happiness, sudden I woke, and knew\nThe coming retribution. We had grown\nToo loving for concealment, and our tale\nOf mutual love was bruited far and wide\nThrough Argos. All the gossips bruited it,\nAnd were all tongue to tell it to the King\nWhen he should come. And should the cold proud Lord\nI never loved, the murderer of my girl,\nCome 'twixt my love and me? A swift resolve\nFlashed through me pondering on it: Love for Love\nAnd Blood for Blood--the simple golden rule\nTaught by the elder gods.\n When I had taken\nMy fixed resolve, I grew impatient for it,\nCounting the laggard days. Oh, it was sweet\nTo simulate the yearning of a wife\nLong parted from her Lord, and mock the fools\nWho dogged each look and word, and but for fear\nHad torn me from my throne--the pies, the jays,\nThe impotent chatterers, who thought by words\nTo stay me in the act! 'Twas sweet to mock them\nAnd read distrust within their eyes, when I,\nKnowing my purpose, bade them quick prepare\nAll fitting honours for the King, and knew\nThey dared not disobey--oh, 'twas enough\nTo wing the slow-paced hours.\n But when at last\nI saw his sails upon the verge, and then\nThe sea-worn ship, and marked his face grown old,\nThe body a little bent, which was so straight,\nThe thin gray hairs which were the raven locks\nOf manhood when he went, I felt a moment\nI could not do the deed. But when I saw\nThe beautiful sad woman come with him,\nThe future in her eyes, and her sad voice\nProclaimed the tale of doom, two thoughts at once\nAssailed me, bidding me despatch with a blow\nHim and his mistress, making sure the will\nOf fate, and my revenge.\n Oh, it was strange\nTo see all happen as we planned; as 'twere\nSome drama oft rehearsed, wherein each step,\nEach word, is so prepared, the poorest player\nKnows his turn come to do--the solemn landing--\nThe ride to the palace gate--the courtesies\nOf welcome--the mute crowds without--the bath\nPrepared within--the precious circling folds\nOf tissue stretched around him, shutting out\nThe gaze, and folding helpless like a net\nThe mighty limbs--the battle-axe laid down\nAgainst the wall, and I, his wife and Queen,\nAlone with him, waiting and watching still,\nTill the woman shrieked without. Then with swift step\nI seized the axe, and struck him as he lay\nHelpless, once, twice, and thrice--once for my girl,\nOnce for my love, once for the woman, and all\nFor Fate and my Revenge!\n He gave a groan,\nOnce only, as I thought he might; and then\nNo sound but the quick gurgling of the blood,\nAs it flowed from him in streams, and turned the pure\nAnd limpid water of the bath to red--\nI had not looked for that--it flowed and flowed,\nAnd seemed to madden me to look on it,\nUntil my love with hands bloody as mine,\nBut with the woman's blood, rushed in, and eyes\nRounded with horror; and we turned to go,\nAnd left the dead alone.\n But happiness\nStill mocked me, and a doubt unknown before\nCame on me, and amid the silken shows\nAnd luxury of power I seemed to see\nAnother answer to my riddle of life\nThan that I gave myself, and it was 'murder;'\nAnd in my people's sullen mien and eyes,\n'Murder;' and in the mirror, when I looked,\n'Murder' glared out, and terror lest my son\nReturning, grown to manhood, should avenge\nHis father's blood. For somehow, as 'twould seem,\nThe gods, if gods there be, or the stern Fate\nWhich doth direct our little lives, do filch\nOur happiness--though bright with Love's own ray,\nThere comes a cloud which veils it. Yet, indeed,\nMy days were happy. I repent me not;\nI would wade through seas of blood to know again\nThose fierce delights once more.\n But my young girl\nElectra, grown to woman, turned from me\nHer modest maiden eyes, nor loved to set\nHer kiss upon my cheek, but, all distraught\nWith secret care, hid her from all the pomps\nAnd revelries which did befit her youth,\nWalking alone; and often at the tomb\nOf her lost sire they found her, pouring out\nLibations to the dead. And evermore\nI did bethink me of my son Orestes,\nWho now should be a man; and yearned sometimes\nTo see his face, yet feared lest from his eyes\nHis father's soul should smite me.\n So I lived\nHappy and yet unquiet--a stern voice\nSpeaking of doom, which long time softer notes\nOf careless weal, the music that doth spring\nFrom the fair harmonies of life and love,\nWould drown in their own concord. This at times\nNay, day by day, stronger and dreadfuller,\nWith dominant accent, marred the sounds of joy\nBy one prevailing discord. So at length\nI came to lose the Present in the dread\nOf what might come; the penalty that waits\nUpon successful sin; who, having sinned,\nHad missed my sin's reward.\n Until one day\nI, looking from my palace casement, saw\nA humble suppliant, clad in pilgrim garb,\nApproach the marble stair. A sudden throb\nThrilled thro' me, and the mother's heart went forth\nThro' all disguise of garb and rank and years,\nKnowing my son. How fair he was, how tall\nAnd vigorous, my boy! What strong straight limbs\nAnd noble port! How beautiful the shade\nOf manhood on his lip! I longed to burst\nFrom my chamber down, yearning to throw myself\nUpon his neck within the palace court,\nBefore the guards--spurning my queenly rank,\nAll but my motherhood. And then a chill\nOf doubt o'erspread me, knowing what a gulf\nFate set between our lives, impassable\nAs that great gulf which yawns 'twixt life and death\nAnd 'twixt this Hell and Heaven. I shrank back,\nAnd turned to think a moment, half in fear,\nAnd half in pain; dividing the swift mind,\nYet all in love.\n Then came a cry, a groan,\nFrom the inner court, the clash of swords, the fall\nOf a body on the pavement; and one cried,\n'The King is dead, slain by the young Orestes,\nWho cometh hither.' With the word, the door\nFlew open, and my son stood straight before me,\nHis drawn sword dripping blood. Oh, he was fair\nAnd terrible to see, when from his limbs,\nThe suppliant's mantle fallen, left the mail\nAnd arms of a young warrior. Love and Hate,\nWhich are the offspring of a common sire,\nStrove for the mastery, till within his eyes\nI saw his father's ghost glare unappeased\nFrom out Love's casements.\n Then I knew my fate\nAnd his--mine to be slain by my son's hand,\nAnd his to slay me, since the Furies drave\nOur lives to one destruction; and I took\nHis point within my breast.\n But I praise not\nThe selfish, careless gods who wrecked our lives,\nMaking the King the murderer of his girl,\nAnd me his murderess; making my son\nThe murderer of his mother and her love--\nA mystery of blood!--I curse them all,\nThe careless Forces, sitting far withdrawn\nUpon the heights of Space, taking men's lives\nFor playthings, and deriding as in sport\nOur happiness and woe--I curse them all.\nWe have a right to joy; we have a right,\nI say, as they have. Let them stand confessed\nThe puppets that they are--too weak to give\nThe good they feign to love, since Fate, too strong\nFor them as us, beyond their painted sky,\nSits and derides them, too. I curse Fate too,\nThe deaf blind Fury, taking human souls\nAnd crushing them, as a dull fretful child\nCrushes its toys and knows not with what skill\nThose feeble forms are feigned.\n I curse, I loathe,\nI spit on them. It doth repent me not.\nI would 'twere yet to do. I have lived my life.\nI have loved. See, there he lies within the bath,\nAnd thus I smite him! thus! Didst hear him groan?\nOh, vengeance, thou art sweet! What, living still?\nAh me! we cannot die! Come, torture me,\nYe Furies--for I love not soothing words--\nAs once ye did my son. Ye miserable\nBlind ministers of Hell, I do defy you;\nNot all your torments can undo the Past\nOf Passion and of Love!\"\n\n Even as she spake\nThere came a viewless trouble in the air,\nWhich took her, and a sweep of wings unseen,\nAnd terrible sounds, which swooped on her and hushed\nHer voice, and seemed to occupy her soul\nWith horror and despair; and as she passed\nI marked her agonized eyes.\n\n\n\n\n But as I went,\nFull many a dreadful shape of lonely pain\nI saw. What need to tell them? We are filled\nWho live to-day with a more present sense\nOf the great love of God, than those of old\nWho, groping in the dawn of Knowledge, saw\nOnly dark shadows of the Unknown; or he,\nFirst-born of modern singers, who swept deep\nHis awful lyre, and woke the voice of song,\nDumb for long centuries of pain. We dread\nTo dwell on those long agonies its sin\nBrings on the offending soul; who hold a creed\nOf deeper Pity, knowing what chains of ill\nBind round our petty lives. Each phase of woe,\nSuffering, and torture which the gloomy thought\nOf bigots feigns for others--all were there.\nOne there was stretched upon a rolling wheel,\nWhich was the barren round of sense, that still\nReturned upon itself and broke the limbs\nBound to it day and night. Others I saw\nDoomed, with unceasing toil, to fill the urns\nWhose precious waters sank ere they could slake\nTheir burning thirst. Another shapeless soul,\nFull of revolts and hates and tyrannous force,\nThe weight of earth, which was its earth-born taint,\nPressed groaning down, while with fierce beak and claw\nThe vulture of remorse, piercing his breast,\nPreyed on his heart. For others, overhead,\nGreat crags of rock impending seemed to fall,\nBut fell not nor brought peace. I felt my soul\nBlunted with horrors, yearning to escape\nTo where, upon the limits of the wood,\nSome scanty twilight grew.\n But ere I passed\nFrom those grim shades a deep voice sounded near,\nA voice without a form.\n \"There is an end\nOf all things that thou seest! There is an end\nOf Wrong and Death and Hell! When the long wear\nOf Time and Suffering has effaced the stain\nIngrown upon the soul, and the cleansed spirit,\nLong ages floating on the wandering winds\nOr rolling deeps of Space, renews itself\nAnd doth regain its dwelling, and, once more\nBlent with the general order, floats anew\nUpon the stream of Things,[2] and comes at length,\nAfter new deaths, to that dim waiting-place\nThou next shalt see, and with the justified\nWhite souls awaits the End; or, snatched at once,\nIf Fate so will, to the pure sphere itself,\nLives and is blest, and works the Eternal Work\nWhose name and end is Love! There is an end\nOf Wrong and Death and Hell!\"\n Even as I heard,\nI passed from out the shadow of Death and Pain,\nCrying, \"There is an end!\"\n\n\n\n\n END OF BOOK I.\n\n\n\n\n BOOK II.\n\n HADES.\n\n\n\n\n Then from those dark\nAnd dreadful precincts passing, ghostly fields\nAnd voiceless took me. A faint twilight veiled\nThe leafless, shadowy trees and herbless plains.\nThere stirred no breath of air to wake to life\nThe slumbers of the world. The sky above\nWas one gray, changeless cloud. There looked no eye\nOf Life from the veiled heavens; but Sleep and Death\nWere round me everywhere. And yet no fear\nNor horror took me here, where was no pain\nNor dread, save that strange tremor which assails\nOne who in life's hot noontide looks on death\nAnd knows he too shall die. The ghosts which rose\nFrom every darkling copse showed thin and pale--\nThinner and paler far than those I left\nIn agony; even as Pity seems to wear\nA thinner form than Fear.\n Not caged alone\nLike those the avenging Furies purged were these,\nNor that dim land as those black cavernous depths\nWhere no hope comes. Fair souls were they and white\nWhom there I saw, waiting as we shall wait,\nThe Beatific End, but thin and pale\nAs the young faith which made them; touched a little\nBy the sad memories of the earth; made glad\nA little by past joys: no more; and wrapt\nIn musing on the brief play played by them\nUpon the lively earth, yet ignorant\nOf the long lapse of years, and what had been\nSince they too breathed Life's air, or if they knew,\nKeeping some echo only; but their pain\nWas fainter than their joy, and a great hope\nLike ours possessed them dimly.\n\n\n\n\n First I saw\nA youth who pensive leaned against the trunk\nOf a dark cypress, and an idle flute\nHung at his side. A sorrowful sad soul,\nSuch as sometimes he knows, who meets the gaze,\nMute, uncomplaining yet most pitiful,\nOf one whom nature, by some secret spite,\nHas maimed and left imperfect; or the pain\nWhich fills a poet's eyes. Beneath his robe\nI seemed to see the scar of cruel stripes,\nToo hastily concealed. Yet was he not\nWholly unhappy, but from out the core\nOf suffering flowed a secret spring of joy,\nWhich mocked the droughts of Fate, and left him glad\nAnd glorying in his sorrow. As I gazed\nHe raised his silent flute, and, half ashamed,\nBlew a soft note; and as I stayed awhile\nI heard him thus discourse--\n \"The flute is sweet\nTo gods and men, but sweeter far the lyre\nAnd voice of a true singer. Shall I fear\nTo tell of that great trial, when I strove\nAnd Phoebus conquered? Nay, no shame it is\nTo bow to an immortal melody;\nBut glory.\n Once among the Phrygian hills\nI lay a-musing,--while the silly sheep\nWandered among the thyme--upon the bank\nOf a clear mountain stream, beneath the pines,\nSafe hidden from the noon. A dreamy haze\nPlayed on the uplands, but the hills were clear\nIn sunlight, and no cloud was on the sky.\nIt was the time when a deep silence comes\nUpon the summer earth, and all the birds\nHave ceased from singing, and the world is still\nAs midnight, and if any live thing move--\nSome fur-clad creature, or cool gliding snake--\nWithin the pipy overgrowth of weeds,\nThe ear can catch the rustle, and the trees\nAnd earth and air are listening. As I lay,\nFaintly, as in a dream, I seemed to hear\nA tender music, like the AEolian chords,\nSound low within the woodland, whence the stream,\nFlowed full, yet silent. Long, with ear to ground,\nI hearkened; and the sweet strain, fuller grown,\nRounder and clearer came, and danced along\nIn mirthful measure now, and now grown grave\nIn dying falls, and sweeter and more clear,\nTripping at nuptials and high revelry,\nWailing at burials, rapt in soaring thoughts,\nChanting strange sea-tales full of mystery,\nTouching all chords of being, and life and death,\nNow rose, now sank, and always was divine,\nSo strange the music came.\n Till, as I lay\nEnraptured, swift a sudden discord rang,\nAnd all the sound grew still. A sudden flash,\nAs from a sunlit jewel, fired the wood.\nA noise of water smitten, and on the hills\nA fair white fleece of cloud, which swiftly climbed\nInto the farthest heaven. Then, as I mused,\nKnowing a parting goddess, straight I saw\nA sudden splendour float upon the stream,\nAnd knew it for this jewelled flute, which paused\nBefore me on an eddy. It I snatched\nEager, and to my ardent lips I bore\nThe wonder, and behold, with the first breath--\nThe first warm human breath, the silent strains.\nThe half-drowned notes which late the goddess blew,\nRevived, and sounded clearer, sweeter far\nThan mortal skill could make. So with delight\nI left my flocks to wander o'er the wastes\nUntended, and the wolves and eagles seized\nThe tender lambs, but I was for my art--\nNought else; and though the high-pitched notes divine\nGrew faint, yet something lingered, and at last\nSo sweet a note I sounded of my skill,\nThat all the Phrygian highlands, all the white\nHill villages, were fain to hear the strain,\nWhich the mad shepherd made.\n So, overbold,\nAnd rapt in my new art, at last I dared\nTo challenge Phoebus' self.\n 'Twas a fair day\nWhen sudden, on the mountain side, I saw\nA train of fleecy clouds in a white band\nDescending. Down the gleaming pinnacles\nAnd difficult crags they floated, and the arch,\nDrawn with its thousand rays against the sun,\nHung like a glory o'er them. Midst the pines\nThey clothed themselves with form, and straight I knew\nThe immortals. Young Apollo, with his lyre,\nKissed by the sun, and all the Muses clad\nIn robes of gleaming white; then a great fear,\nYet mixed with joy, assailed me, for I knew\nMyself a mortal equalled with the gods.\n\n Ah me! how fair they were! how fair and dread\nIn face and form, they showed, when now they came\nUpon the thymy slope, and the young god\nLay with his choir around him, beautiful\nAnd bold as Youth and Dawn! There was no cloud\nUpon the sky, nor any sound at all\nWhen I began my strain. No coward fear\nOf what might come restrained me; but an awe\nOf those immortal eyes and ears divine\nLooking and listening. All the earth seemed full\nOf ears for me alone--the woods, the fields,\nThe hills, the skies were listening. Scarce a sound\nMy flute might make; such subtle harmonies\nThe silence seemed to weave round me and flout\nThe half unuttered thought. Till last I blew,\nAs now, a hesitating note, and lo!\nThe breath divine, lingering on mortal lips,\nHurried my soul along to such fair rhymes,\nSweeter than wont, that swift I knew my life\nRise up within me, and expand, and all\nThe human, which so nearly is divine,\nWas glorified, and on the Muses' lips,\nAnd in their lovely eyes, I saw a fair\nApproval, and my soul in me was glad.\n\n For all the strains I blew were strains of love--\nLove striving, love triumphant, love that lies\nWithin beloved arms, and wreathes his locks\nWith flowers, and lets the world go by and sings\nUnheeding; and I saw a kindly gleam\nWithin the Muses' eyes, who were indeed,\nWomen, though god-like.\n But upon the face\nOf the young Sun-god only haughty scorn\nSate and he swiftly struck his golden lyre,\nAnd played the Song of Life; and lo, I knew\nMy strain, how earthy! Oh, to hear the young\nApollo playing! and the hidden cells\nAnd chambers of the universe displayed\nBefore the charmed sound! I seemed to float\nIn some enchanted cave, where the wave dips\nIn from the sunlit sea, and floods its depths\nWith reflex hues of heaven. My soul was rapt\nBy that I heard, and dared to wish no more\nFor victory; and yet because the sound\nOf music that is born of human breath\nComes straighter from the soul than any strain\nThe hand alone can make; therefore I knew,\nWith a mixed thrill of pity and delight,\nThe nine immortal Sisters hardly touched\nBy this fine strain of music, as by mine,\nAnd when the high lay trembled to its close,\nStill doubting.\n Then upon the Sun-god's face\nThere passed a cold proud smile. He swept his lyre\nOnce more, then laid it down, and with clear voice,\nThe voice of godhead, sang. Oh, ecstasy,\nOh happiness of him who once has heard\nApollo singing! For his ears the sound\nOf grosser music dies, and all the earth\nIs full of subtle undertones, which change\nThe listener and transform him. As he sang--\nOf what I know not, but the music touched\nEach chord of being--I felt my secret life\nStand open to it, as the parched earth yawns\nTo drink the summer rain; and at the call\nOf those refreshing waters, all my thought\nStir from its dark and secret depths, and burst\nInto sweet, odorous flowers, and from their wells\nDeep call to deep, and all the mystery\nOf all that is, laid open. As he sang,\nI saw the Nine, with lovely pitying eyes,\nSign 'He has conquered.' Yet I felt no pang\nOf fear, only deep joy that I had heard\nSuch music while I lived, even though it brought\nTorture and death. For what were it to lie\nSleek, crowned with roses, drinking vulgar praise,\nAnd surfeited with offerings, the dull gift\nOf ignorant hands--all which I might have known--\nTo this diviner failure? Godlike 'tis\nTo climb upon the icy ledge, and fall\nWhere other footsteps dare not. So I knew\nMy fate, and it was near.\n For to a pine\nThey bound me willing, and with cruel stripes\nTore me, and took my life.\n But from my blood\nWas born the stream of song, and on its flow\nMy poor flute, to the cool swift river borne,\nFloated, and thence adown a lordlier tide\nInto the deep, wide sea. I do not blame\nPhoebus, or Nature which has set this bar\nBetwixt success and failure, for I know\nHow far high failure overleaps the bound\nOf low successes. Only suffering draws\nThe inner heart of song and can elicit\nThe perfumes of the soul. 'Twere not enough\nTo fail, for that were happiness to him\nWho ever upward looks with reverent eye\nAnd seeks but to admire. So, since the race\nOf bards soars highest; as who seek to show\nOur lives as in a glass; therefore it comes\nThat suffering weds with song, from him of old,\nWho solaced his blank darkness with his verse;\nThrough all the story of neglect and scorn,\nNecessity, sheer hunger, early death,\nWhich smite the singer still. Not only those\nWho keep clear accents of the voice divine\nAre honourable--they are happy, indeed,\nWhate'er the world has held--but those who hear\nSome fair faint echoes, though the crowd be deaf,\nAnd see the white gods' garments on the hills,\nWhich the crowd sees not, though they may not find\nFit music for their thought; they too are blest,\nNot pitiable. Not from arrogant pride\nNor over-boldness fail they who have striven\nTo tell what they have heard, with voice too weak\nFor such high message. More it is than ease,\nPalace and pomp, honours and luxuries,\nTo have seen white Presences upon the hills,\nTo have heard the voices of the Eternal Gods.\"\n\n So spake he, and I seemed to look on him,\nWhose sad young eyes grow on us from the page\nOf his own verse: who did himself to death:\nOr whom the dullard slew: or whom the sea\nRapt from us: and I passed without a word,\nSlow, grave, with many musings.\n\n\n\n\n Then I came\nOn one a maiden, meek with folded hands,\nSeated against a rugged face of cliff,\nIn silent thought. Anon she raised her arms,\nHer gleaming arms, above her on the rock,\nWith hands which clasped each other, till she showed\nAs in a statue, and her white robe fell\nDown from her maiden shoulders, and I knew\nThe fair form as it seemed chained to the stone\nBy some invisible gyves, and named her name:\nAnd then she raised her frightened eyes to mine\nAs one who, long expecting some great fear,\nScarce sees deliverance come. But when she saw\nOnly a kindly glance, a softer look\nCame in them, and she answered to my thought\nWith a sweet voice and low.\n \"I did but muse\nUpon the painful past, long dead and done,\nForgetting I was saved.\n The angry clouds\nBurst always on the low flat plains, and swept\nThe harvest to the ocean; all the land\nWas wasted. A great serpent from the deep,\nLifting his horrible head above their homes,\nDevoured the children. And the people prayed\nIn vain to careless gods.\n On that dear land,\nWhich now was turned into a sullen sea,\nGazing in safety from the stately towers\nOf my sire's palace, I, a princess, saw,\nLapt in soft luxury, within my bower\nThe wreck of humble homes come whirling by,\nThe drowning, bleating flocks, the bellowing herds,\nThe grain scarce husbanded by toiling hands\nUpon the sunlit plain, rush to the sea,\nWith floating corpses. On the rain-swept hills\nThe remnant of the people huddled close,\nHomeless and starving. All my being was filled\nWith pity for them, and I joyed to give\nWhat food and shelter and compassionate hands\nOf woman might. I took the little ones\nAnd clasped them shivering to the virgin breast\nWhich knew no other touch but theirs, and gave\nRaiment and food. My sire, not stern to me,\nSmiled on me as he saw. My gentle mother,\nWho loved me with a closer love than binds\nA mother to her son; and sunned herself\nIn my fresh beauty, seeing in my young eyes\nHer own fair vanished youth; doted on me,\nAnd fain had kept my eyes from the sad sights\nThat pained them. But my heart was sad in me,\nSeeing the ineffable miseries of life,\nAnd that mysterious anger of the gods,\nAnd helpless to allay them. All in vain\nWere prayer and supplication, all in vain\nThe costly victims steamed. The vengeful clouds\nHid the fierce sky, and still the ruin came.\nAnd wallowing his grim length within the flood,\nOver the ravaged fields and homeless homes,\nThe fell sea-monster raged, sating his jaws\nWith blood and rapine.\n Then to the dread shrine\nOf Ammon went the priests, and reverend chiefs\nOf all the nation. White robed, at their head,\nWent slow my royal sire. The oracle\nSpoke clear, not as ofttimes in words obscure,\nAmbiguous. And as we stood to meet\nThe suppliants--she who bare me, with her head\nUpon my neck--we cheerful and with song\nWelcomed their swift return; auguring well\nFrom such a quick-sped mission.\n But my sire\nHid his face from me, and the crowd of priests\nAnd nobles looked not at us. And no word\nWas spoken till at last one drew a scroll\nAnd gave it to the queen, who straightway swooned,\nHaving read it, on my breast, and then I saw,\nI the young girl whose soft life scarcely knew\nShadow of sorrow, I whose heart was full\nOf pity for the rest, what doom was mine.\n\n I think I hardly knew in that dread hour\nThe fear that came anon; I was transformed\nInto a champion of my race, made strong\nWith a new courage, glorying to meet,\nIn all the ecstasy of sacrifice,\nDeath face to face. Some god, I know not who,\nO'erspread me, and despite my mother's tears\nAnd my stern father's grief, I met my fate\nUnshrinking.\n When the moon rose clear from cloud\nOnce more again over the midnight sea,\nAnd that vast watery plain, where were before\nHundreds of happy homes, and well-tilled fields,\nAnd purple vineyards; from my father's towers\nThe white procession went along the paths,\nThe high cliff paths, which well I loved of old,\nAmong the myrtles. Priests with censers went\nAnd offerings, robed in white, and round their brows\nThe sacred fillet. With his nobles walked\nMy sire with breaking heart. My mother clung\nTo me the victim, and the young girls went\nWith wailing and with tears. A solemn strain\nThe soft flutes sounded, as we went by night\nTo a wild headland, rock-based in the sea.\n\n There on a sea-worn rock, upon the verge,\nTo some rude stanchions, high above my head,\nThey bound me. Out at sea, a black reef rose,\nWashed by the constant surge, wherein a cave\nSheltered deep down the monster. The sad queen\nWould scarcely leave me, though the priests shrunk back\nIn terror. Last, torn from my endless kiss,\nSwooning they bore her upwards. All my robe\nFell from my lifted arms, and left displayed\nThe virgin treasure of my breasts; and then\nThe white procession through the moonlight streamed\nUpwards, and soon their soft flutes sounded low\nUpon the high lawns, leaving me alone.\n\n There stood I in the moonlight, left alone\nAgainst the sea-worn rock. Hardly I knew,\nSeeing only the bright moon and summer sea,\nWhich gently heaved and surged, and kissed the ledge\nWith smooth warm tides, what fate was mine. I seemed,\nSoothed by the quiet, to be resting still\nWithin my maiden chamber, and to watch\nThe moonlight thro' my lattice. Then again\nFear came, and then the pride of sacrifice\nFilled me, as on the high cliff lawns I heard\nThe wailing cries, the chanted liturgies,\nAnd knew me bound forsaken to the rock,\nAnd saw the monster-haunted depths of sea.\n\n So all night long upon the sandy shores\nI heard the hollow murmur of the wave,\nAnd all night long the hidden sea caves made\nA ghostly echo; and the sea birds mewed\nAround me; once I heard a mocking laugh,\nAs of some scornful Nereid; once the waters\nBroke louder on the scarped reefs, and ebbed\nAs if the monster coming; but again\nHe came not, and the dead moon sank, and still\nOnly upon the cliffs the wails, the chants,\nAnd I forsaken on my sea-worn rock,\nAnd lo, the monster-haunted depths of sea.\n\n Till at the dead dark hour before the dawn,\nWhen sick men die, and scarcely fear itself\nBore up my weary eyelids, a great surge\nBurst on the rock, and slowly, as it seemed,\nThe sea sucked downward to its depths, laid bare\nThe hidden reefs, and then before my eyes--\nOh, horrible! a huge and loathsome snake\nLifted his dreadful crest and scaly side\nAbove the wave, in bulk and length so large,\nCoil after hideous coil, that scarce the eye\nCould measure its full horror; the great jaws\nDropped as with gore; the large and furious eyes\nWere fired with blood and lust. Nearer he came,\nAnd slowly, with a devilish glare, more near,\nTill his hot foetor choked me, and his tongue,\nForked horribly within his poisonous jaws,\nPlayed lightning-like around me. For awhile\nI swooned, and when I knew my life again,\nDeath's bitterness was past.\n Then with a bound\nLeaped up the broad red sun above the sea,\nAnd lit the horrid fulgour of his scales,\nAnd struck upon the rock; and as I turned\nMy head in the last agony of death,\nI knew a brilliant sunbeam swiftly leaping\nDownward from crag to crag, and felt new hope\nWhere all was hopeless. On the hills a shout\nOf joy, and on the rocks the ring of mail;\nAnd while the hungry serpent's gloating eyes\nWere fixed on me, a knight in casque of gold\nAnd blazing shield, who with his flashing blade\nFell on the monster. Long the conflict raged,\nTill all the rocks were red with blood and slime,\nAnd yet my champion from those horrible jaws\nAnd dreadful coils was scatheless. Zeus his sire\nProtected, and the awful shield he bore\nWithered the monster's life and left him cold,\nDragging his helpless length and grovelling crest:\nAnd o'er his glaring eyes the films of death\nCrept, and his writhing flank and hiss of hate\nThe great deep swallowed down, and blood and spume\nRose on the waves; and a strange wailing cry\nResounded o'er the waters, and the sea\nBellowed within its hollow-sounding caves.\n\n Then knew I, I was saved, and with me all\nThe people. From my wrists he loosed the gyves,\nMy hero; and within his godlike arms\nBore me by slippery rock and difficult path,\nTo where my mother prayed. There was no need\nTo ask my love. Without a spoken word\nLove lit his fires within me. My young heart\nWent forth, Love calling, and I gave him all.\n\n Dost thou then wonder that the memory\nOf this supreme brief moment lingers still,\nWhile all the happy uneventful years\nOf wedded life, and all the fair young growth\nOf offspring, and the tranquil later joys,\nNay, even the fierce eventful fight which raged\nWhen we were wedded, fade and are deceased,\nLost in the irrecoverable past?\nNay, 'tis not strange. Always the memory\nOf overwhelming perils or great joys,\nAvoided or enjoyed, writes its own trace\nWith such deep characters upon our lives,\nThat all the rest are blotted. In this place,\nWhere is not action, thought, or count of time,\nIt is not weary as it were on earth,\nTo dwell on these old memories. Time is born\nOf dawns and sunsets, days that wax and wane\nAnd stamp themselves upon the yielding face\nOf fleeting human life; but here there is\nMorning nor evening, act nor suffering,\nBut only one unchanging Present holds\nOur being suspended. One blest day indeed,\nOr centuries ago or yesterday,\nThere came among us one who was Divine,\nNot as our gods, joyous and breathing strength\nAnd careless life, but crowned with a new crown\nOf suffering, and a great light came with him,\nAnd with him he brought Time and a new sense\nOf dim, long-vanished years; and since he passed\nI seem to see new meaning in my fate,\nAnd all the deeds I tell of. Evermore\nThe young life comes, bound to the cruel rocks\nAlone. Before it the unfathomed sea\nSmiles, filled with monstrous growths that wait to take\nIts innocence. Far off the voice and hand\nOf love kneel by in agony, and entreat\nThe seeming careless gods. Still when the deep\nIs smoothest, lo, the deadly fangs and coils\nLurk near, to smite with death. And o'er the crags\nOf duty, like a sudden sunbeam, springs\nSome golden soul half mortal, half divine,\nHeaven-sent, and breaks the chain; and evermore\nFor sacrifice they die, through sacrifice\nThey live, and are for others, and no grief\nWhich smites the humblest but reverberates\nThro' all the close-set files of life, and takes\nThe princely soul that from its royal towers\nLooks down and sees the sorrow.\n Sir, farewell!\nIf thou shouldst meet my children on the earth\nOr here, for maybe it is long ago\nSince I and they were living, say to them\nI only muse a little here, and wait\nThe waking.\"\n And her lifted arms sank down\nUpon her knees, and as I passed I saw her\nGazing with soft rapt eyes, and on her lips\nA smile as of a saint.\n\n\n\n\n And then I saw\nA manly hunter pace along the lea,\nHis bow upon his shoulder, and his spear\nPoised idly in his hand: the face and form\nOf vigorous youth; but in the full brown eyes\nA timorous gaze as of a hunted hart,\nBrute-like, yet human still, even as the Faun\nOf old, the dumb brute passing into man,\nAnd dowered with double nature. As he came\nI seemed to question of his fate, and he\nAnswered me thus:\n \"'Twas one hot afternoon\nThat I, a hunter, wearied with my day,\nHeard my hounds baying fainter on the hills,\nLed by the flying hart; and when the sound\nFaded and all was still, I turned to seek,\nO'ercome by heat and thirst, a little glade,\nBeloved of old, where, in the shadowy wood,\nThe clear cold crystal of a mossy pool\nLipped the soft emerald marge, and gave again\nThe flower-starred lawn where ofttimes overspent\nI lay upon the grass and careless bathed\nMy limbs in the sweet lymph.\n But as I neared\nThe hollow, sudden through the leaves I saw\nA throng of wood-nymphs fair, sporting undraped\nRound one, a goddess. She with timid hand\nLoosened her zone, and glancing round let fall\nHer robe from neck and bosom, pure and bright,\n(For it was Dian's self I saw, none else)\nAs when she frees her from a fleece of cloud\nAnd swims along the deep blue sea of heaven\nOn sweet June nights. Silent awhile I stood,\nRooted with awe, and fain had turned to fly,\nBut feared by careless footstep to affright\nThose chaste cold eyes. Great awe and reverence\nHeld me, and fear; then Love with passing wing\nFanned me, and held my eyes, and checked my breath,\nSigning 'Beware!'\n So for a time I watched,\nBreathless as one a brooding nightmare holds,\nWho fleeth some great fear, yet fleeth not;\nTill the last flutter of lawn, and veil no more\nObscured, and all the beauty of my dreams\nAssailed my sense. But ere I raised my eyes,\nAs one who fain would look and see the sun,\nThe first glance dazed my brain. Only I knew\nThe perfect outline flow in tender curves,\nTo break in doubled charms; only a haze\nOf creamy white, dimple, and deep divine:\nAnd then no more. For lo! a sudden chill,\nAnd such thick mist as shuts the hills at eve,\nOppressed me gazing; and a heaven-sent shame,\nAn awe, a fear, a reverence for the unknown,\nFroze all the springs of will and left me cold,\nAnd blinded all the longings of my eyes,\nLeaving such dim reflection still as mocks\nHim who has looked on a great light, and keeps\nOn his closed eyes the image. Presently,\nMy fainting soul, safe hidden for awhile\nDeep in Life's mystic shades, renewed herself,\nAnd straight, the innocent brute within the man\nBore on me, and with half-averted eye\nI gazed upon the secret.\n As I looked,\nA radiance, white as beamed the frosty moon\nOn the mad boy and slew him, beamed on me;\nMade chill my pulses, checked my life and heat;\nTransformed me, withered all my soul, and left\nMy being burnt out. For lo! the dreadful eyes\nOf Godhead met my gaze, and through the mask\nAnd thick disguise of sense, as through a wood,\nPierced to my life. Then suddenly I knew\nAn altered nature, touched by no desire\nFor that which showed so lovely, but declined\nTo lower levels. Nought of fear or awe,\nNothing of love was mine. Wide-eyed I gazed,\nBut saw no spiritual beam to blight\nMy brain with too much beauty, no undraped\nAnd awful majesty; only a brute,\nDumb charm, like that which draws the brute to it,\nUnknowing it is drawn. So gradually\nI knew a dull content o'ercloud my sense,\nAnd unabashed I gazed, like that dumb bird\nWhich thinks no thought and speaks no word, yet fronts\nThe sun that blinded Homer--all my fear\nSunk with my shame, in a base happiness.\n\n But as I gazed, and careless turned and passed\nThrough the thick wood, forgetting what had been,\nAnd thinking thoughts no longer, swift there came\nA mortal terror: voices that I knew,\nMy own hounds' bayings that I loved before,\nAs with them often o'er the purple hills\nI chased the flying hart from slope to slope,\nBefore the slow sun climbed the Eastern peaks,\nUntil the swift sun smote the Western plain;\nWhom often I had cheered by voice and glance,\nWhom often I had checked with hand and thong\nGrim followers, like the passions, firing me,\nTrue servants, like the strong nerves, urging me\nOn many a fruitless chase, to find and take\nSome too swift-fleeting beauty; faithful feet\nAnd tongues, obedient always: these I knew,\nClothed with a new-born force and vaster grown,\nAnd stronger than their master; and I thought,\nWhat if they tare me with their jaws, nor knew\nThat once I ruled them,--brute pursuing brute,\nAnd I the quarry? Then I turned and fled,--\nIf it was I indeed that feared and fled--\nDown the long glades, and through the tangled brakes,\nWhere scarce the sunlight pierced; fled on and on,\nAnd panted, self-pursued. But evermore\nThe dissonant music which I knew so sweet,\nWhen by the windy hills, the echoing vales,\nAnd whispering pines it rang, now far, now near,\nAs from my rushing steed I leant and cheered\nWith voice and horn the chase--this brought to me\nFear of I knew not what, which bade me fly,\nFly always, fly; but when my heart stood still,\nAnd all my limbs were stiffened as I fled,\nJust as the white moon ghost-like climbed the sky,\nNearer they came and nearer, baying loud,\nWith bloodshot eyes and red jaws dripping foam;\nAnd when I strove to check their savagery,\nSpeaking with words; no voice articulate came,\nOnly a dumb, low bleat. Then all the throng\nLeapt swift on me, and tare me as I lay,\nAnd left me man again.\n Wherefore I walk\nAlong these dim fields peopled with the ghosts\nOf heroes who have left the ways of earth\nFor this faint ghost of them. Sometimes I think,\nPondering on what has been, that all my days\nWere shadows, all my life an allegory;\nAnd, though I know sometimes some fainter gleam\nOf the old beauty move me, and sometimes\nSome beat of the old pulses; that my fate,\nFor ever hurrying on in hot pursuit,\nTo fall at length self-slain, was but a tale\nWrit large by Zeus upon a mortal life,\nWrit large, and yet a riddle. For sometimes\nI read its meaning thus: Life is a chase,\nAnd Man the hunter, always following on,\nWith hounds of rushing thought or fiery sense,\nSome hidden truth or beauty, fleeting still\nFor ever through the thick-leaved coverts deep\nAnd wind-worn wolds of time. And if he turn\nA moment from the hot pursuit to seize\nSome chance-brought sweetness, other than the search\nTo which his soul is set,--some dalliance,\nSome outward shape of Art, some lower love,\nSome charm of wealth and sleek content and home,--\nThen, if he check an instant, the swift chase\nOf fierce untempered energies which pursue,\nWith jaws unsated and a thirst for act,\nBears down on him with clanging shock, and whelms\nHis prize and him in ruin.\n And sometimes\nI seem to myself a thinker, who at last,\nAmid the chase and capture of low ends,\nPausing by some cold well of hidden thought\nComes on some perfect truth, and looks and looks\nTill the fair vision blinds him. And the sum\nOf all his lower self pursuing him,\nThe strong brute forces, the unchecked desires,\nFinding him bound and speechless, deem him now\nNo more their master, but some soulless thing;\nAnd leap on him, and seize him, and possess\nHis life, till through death's gate he pass to life,\nAnd, his own ghost, revives. But looks no more\nUpon the truth unveiled, save through a cloud\nOf creed and faith and longing, which shall change\nOne day to perfect knowledge.\n But whoe'er\nShall read the riddle of my life, I walk\nIn this dim land amid dim ghosts of kings,\nAs one day thou shalt; meantime, fare thou well.\"\n\n Then passed he; and I marked him slowly go\nAlong the winding ways of that weird land,\nAnd vanish in a wood.\n\n\n\n\n And next I knew\nA woman perfect as a young man's dream,\nAnd breathing as it seemed the old sweet air\nOf the fair days of old, when man was young\nAnd life an Epic. Round the lips a smile\nSubtle and deep and sweet as hers who looks\nFrom the old painter's canvas, and derides\nLife and the riddle of things, the aimless strife,\nThe folly of Love, as who has proved it all,\nEnjoyed and suffered. In the lovely eyes\nA weary look, no other than the gaze\nWhich ofttimes as the rapid chariot whirls,\nAnd ofttimes by the glaring midnight streets,\nGleams out and chills our thought. And yet not guilt\nNor sorrow was it; only weariness,\nNo more, and still most lovely. As I named\nHer name in haste, she looked with half surprise,\nAnd thus she seemed to speak:\n \"What? Dost thou know\nThou too, the fatal glances which beguiled\nThose strong rude chiefs of old? Has not the gloom\nOf this dim land withdrawn from out mine eyes\nThe glamour which once filled them? Does my cheek\nRetain the round of youth and still defy\nThe wear of immemorial centuries?\nAnd this low voice, long silent, keeps it still\nThe music of old time? Aye, in thine eyes\nI read it, and within thine eyes I see\nThou knowest me, and the story of my life\nSung by the blind old bard when I was dead,\nAnd all my lovers dust. I know thee not,\nThee nor thy gods, yet would I soothly swear\nI was not all to blame for what has been,\nThe long fight, the swift death, the woes, the tears\nThe brave lives spent, the humble homes uptorn\nTo gain one poor fair face. It was not I\nThat curved these lips into this subtle smile,\nOr gave these eyes their fire, nor yet made round\nThis supple frame. It was not I, but Love,\nLove mirroring himself in all things fair,\nLove that projects himself upon a life,\nAnd dotes on his own image.\n Ah! the days,\nThe weary years of Love and feasts and gold,\nThe hurried flights, the din of clattering hoofs\nAt midnight, when the heroes dared for me,\nAnd bore me o'er the hills; the swift pursuits\nBaffled and lost; or when from isle to isle\nThe high-oared galley spread its wings and rose\nOver the swelling surges, and I saw,\nTime after time, the scarce familiar town,\nThe sharp-cut hills, the well-loved palaces,\nThe gleaming temples fade, and all for me,\nMe the dead prize, the shell, the soulless ghost,\nThe husk of a true woman; the fond words\nWasted on careless ears, that seemed to hear,\nOf love to me unloving; the rich feasts,\nThe silken dalliance and soft luxury,\nThe fair observance and high reverence\nFor me who cared not, to whatever land\nMy kingly lover snatched me. I have known\nHow small a fence Love sets between the king\nAnd the strong hind, who breeds his brood, and dies\nUpon the field he tills. I have exchanged\nPeople for people, crown for glittering crown,\nThrough every change a queen, and held my state\nHateful, and sickened in my soul to lie\nStretched on soft cushions to the lutes' low sound,\nWhile on the wasted fields the clang of arms\nRang, and the foemen perished, and swift death,\nHunger, and plague, and every phase of woe\nVexed all the land for me. I have heard the curse\nUnspoken, when the wife widowed for me\nClasped to her heart her orphans starved for me;\nAs I swept proudly by. I have prayed the gods,\nHating my own fair face which wrought such woe,\nSome plague divine might light on it and leave\nMy curse a ruin. Yet I think indeed\nThey had not cursed but pitied, those true wives\nWho mourned their humble lords, and straining felt\nThe innocent thrill which swells the mother's heart\nWho clasps her growing boy; had they but known\nThe lifeless life, the pain of hypocrite smiles,\nThe dead load of caresses simulated,\nWhen Love stands shuddering by to see his fires\nLit for the shrine of gold. What if they felt\nThe weariness of loveless love which grew\nAnd through the jealous palace portals seized\nThe caged unloving woman, sick of toys,\nSick of her gilded chains, her ease, herself,\nTill for sheer weariness she flew to meet\nSome new unloved seducer? What if they knew\nNo childish loving hands, or worse than all,\nHad borne them sullen to a sire unloved,\nAnd left them without pain? I might have been,\nI too, a loving mother and chaste wife,\nHad Fate so willed.\n For I remember well\nHow one day straying from my father's halls\nSeeking anemones and violets,\nA girl in Spring-time, when the heart makes Spring\nWithin the budding bosom, that I came\nOf a sudden through a wood upon a bay,\nA little sunny land-locked bay, whose banks\nSloped gently downward to the yellow sand,\nWhere the blue wave creamed soft with fairy foam,\nAnd oft the Nereids sported. As I strayed\nSinging, with fresh-pulled violets in my hair\nAnd bosom, and my hands were full of flowers,\nI came upon a little milk-white lamb,\nAnd took it in my arms and fondled it,\nAnd wreathed its neck with flowers, and sang to it\nAnd kissed it, and the Spring was in my life,\nAnd I was glad.\n And when I raised my eyes\nBehold, a youthful shepherd with his crook\nStood by me and regarded as I lay,\nTall, fair, with clustering curls, and front that wore\nA budding manhood. As I looked a fear\nCame o'er me, lest he were some youthful god\nDisguised in shape of man, so fair he was;\nBut when he spoke, the kindly face was full\nOf manhood, and the large eyes full of fire\nDrew me without a word, and all the flowers\nFell from me, and the little milk-white lamb\nStrayed through the brake, and took with it the white\nFair years of childhood. Time fulfilled my being\nWith passion like a cup, and with one kiss\nLeft me a woman.\n Ah! the lovely days,\nWhen on the warm bank crowned with flowers we sate\nAnd thought no harm, and his thin reed pipe made\nLow music, and no witness of our love\nIntruded, but the tinkle of the flock\nCame from the hill, and 'neath the odorous shade\nWe dreamed away the day, and watched the waves\nSteal shoreward, and beyond the sylvan capes\nThe innumerable laughter of the sea!\n\nAh youth and love! So passed the happy days\nTill twilight, and I stole as in a dream\nHomeward, and lived as in a happy dream,\nAnd when they spoke answered as in a dream,\nAnd through the darkness saw, as in a glass,\nThe happy, happy day, and thrilled and glowed\nAnd kept my love in sleep, and longed for dawn\nAnd scarcely stayed for hunger, and with morn\nStole eager to the little wood, and fed\nMy life with kisses. Ah! the joyous days\nOf innocence, when Love was Queen in heaven,\nAnd nature unreproved! Break they then still,\nThose azure circles, on a golden shore?\nSmiles there no glade upon the older earth\nWhere spite of all, gray wisdom, and new gods,\nYoung lovers dream within each other's arms\nSilent, by shadowy grove, or sunlit sea?\n\n Ah days too fair to last! There came a night\nWhen I lay longing for my love, and knew\nSudden the clang of hoofs, the broken doors.\nThe clash of swords, the shouts, the groans, the stain\nOf red upon the marble, the fixed gaze\nOf dead and dying eyes,--that was the time\nWhen first I looked on death,--and when I woke\nFrom my deep swoon, I felt the night air cool\nUpon my brow, and the cold stars look down,\nAs swift we galloped o'er the darkling plain;\nAnd saw the chill sea glimpses slowly wake,\nWith arms unknown around me. When the dawn\nBroke swift, we panted on the pathless steeps,\nAnd so by plain and mountain till we came\nTo Athens, where they kept me till I grew\nFairer with every year, and many wooed,\nHeroes and chieftains, but I loved not one.\n\n And then the avengers came and snatched me back\nTo Sparta. All the dark high-crested chiefs\nOf Argos wooed me, striving king with king\nFor one fair foolish face, nor knew I kept\nNo heart to give them. Yet since I was grown\nWeary of honeyed words and suit of love,\nI wedded a brave chief, dauntless and true.\nBut what cared I? I could not prize at all\nHis honest service. I had grown so tired\nOf loving and of love, that when they brought\nNews that the fairest shepherd on the hills,\nHaving done himself to death for his lost love,\nLay, like a lovely statue, cold and white\nUpon the golden sand, I hardly knew\nMore than a passing pang. Love, like a flower,\nLove, springing up too tall in a young breast,\nThe growth of morning, Life's too scorching sun\nHad withered long ere noon. Love, like a flame\nOn his own altar offering up my heart,\nHad burnt my being to ashes.\n Was it love\nThat drew me then to Paris? He was fair,\nI grant you, fairer than a summer morn,\nFair with a woman's fairness, yet in arms\nA hero, but he never had my heart,\nNot love for him allured me, but the thirst\nFor freedom, if in more than thought I erred,\nAnd was not rapt but willing. For my child,\nBorn to an unloved father, loved me not,\nThe fresh sea called, the galleys plunged, and I\nFled willing from my prison and the pain\nOf undesired caresses, and the wind\nWas fair, and on the third day as we sailed,\nMy heart was glad within me when I saw\nThe towers of Ilium rise beyond the wave.\n\n Ah, the long years, the melancholy years,\nThe miserable melancholy years!\nFor soon the new grew old, and then I grew\nWeary of him, of all, of pomp and state\nAnd novel splendour. Yet at times I knew\nSome thrill of pride within me as I saw\nFrom those high walls, a prisoner and a foe,\nThe swift ships flock at anchor in the bay,\nThe hasty landing and the flash of arms,\nThe lines of royal tents upon the plain,\nThe close-shut gates, the chivalry within\nIssuing in all its pride to meet the shock\nOf the bold chiefs without; so year by year\nThe haughty challenge from the warring hosts\nRang forth, and I with a divided heart\nSaw victory incline, now here, now there,\nAnd helpless marked the Argive chiefs I knew,\nThe spouse I left, the princely loves of old,\nNow with each other strive, and now with Troy:\nThe brave pomp of the morn, the fair strong limbs,\nThe glittering panoply, the bold young hearts,\nAthirst for fame of war, and with the night\nThe broken spear, the shattered helm, the plume\nDyed red with blood, the ghastly dying face,\nAnd nerveless limbs laid lifeless. And I knew\nThe stainless Hector whom I could have loved,\nBut that a happy love made blind his eyes\nTo all my baleful beauty; fallen and dragged\nHis noble, manly head upon the sand\nBy young Achilles' chariot; him in turn\nFallen and slain; my fair false Paris slain;\nPlague, famine, battle, raging now within,\nAnd now without, for many a weary year,\nSummer and winter, till I loathed to live,\nWho was indeed, as well they said, the Hell\nOf men, and fleets, and cities. As I stood\nUpon the walls, ofttimes a longing came,\nLooking on rage, and fight, and blood, and death,\nTo end it all, and dash me down and die;\nBut no god helped me. Nay, one day I mind\nI would entreat them. 'Pray you, lords, be men.\nWhat fatal charm is this which Ate gives\nTo one poor foolish face? Be strong, and turn\nIn peace, forget this glamour, get you home\nWith all your fleets and armies, to the land\nI love no longer, where your faithful wives\nPine widowed of their lords, and your young boys\nGrow wild to manhood. I have nought to give,\nNo heart, nor prize of love for any man,\nNor recompense. I am the ghost alone\nOf the fair girl ye knew; she still abides,\nIf she still lives and is not wholly dead,\nStretched on a flowery bank upon the sea\nIn fair heroic Argos. Leave this form\nThat is no other than the outward shell\nOf a once loving woman.'\n As I spake,\nMy pity fired my eyes and flushed my cheek\nWith some soft charm; and as I spread my hands,\nThe purple, glancing down a little, left\nThe marble of my breasts and one pink bud\nUpon the gleaming snows. And as I looked\nWith a mixed pride and terror, I beheld\nThe brute rise up within them, and my words\nFall barren on them. So I sat apart,\nNor ever more looked forth, while every day\nBrought its own woe.\n The melancholy years,\nThe miserable melancholy years,\nCrept onward till the midnight terror came,\nAnd by the glare of burning streets I saw\nPalace and temple reel in ruin and fall,\nAnd the long-baffled legions, bursting in\nBy gate and bastion, blunted sword and spear\nWith unresisted slaughter. From my tower\nI saw the good old king; his kindly eyes\nIn agony, and all his reverend hairs\nDabbled with blood, as the fierce foeman thrust\nAnd stabbed him as he lay; the youths, the girls,\nWhom day by day I knew, their silken ease\nAnd royal luxury changed for blood and tears,\nHaled forth to death or worse. Then a great hate\nOf life and fate seized on me, and I rose\nAnd rushed among them, crying, 'See, 'tis I,\nI who have brought this evil! Kill me! kill\nThe fury that is I, yet is not I!\nAnd let my soul go outward through the wound\nMade clean by blood to Hades! Let me die,\nNot these who did no wrong!' But not a hand\nWas raised, and all shrank backward as afraid,\nAs from a goddess. Then I swooned and fell\nAnd knew no more, and when I woke I felt\nMy husband's arms around me, and the wind\nBlew fair for Greece, and the beaked galley plunged;\nAnd where the towers of Ilium rose of old,\nA pall of smoke above a glare of fire.\n\n What then in the near future?\n Ten long years\nBring youth and love to that deep summer-tide\nWhen the full noisy current of our lives\nCreeps dumb through wealth of flowers. I think I knew\nSomewhat of peace at last, with my good Lord\nWho loved too much, to palter with the past,\nFlushed with the present. Young Hermione\nHad grown from child to woman. She was wed;\nAnd was not I her mother? At the pomp\nOf solemn nuptials and requited love,\nI prayed she might be happy, happier far\nThan ever I was; so in tranquil ease\nI lived a queen long time, and because wealth\nAnd high observance can make sweet our days\nWhen youth's swift joy is past, I did requite\nWith what I might, not love, the kindly care\nOf him I loved not; pomps and robes of price\nAnd chariots held me. But when Fate cut short\nHis life and love, his sons who were not mine\nReigned in his stead, and hated me and mine:\nAnd knowing I was friendless, I sailed forth\nOnce more across the sea, seeking for rest\nAnd shelter. Still I knew that in my eyes\nLove dwelt, and all the baleful charm of old\nBurned as of yore, scarce dimmed as yet by time:\nI saw it in the mirror of the sea,\nI saw it in the youthful seamen's eyes,\nAnd was half proud again I had such power\nWho now kept nothing else. So one calm eve,\nBehold, a sweet fair isle blushed like a rose\nUpon the summer sea: there my swift ship\nCast anchor, and they told me it was Rhodes.\n\n There, in a little wood above the sea,\nLike that dear wood of yore, I wandered forth\nForlorn, and all my seamen were apart,\nAnd I, alone; when at the close of day\nI knew myself surrounded by strange churls\nWith angry eyes, and one who ordered them,\nA woman, whom I knew not, but who walked\nIn mien and garb a queen. She, with the fire\nOf hate within her eyes, 'Quick, bind her, men!\nI know her; bind her fast!' Then to the trunk\nOf a tall plane they bound me with rude cords\nThat cut my arms. And meantime, far below,\nThe sun was gilding fair with dying rays\nIsle after isle and purple wastes of sea.\n\n And then she signed to them, and all withdrew\nAmong the woods and left us, face to face,\nTwo women. Ere I spoke, 'I know,' she said,\n'I know that evil fairness. This it was,\nOr ever he had come across my life,\nThat made him cold to me, who had my love\nAnd left me half a heart. If all my life\nOf wedlock was but half a life, what fiend\nCame 'twixt my love and me, but that fair face?\nWhat left his children orphans, but that face?\nAnd me a widow? Fiend! I have thee now;\nThou hast not long to live. I will requite\nThy murders; yet, oh fiend! that art so fair,\nWere it not haply better to deface\nThy fatal loveliness, and leave thee bare\nOf all thy baleful power? And yet I doubt,\nAnd looking on thy face I doubt the more,\nLest all thy dower of fairness be the gift\nOf Aphrodite, and I fear to fight\nAgainst the immortal Gods.'\n\n Even with the word,\nAnd she relenting, all the riddle of life\nFlashed through me, and the inextricable coil\nOf Being, and the immeasurable depths\nAnd irony of Fate, burst on my thought\nAnd left me smiling in the eyes of death,\nWith this deep smile thou seest. Then with a shriek\nThe woman leapt on me, and with blind rage\nStrangled my life. And when she had done the deed\nShe swooned, and those her followers hasting back\nFell prone upon their knees before the corpse\nAs to a goddess. Then one went and brought\nA sculptor, and within a jewelled shrine\nThey set me in white marble, bound to a tree\nOf marble. And they came and knelt to me,\nYoung men and maidens, through the secular years,\nWhile the old gods bore sway, but I was here,\nAnd now they kneel no longer, for the world\nHas gone from beauty.\n But I think, indeed,\nThey well might worship still, for never yet\nWas any thought or thing of beauty born\nExcept with suffering. That poor wretch who thought\nI injured her, stealing the foolish heart\nWhich she prized but I could not, what knew she\nOf that I suffered? She had loved her love,\nThough unrequited, and had borne to him\nChildren who loved her. What if she had been\nLoved yet unloving: all the fire of love\nBurnt out before love's time in one brief blaze\nOf passion. Ah, poor fool! I pity her,\nBeing blest and yet unthankful, and forgive,\nNow that she is a ghost as I, the hand\nWhich loosed my load of life. For scarce indeed\nCould any god who cares for mortal men\nHave ever kept me happy. I had tired\nOf simple loving, doubtless, as I tired\nOf splendour and being loved. There be some souls\nFor which love is enough, content to bear\nFrom youth to age, from chesnut locks to gray,\nThe load of common, uneventful life\nAnd penury. But I was not of these;\nI know not now, if it were best indeed\nThat I had reared my simple shepherd brood,\nAnd lived and died unknown in some poor hut\nAmong the Argive hills; or lived a queen\nAs I did, knowing every day that dawned\nSome high emprise and glorious, and in death\nTo fill the world with song. Not the same meed\nThe gods mete out for all, or She, the dread\nNecessity, who rules both gods and men,\nSome to dishonour, some to honour moulds,\nTo happiness some, some to unhappiness.\nWe are what Zeus has made us, discords playing\nIn the great music, but the harmony\nIs sweeter for them, and the great spheres ring\nIn one accordant hymn.\n But thou, if e'er\nThere come a daughter of thy love, oh pray\nTo all thy gods, lest haply they should mar\nHer life with too great beauty!\"\n So she ceased.\nThe fairest woman that the poet's dream\nOr artist hand has fashioned. All the gloom\nSeemed lightened round her, and I heard the sound\nOf her melodious voice when all was still,\nAnd the dim twilight took her.\n\n\n\n\n Next there came\nTwo who together walked: one with a lyre\nOf gold, which gave no sound; the other hung\nUpon his breast, and closely clung to him,\nSpent in a tender longing. As they came,\nI heard her gentle voice recounting o'er\nSome ancient tale, and these the words she said:\n\n \"Dear voice and lyre now silent, which I heard\nAcross yon sullen river, bringing to me\nAll my old life, and he, the ferryman,\nHeard and obeyed, and the grim monster heard\nAnd fawned on you. Joyous thou cam'st and free\nLike a white sunbeam from the dear bright earth,\nWhere suns shone clear, and moons beamed bright, and streams\nLaughed with a rippling music,--nor as here\nThe dumb stream stole, the veiled sky slept, the fields\nWere lost in twilight. Like a morning breeze,\nWhich blows in summer from the gates of dawn\nAcross the fields of spice, and wakes to life\nTheir slumbering perfume, through this silent land\nOf whispering voices and of half-closed eyes,\nWhere scarce a footstep sounds, nor any strain\nOf earthly song, thou cam'st; and suddenly\nThe pale cheeks flushed a little, the murmured words\nRose to a faint, thin treble; the throng of ghosts\nPacing along the sunless ways and still,\nFelt a new life. Thou camest, dear, and straight\nThe dull cold river broke in sparkling foam,\nThe pale and scentless flowers grew perfumed; last\nTo the dim chamber, where with the sad queen\nI sat in gloom, and silently inwove\nDead wreaths of amaranths; thy music came\nLaden with life, and I, who seemed to know\nNot life's voice only, but my own, rose up,\nAlong the hollow pathways following\nThe sound which brought back earth and life and love,\nAnd memory and longing. Yet I went\nWith half-reluctant footsteps, as of one\nWhom passion draws, or some high fantasy,\nDespite himself, because some subtle spell,\nPart born of dread to cross that sullen stream\nAnd its grim guardians, part of secret shame\nOf the young airs and freshness of the earth,\nBeing that I was, enchained me.\n Then at last,\nFrom voice and lyre so high a strain arose\nAs trembled on the utter verge of being,\nAnd thrilling, poured out life. Thus closelier drawn\nI walked with thee, shut in by halcyon sound\nAnd soft environments of harmony,\nBeyond the ghostly gates, beyond the dim\nCalm fields, where the beetle hummed and the pale owl\nStole noiseless from the copse, and the white blooms\nStretched thin for lack of sun: so fair a light\nBorn out of consonant sound environed me.\nNor looked I backward, as we seemed to move\nTo some high goal of thought and life and love,\nLike twin birds flying fast with equal wing\nOut of the night, to meet the coming sun\nAbove a sea. But on thy dear fair eyes,\nThe eyes that well I knew on the old earth,\nI looked not, for with still averted gaze\nThou leddest, and I followed; for, indeed,\nWhile that high strain was sounding, I was rapt\nIn faith and a high courage, driving out\nAll doubt and discontent and womanish fear,\nNay, even my love itself. But when awhile\nIt sank a little, or seemed to sink and fall\nTo lower levels, seeing that use makes blunt\nThe too accustomed ear, straightway, desire\nTo look once more on thy recovered eyes\nSeized me, and oft I called with piteous voice,\nBeseeching thee to turn. But thou long time\nWert even as one unmindful, with grave sign\nAnd waving hand, denying. Finally,\nWhen now we neared the stream, on whose far shore\nLay life, great terror took me, and I shrieked\nThy name, as in despair. Then thou, as one\nWho knows him set in some great jeopardy,\nA swift death fronting him on either hand,\nDidst slowly turning gaze; and lo! I saw\nThine eyes grown awful, life that looked on death,\nClear purity on dark and cankered sin,\nThe immortal on corruption,--not the eyes\nThat erst I knew in life, but dreadfuller,\nAnd stranger. As I looked, I seemed to swoon,\nSome blind force whirled me back, and when I woke\nI saw thee vanish in the middle stream,\nA speck on the dull waters, taking with thee\nMy life, and leaving Love with me. But I\nNot for myself bewail, but all for thee,\nWho, but for me, wert now among the stars\nWith thy great Lord; I sitting at thy feet:\nBut now the fierce and unrestrained rout\nOf passions woman-natured, finding thee\nScornful of love within thy lonely cell,\nWith blind rage falling on thee, tore thy limbs,\nAnd left them to the Muses' sepulture,\nWhile thy soul dwells in Hades. But I wail\nMy weakness always, who for Love destroyed\nThe life that was my Love. I prithee, dear,\nForgive me if thou canst, who hast lost heaven\nTo save a loving woman.\"\n He with voice\nSweeter than any mortal melody,\nAnd plaintive as the music that is made\nBy the AEolian strings, or the sad bird\nThat sings of summer nights:\n \"Eurydice,\nDear love, be comforted; not once alone\nThat which thou mournest is, but day by day\nSome lonely soul, which walks apart and feeds\nOn high hill pastures, far from herds of men,\nComes to the low fat fields, and sunny vales\nJoyous with fruits and flowers, and the white arms\nOf laughing love; and there awhile he stays\nContent, forgetting all the joys he knew,\nWhen first the morning broke upon the hills,\nAnd the keen air breathed from the Eastern gates\nLike a pure draught of wine; forgetting all\nThe strains which float, as from a nearer heaven,\nTo him who treads at dawn the untrodden snows,\nWhile all the warm world sleeps;--forgetting these\nAnd all things that have been. And if he gain\nTo raise to his own heights the simpler souls\nThat dwell upon the plains, the untutored thought,\nThe museless lives, the unawakened brain\nThat yet might soar, then is he blest indeed.\nBut if he fail, then, leaving love behind,\nThe wider love of the race, the closer love\nOf some congenial soul, he turns again\nTo the old difficult steeps, and there alone\nPines, till the widowed passions of his heart\nTear him and rend his soul, and drive him down\nTo the low plains he left. And there he dwells,\nMissing the heavens, dear, and the white peaks,\nAnd the light air of old; but in their stead\nFinding the soft sweet sun of the vale, the clouds\nWhich veil the skies indeed, but give the rains\nThat feed the streams of life and make earth green,\nAnd bring at last the harvest. So I walk\nIn this dim land content with thee, O Love,\nUntouched by any yearning of regret\nFor those old days; nor that the lyre which made\nErewhile such potent music now is dumb;\nNor that the voice that once could move the earth\n(Zeus speaking through it), speaks in household words\nOf homely love: Love is enough for me\nWith thee, O dearest; and perchance at last,\nZeus willing, this dumb lyre and whispered voice\nShall wake, by Love inspired, to such clear note\nAs soars above the stars, and swelling, lifts\nOur souls to highest heaven.\"\n Then he stooped,\nAnd, folded in one long embrace, they went\nAnd faded. And I cried, \"Oh, strong God, Love,\nMightier than Death and Hell!\"\n\n\n And then I chanced\nOn a fair woman, whose sad eyes were full\nOf a fixed self-reproach, like his who knows\nHimself the fountain of his grief, and pines\nIn self-inflicted sorrow. As I spake\nEnquiring of her grief, she answered thus:\n\n \"Stranger, thou seest of all the shades below\nThe most unhappy. Others sought their love\nIn death, and found it, dying; but for me\nThe death that took me, took from me my love,\nAnd left me comfortless. No load I bear\nLike those dark wicked women, who have slain\nTheir Lords for lust or anger, whom the dread\nPropitious Ones within the pit below\nPunish and purge of sin; only unfaith,\nIf haply want of faith be not a crime\nBlacker than murder, when we fail to trust\nOne worthy of all faith, and folly bring\nNo harder recompense than comes of scorn\nAnd loathing of itself.\n Ah, fool, fool, fool,\nWho didst mistrust thy love, who was the best,\nAnd truest, manliest soul with whom the gods\nHave ever blest the earth; so brave, so strong,\nFired with such burning hate of powerful ill,\nSo loving of the race, so swift to raise\nThe fearless arm and mighty club, and smite\nAll monstrous growths with ruin--Zeus himself\nShowed scarce more mighty--and yet was the while\nA very man, not cast in mould too fine\nFor human love, but ofttimes snared and caught\nBy womanish wiles, fast held within the net\nHis passions wove. Oh, it was grand to hear\nOf how he went, the champion of his race,\nMighty in war, mighty in love, now bent\nTo more than human tasks, now lapt in ease,\nNow suffering, now enjoying. Strong, vast soul,\nTuned to heroic deeds, and set on high\nAbove the range of common petty sins--\nToo high to mate with an unequal soul,\nToo full of striving for contented days.\n\n Ah me, how well I do recall the cause\nOf all our ills! I was a happy bride\nWhen that dark Ate which pursues the steps\nOf heroes--innocent blood-guiltiness--\nDrove us to exile, and I joyed to be\nHis own, and share his pain. To a swift stream\nFleeing we came, where a rough ferryman\nWaited, more brute than man. My hero plunged\nIn those fierce depths and battled with their flow,\nAnd with great labour gained the strand, and bade\nThe monster row me to him. But with lust\nAnd brutal cunning in his eyes, the thing\nSeized me and turned to fly with me, when swift\nAn arrow hissed from the unerring bow,\nPierced him, and loosed his grasp. Then as his eyes\nGrew glazed in death there came in them a gleam\nOf what I know was hate, and he said, 'Take\nThis white robe. It is costly. See, my blood\nHas stained it but a little. I did wrong:\nI know it, and repent me. If there come\nA time when he grows cold--for all the race\nOf heroes wander, nor can any love\nFix theirs for long--take it and wrap him in it,\nAnd he shall love again.' Then, from the strange\nDeep look within his eyes I shrank in fear,\nAnd left him half in pity, and I went\nTo meet my Lord, who rose from that fierce stream\nFair as a god.\n Ah me, the weary days\nWe women live, spending our anxious souls,\nConsumed with jealous fancies, hungering still\nFor the beloved voice and ear and eye,\nAnd hungering all in vain! For life is more\nTo youthful manhood than to sit at home\nBefore the hearth to watch the children's ways\nAnd lead the life of petty household care\nWhich doth content us women. Day by day\nI pined in Trachis for my love, while he,\nNow in some warlike exploit busied, now\nFighting some monster, now at some fair court,\nResting awhile till some new enterprise\nCalled him, returned not. News of treacheries\nAvenged, friends succoured, dreadful monsters slain,\nCame from him: always triumph, always fame,\nAnd honour, and success, and reverence,\nAnd sometimes, words of love for me who pined\nFor more than words, and would have gone to him\nBut that the toils of such high errantry\nAsked more than woman's strength.\n So the slow years\nVexed me alone in Trachis, set forlorn\nIn solitude, nor hearing at the gate\nThe frank and cheering voice, nor on the stair\nThe heavy tread, nor feeling the strong arm\nAround me in the darkling night, when all\nMy being ran slow. Last, subtle whispers came\nOf womanish wiles which kept my Lord from me,\nAnd one who, young and fair, a fresh-blown life\nAnd virgin, younger, fairer far than I\nWhen first he loved me, held him in the toils\nOf scarce dissembled love. Not easily\nMight I believe this evil, but at last\nThe oft-repeated malice finding me\nForlorn, and sitting imp-like at my ear,\nPossessed me, and the fire of jealous love\nRaged through my veins, not turned as yet to hate--\nToo well I loved for that--but breeding in me\nUnfaith in him. Love, setting him so high\nAnd self so low, betrayed me, and I prayed,\nConstrained to hold him false, the immortal gods\nTo make him love again.\n But still he came not.\nAnd still the maddening rumours worked, and still\n'Fair, young, and a king's daughter,' the same words\nSmote me and pierced me. Oh, there is no pain\nIn Hades--nay, nor deepest Hell itself,\nLike that of jealous hearts, the torture-pain\nWhich racked my life so long.\n Till one fair morn\nThere came a joyful message. 'He has come!\nAnd at the shrine upon the promontory,\nThe fair white shrine upon the purple sea,\nHe waits to do his solemn sacrifice\nTo the immortal gods; and with him comes\nA young maid beautiful as Dawn.'\n Then I,\nMingling despair with love, rapt in deep joy\nThat he was come, plunged in the depths of hell\nThat she came too, bethought me of the robe\nThe Centaur gave me, and the words he spake,\nForgetting the deep hatred in his eyes,\nAnd all but love, and sent a messenger\nBidding him wear it for the sacrifice\nTo the immortals, knowing not at all\nWhom Fate decreed the victim.\n Shall my soul\nForget the agonized message which he sent,\nBidding me come? For that accursed robe,\nStained with the poisonous accursed blood,\nEven in the midmost flush of sacrifice\nClung to him a devouring fire, and ate\nThe piteous flesh from his dear limbs, and stung\nHis great soft soul to madness. When I came,\nKnowing it was my work, he bent on me,\nWise as a god through suffering and the near\nInevitable Death, so that no word\nOf mine was needed, such a tender look\nOf mild reproach as smote me. 'Couldst not thou\nTrust me, who never loved as I love thee?\nWhat need was there of magical arts to draw\nThe love that never wavered? I have lived\nAs he lives who through perilous paths must pass,\nAnd lifelong trials, striving to keep down\nThe brute within him, born of too much strength\nAnd sloth and vacuous days; by difficult toils,\nLabours endured, and hard-fought fights with ill,\nNow vanquished, now triumphant; and sometimes,\nIn intervals of too long labour, finding\nHis nature grown too strong for him, falls prone\nAwhile a helpless prey, then once again\nRises and spurns his chains, and fares anew\nAlong the perilous ways. Dearest, I would\nThat thou wert wedded to some knight who stayed\nAt home within thy gates, and were content\nTo see thee happy. But for me the fierce\nRude energies of life, the mighty thews,\nThe god-sent hate of Wrong, these drove me forth\nTo quench the thirst of battle. See, this maid,\nThis is the bride I destined for our son\nWho grows to manhood. Do thou see to her\nWhen I am dead, for soon I know again\nThe frenzy comes, and with it ceasing, death.\nGo, therefore, ere I harm thee when my strength\nHas lost its guidance. Thou wert rich in love,\nBe now as rich in faith. Dear, for thy wrong\nI do forgive thee.'\n When I saw the glare\nOf madness fire his eyes, and my ears heard\nThe groans the torture wrung from his great soul,\nI fled with broken heart to the white shrine,\nAnd knelt in prayer, but still my sad ear took\nThe agony of his cries.\n Then I who knew\nThere was no hope in god or man for me\nWho had destroyed my Love, and with him slain\nThe champion of the suffering race of men,\nAnd knowing that my soul, though innocent\nOf blood, was guilty of unfaith and vile\nMistrust, and wrapt in weakness like a cloak,\nAnd made the innocent tool of hate and wrong,\nAgainst all love and good; grown sick and filled\nWith hatred of myself, rose from my knees,\nAnd went a little space apart, and found\nA gnarled tree on the cliff, and with my scarf\nStrangling myself, swung lifeless.\n But in death\nI found him not. For, building a vast pile\nOf scented woods on Oeta, as they tell,\nMy hero with his own hand lighted it,\nAnd when the mighty pyre flamed far and wide\nOver all lands and seas, he climbed on it\nAnd laid him down to die; but pitying Zeus,\nBefore the swift flames reached him, in a cloud\nDescending, snatched the strong brave soul to heaven,\nAnd set him mid the stars.\n Wherefore am I\nOf all the blameless shades within this place\nThe most unhappy, if of blame, indeed,\nI bear no load. For what is Sin itself,\nBut Error when we miss the road which leads\nUp to the gate of heaven? Ignorance!\nWhat if we be the cause of ignorance?\nBeing blind who might have seen! Yet do I know\nBut self-inflicted pain, nor stain there is\nUpon my soul such as they bear who know\nThe dreadful scourge with which the stern judge still\nLashes their sins. I am forgiven, I know,\nWho loved so much, and one day, if Zeus will,\nI shall go free from hence, and join my Lord,\nAnd be with him again.\"\n And straight I seemed,\nPassing, to look upon some scarce-spent life,\nWhich knows to-day the irony of Fate\nIn self-inflicted pain.\n\n\n\n\n Together clung\nThe ghosts whom next I saw, bound three in one\nBy some invisible bond. A sire of port\nGod-like as Zeus, to whom on either hand\nA tender stripling clung. I knew them well,\nAs all men know them. One fair youth spake low:\n\"Father, it does not pain me now, to be\nDrawn close to thee, and by a double bond,\nWith this my brother.\" And the other: \"Nay,\nNor me, O father; but I bless the chain\nWhich binds our souls in union. If some trace\nOf pain still linger, heed it not--'tis past:\nStill let us cling to thee.\"\n He with grave eyes\nFull of great tenderness, upon his sons\nLooked with the father's gaze, that is so far\nMore sweet, and sad, and tender, than the gaze\nOf mothers,--now on this one, now on that,\nRegarding them. \"Dear sons, whom on the earth\nI loved and cherished, it was hard to watch\nYour pain; but now 'tis finished, and we stand\nFor ever, through all future days of time,\nSymbols of patient suffering undeserved,\nEndured and vanquished. Yet sad memory still\nBrings back our time of trial.\n For the day\nBroke fair when I, the dread Poseidon's priest,\nJoyous because the unholy strife was done,\nAnd seeing the blue waters now left free\nOf hostile keels--save where upon the verge\nFar off the white sails faded--rose at dawn,\nAnd white robed, and in garb of sacrifice,\nAnd with the sacred fillet round my brows,\nStood at the altar; and behind, ye twain,\nDecked by your mother's hand with new-cleansed robes,\nAnd with fresh flower-wreathed chaplets on your curls,\nAttended, and your clear young voices made\nMusic that touched your father's eyes with tears,\nIf not the careless gods. I seem to hear\nThose high sweet accents mounting in the hymn\nWhich rose to all the blessed gods who dwelt\nUpon the far Olympus--Zeus, the Lord,\nAnd Sovereign Here, and the immortal choir\nOf Deities, but chiefly to the dread\nPoseidon, him who sways the purple sea\nAs with a sceptre, shaking the fixed earth\nWith stress of thundering surges. By the shrine\nThe meek-eyed victim, for the sacrifice,\nStood with his gilded horns. The hymns were done,\nAnd I in act to strike, when all the crowd\nWho knelt behind us, with a common fear\nCried, with a cry that well might freeze the blood,\nAnd then, with fearful glances towards the sea,\nFled, leaving us alone--me, the high priest,\nAnd ye, the acolytes; forlorn of men,\nAlone, but with our god.\n But we stirred not:\nWe could not flee, who in the solemn act\nOf worship, and the ecstasy which comes\nTo the believer's soul, saw heaven revealed,\nThe mysteries unveiled, the inner sky\nWhich meets the enraptured gaze. How should we fear\nWho thus were god-encircled! So we stood\nWhile the long ritual spent itself, nor cast\nAn eye upon the sea. Till as I came\nTo that great act which offers up a life\nBefore life's Lord, and the full mystery\nWas trembling to completion, quick I heard\nA stifled cry of agony, and knew\nMy children's voices. And the father's heart,\nWhich is far more than rite or service done\nBy man for god, seeing that it is divine\nAnd comes from God to men--this rising in me,\nConstrained me, and I ceased my prayer, and turned\nTo succour you, and lo! the awful coils\nWhich crushed your lives already, bound me round\nAnd crushed me also, as you clung to me,\nIn common death. Some god had heard the prayer,\nAnd lo! we were ourselves the sacrifice--\nThe priest, the victim, the accepted life,\nThe blood, the pain, the salutary loss.\n\n Was it not better thus to cease and die\nTogether in one blest moment, mid the flush\nAnd ecstasy of worship, and to know\nOurselves the victims? They were wrong who taught\nThat 'twas some jealous goddess who destroyed\nOur lives, revengeful for discovered wiles,\nOr hateful of our land. Not readily\nShould such base passions sway the immortal gods;\nBut rather do I hold it sooth indeed\nThat Zeus himself it was, who pitying\nThe ruin he foreknew, yet might not stay,\nSince mightier Fate decreed it, sent in haste\nThose dreadful messengers, and bade them take\nThe pious lives he loved, before the din\nOf midnight slaughter woke, and the fair town\nFlamed pitifully to the skies, and all\nWas blood and ruin. Surely it was best\nTo die as we did, and in death to live,\nA vision for all ages of high pain\nWhich passes into beauty, and is merged\nIn one accordant whole, as discords merge\nIn that great Harmony which ceaseless rings\nFrom the tense chords of life, than to have lived\nOur separate lives, and died our separate deaths,\nAnd left no greater mark than drops which rain\nUpon the unbounded sea. Those hosts which fell\nBefore the Scaean gate upon the sand,\nNor found a bard to sing their fate, but left\nTheir bones to dogs and kites--were they more blest\nThan we who, in the people's sight before\nIlium's unshattered towers, lay down to die\nOur swift miraculous death? Dear sons, and good,\nDear children of my love, how doubly dear\nFor this our common sorrow; suffering weaves\nNot only chains of darkness round, but binds\nA golden glittering link, which though withdrawn\nOr felt no longer, knits us soul to soul,\nIn indissoluble bonds, and draws our lives\nSo close, that though the individual life\nBe merged, there springs a common life which grows\nTo such dread beauty, as has power to take\nThe sting from sorrow, and transform the pain\nInto transcendent joy: as from the storm\nThe unearthly rainbow draws its myriad hues\nAnd steeps the world in fairness. All our lives\nAre notes that fade and sink, and so are merged\nIn the full harmony of Being. Dear sons,\nCling closer to me. Life nor Death has torn\nOur lives asunder, as for some, but drawn\nTheir separate strands together in a knot\nCloser than Life itself, stronger than Death,\nInsoluble as Fate.\"\n Then they three clung\nTogether--the strong father and young sons,\nAnd in their loving eyes I saw the Pain\nFade into Joy, Suffering in Beauty lost,\nAnd Death in Love!\n\n\n\n\n By a still sullen pool,\nInto its dark depths gazing, lay the ghost\nWhom next I passed. In form, a lovely youth,\nScarce passed from boyhood. Golden curls were his,\nAnd wide blue eyes. The semblance of a smile\nCame on his lip--a girl's but for the down\nWhich hardly shaded it; but the pale cheek\nWas soft as any maiden's, and his robe\nWas virginal, and at his breast he bore\nThe perfumed amber cup which, when March comes\nGems the dry woods and windy wolds, and speaks\nThe resurrection.\n Looking up, he said:\n\"Methought I saw her then, my love, my fair,\nMy beauty, my ideal; the dim clouds\nLifted, methought, a little--or was it\nFond Fancy only? For I know that here\nNo sunbeam cleaves the twilight, but a mist\nCreeps over all the sky and fields and pools,\nAnd blots them; and I know I seek in vain\nMy earth-sought beauty, nor can Fancy bring\nAn answer to my thought from these blind depths\nAnd unawakened skies. Yet has use made\nThe quest so precious, that I keep it here,\nWell knowing it is vain.\n On the old earth\n'Twas otherwise, when in fair Thessaly\nI walked regardless of all nymphs who sought\nMy love, but sought in vain, whether it were\nDryad or Naiad from the woods or streams,\nOr white-robed Oread fleeting on the side\nOf fair Olympus, echoing back my sighs,\nIn vain, for through the mountains day by day\nI wandered, and along the foaming brooks,\nAnd by the pine-woods dry, and never took\nA thought for love, nor ever 'mid the throng\nOf loving nymphs who knew me beautiful\nI dallied, unregarding; till they said\nSome died for love of me, who loved not one.\nAnd yet I cared not, wandering still alone\nAmid the mountains by the scented pines.\n\n Till one fair day, when all the hills were still,\nNor any breeze made murmur through the boughs,\nNor cloud was on the heavens, I wandered slow,\nLeaving the nymphs who fain with dance and song\nHad kept me 'midst the glades, and strayed away\nAmong the pines, enwrapt in fantasy,\nAnd by the beechen dells which clothe the feet\nOf fair Olympus, wrapt in fantasy,\nWeaving the thin and unembodied shapes\nWhich Fancy loves to body forth, and leave\nIn marble or in song; and so strayed down\nTo a low sheltered vale above the plains,\nWhere the lush grass grew thick, and the stream stayed\nIts garrulous tongue; and last upon the bank\nOf a still pool I came, where was no flow\nOf water, but the depths were clear as air,\nAnd nothing but the silvery gleaming side\nOf tiny fishes stirred. There lay I down\nUpon the flowery bank, and scanned the deep,\nHalf in a waking dream.\n Then swift there rose,\nFrom those enchanted depths, a face more fair\nThan ever I had dreamt of, and I knew\nMy sweet long-sought ideal: the thick curls,\nLike these, were golden, and the white robe showed\nLike this; but for the wondrous eyes and lips,\nThe tender loving glance, the sunny smile\nUpon the rosy mouth, these knew I not,\nNot even in dreams; and yet I seemed to trace\nMyself within them too, as who should find\nHis former self expunged, and him transformed\nTo some high thin ideal, separate\nFrom what he was, by some invisible bar,\nAnd yet the same in difference. As I moved\nMy arms to clasp her to me, lo! she moved\nHer eager arms to mine, smiled to my smile,\nLooked love to love, and answered longing eyes\nWith longing. When my full heart burst in words,\n'Dearest, I love thee,' lo! the lovely lips,\n'Dearest, I love thee,' sighed, and through the air\nThe love-lorn echo rang. But when I longed\nTo answer kiss with kiss, and stooped my lips\nTo her sweet lips in that long thrill which strains\nSoul unto soul, the cold lymph came between\nAnd chilled our love, and kept us separate souls\nWhich fain would mingle, and the self-same heaven\nRose, a blue vault above us, and no shade\nOf earthly thing obscured us, as we lay\nTwo reflex souls, one and yet different,\nTwo sundered souls longing to be at one.\n\nThere, all day long, until the light was gone\nAnd took my love away, I lay and loved\nThe image, and when night was come, 'Farewell,'\nI whispered, and she whispered back, 'Farewell,'\nWith oh, such yearning! Many a day we spent\nBy that clear pool together all day long.\nAnd many a clouded hour on the wet grass\nI lay beneath the rain, and saw her not,\nAnd sickened for her; and sometimes the pool\nWas thick with flood, and hid her; and sometimes\nSome cold wind ruffled those clear wells, and left\nBut glimpses of her, and I rose at eve\nUnsatisfied, a cold chill in my limbs\nAnd fever at my heart: until, too soon!\nThe summer faded, and the skies were hid,\nAnd my love came not, but a quenchless thirst\nWasted my life. And all the winter long\nThe bright sun shone not, or the thick ribbed ice\nObscured her, and I pined for her, and knew\nMy life ebb from me, till I grew too weak\nTo seek her, fearing I should see no more\nMy dear. And so the long dead winter waned\nAnd the slow spring came back.\n And one blithe day,\nWhen life was in the woods, and the birds sang,\nAnd soft airs fanned the hills, I knew again\nSome gleam of hope within me, and again\nWith feeble limbs crawled forth, and felt the spring\nBlossom within me; and the flower-starred glades,\nThe bursting trees, the building nests, the songs,\nThe hurry of life revived me; and I crept,\nGhost-like, amid the joy, until I flung\nMy panting frame, and weary nerveless limbs,\nDown by the cold still pool.\n And lo! I saw\nMy love once more, not beauteous as of old,\nBut oh, how changed! the fair young cheek grown pale,\nThe great eyes, larger than of yore, gaze forth\nWith a sad yearning look; and a great pain\nAnd pity took me which were more than love,\nAnd with a loud and wailing voice I cried,\n'Dearest, I come again. I pine for thee,'\nAnd swift she answered back, 'I pine for thee;'\n'Come to me, oh, my own,' I cried, and she--\n'Come to me, oh, my own.' Then with a cry\nOf love I joined myself to her, and plunged\nBeneath the icy surface with a kiss,\nAnd fainted, and am here.\n And now, indeed,\nI know not if it was myself I sought,\nAs some tell, or another. For I hold\nThat what we seek is but our other self,\nOther and higher, neither wholly like\nNor wholly different, the half-life the gods\nRetained when half was given--one the man\nAnd one the woman; and I longed to round\nThe imperfect essence by its complement,\nFor only thus the perfect life stands forth\nWhole, self-sufficing. Worse it is to live\nIll-mated than imperfect, and to move\nFrom a false centre, not a perfect sphere,\nBut with a crooked bias sent oblique\nAthwart life's furrows. 'Twas myself, indeed,\nThus only that I sought, that lovers use\nTo see in that they love, not that which is,\nBut that their fancy feigns, and view themselves\nReflected in their love, yet glorified,\nAnd finer and more pure.\n Wherefore it is:\nAll love which finds its own ideal mate\nIs happy--happy that which gives itself\nUnto itself, and keeps, through long calm years,\nThe tranquil image in its eyes, and knows\nFulfilment and is blest, and day by day\nWears love like a white flower, nor holds it less\nThough sharp winds bite, or hot suns fade, or age\nSully its perfect whiteness, but inhales\nIts fragrance, and is glad. But happier still\nHe who long seeks a high goal unattained,\nAnd wearies for it all his days, nor knows\nPossession sate his thirst, but still pursues\nThe fleeting loveliness--now seen, now lost,\nBut evermore grown fairer, till at last\nHe stretches forth his arms and takes the fair\nIn one long rapture, and its name is Death.\"\n\n Thus he; and seeing me stand grave: \"Farewell.\nIf ever thou shouldst happen on a wood\nIn Thessaly, upon the plain-ward spurs\nOf fair Olympus, take the path which winds\nThrough the close vale, and thou shalt see the pool\nWhere once I found my life. And if in Spring\nThou go there, round the margin thou shalt know\nThese amber blooms bend meekly, smiling down\nUpon the crystal surface. Pluck them not.\nBut kneel a little while, and breathe a prayer\nTo the fair god of Love, and let them be.\nFor in those tender flowers is hid the life\nThat once was mine. All things are bound in one\nIn earth and heaven, nor is there any gulf\n'Twixt things that live,--the flower that was a life,\nThe life that is a flower,--but one sure chain\nBinds all, as now I know.\n If there are still\nFair Oreads on the hills, say to them, sir,\nThey must no longer pine for me, but find\nSome worthier lover, who can love again;\nFor I have found my love.\"\n And to the pool\nHe turned, and gazed with lovely eyes, and showed\nFair as an angel.\n\n\n\n\n Leaving him enwrapt\nIn musings, to a gloomy pass I came\nBetween dark rocks, where scarce a gleam of light,\nNot even the niggard light of that dim land,\nMight enter; and the soil was black and bare,\nNor even the thin growths which scarcely clothed\nThe higher fields might live. Hard by a cave\nWhich sloped down steeply to the lowest depths,\nWhence dreadful sounds ascended, seated still,\nHer head upon her hands, I saw a maid\nWith eyes fixed on the ground--not Tartarus\nIt was, but Hades; and she knew no pain,\nExcept her painful thought. Yet there it seemed,\nAs here, the unequal measure which awaits\nThe adjustment, and meanwhile, inspires the strife\nWhich rears life's palace walls; and fills the sail\nWhich bears our bark across unfathomed seas,\nTo its last harbour; this bore sway there too,\nAnd 'twas a luckless shade which sat and wept\nAmid the gloom, though blameless. Suddenly,\nShe raised her head, and lo! the long curls, writhed\nTangled, and snake-like--as the dripping hair\nOf a dead girl who freed from life and shame,\nFrom out the cruel wintry flow, is laid\nStark on the snow with dreadful staring eyes\nLike hers. For when she raised her eyes to mine,\nThey chilled my blood, so great a woe they bore;\nAnd as she gazed, wide-eyed, I knew my pulse\nBeat slow, and my limbs stiffen. Then they wore,\nAt length, a softer look, and life revived\nWithin my breast as thus she softly spoke:\n\n \"Nay, friend, I would not harm thee. I have known\nGreat sorrow, and sometimes it racks me still,\nAnd turns me into stone, and makes my eyes\nAs dreadful as of yore; and yet it comes\nBut seldom, as thou sawest, now, for Time\nAnd Death have healing hands. Only I love\nTo sit within the darkness here, nor face\nThe throng of happier ghosts; if any ghost\nOf happiness come here. For on the earth\nThey wronged me bitterly, and turned to stone\nMy heart, till scarce I knew if e'er I was\nThe happy girl of yore.\n That youth who dreams\nUp yonder by the margin of the lake,\nKnew but a cold ideal love, but me\nLove in unearthly guise, but bodily form,\nSeized and betrayed.\n I was a priestess once,\nOf stern Athene, doing day by day\nDue worship; raising, every dawn that came,\nMy cold pure hymns to take her virgin ear;\nNor sporting with the joyous company\nOf youths and maids, who at the neighbouring shrine\nOf Aphrodite served. Nor dance nor song\nAllured me, nor the pleasant days of youth\nAnd twilights 'mid the vines. They held me cold\nWho were my friends in childhood. For my soul\nWas virginal, and at the virgin shrine\nI knelt, athirst for knowledge. Day by day\nThe long cold ritual sped, the liturgies\nWere done, the barren hymns of praise went up\nBefore the goddess, and the ecstasy\nOf faith possessed me wholly, till almost\nI knew not I was woman. Yet I knew\nThat I was fair to see, and fit to share\nSome natural honest love, and bear the load\nOf children like the rest; only my soul\nWas lost in higher yearnings.\n Like a god,\nHe burst upon those pallid lifeless days,\nBringing fresh airs and salt, as from the sea,\nAnd wrecked my life. How should a virgin know\nDeceit, who never at the joyous shrine\nOf Cypris knelt, but ever lived apart,\nAnd so grew guilty? For if I had spent\nMy days among the throng, either my fault\nWere blameless, or undone. For innocence\nThe tempter spreads his net. For innocence\nThe gods keep all their terrors. Innocence\nIt is that bears the burden, which for guilt\nIs lightened, and the spoiler goes his way,\nUncaring, joyous, leaving her alone,\nThe victim and unfriended.\n Was it just\nIn her, my mistress, who had had my youth,\nTo wreak such vengeance on me? I had erred,\nIt may be; but on him, whose was the guilt,\nNo heaven-sent vengeance lighted, but he sped\nAway to other hearts across the deep,\nCareless and free; but me, the cold stern eyes\nOf the pure goddess withered; and the scorn\nOf maids, despised before, and the great blank\nOf love, whose love was gone--this wrung my heart,\nAnd froze my blood; set on my brow despair,\nAnd turned my gaze to stone, and filled my eyes\nWith horror, and stiffened the soft curls which once\nLay smooth and fair into such snake-like rings\nAs made my aspect fearful. All who saw,\nShrank from me and grew cold, and felt the warm,\nFull tide of life freeze in them, seeing in me\nLove's work, who sat wrapt up and lost in shame,\nAs in a cloak, consuming my own heart,\nAnd was in hell already. As they gazed\nUpon me, my despair looked forth so cold\nFrom out my eyes, that if some spoiler came\nFresh from his wickedness, and looked on them,\nTheir glare would strike him dead; and those fair curls\nWhich once the accursed toyed with, grew to be\nThe poisonous things thou seest; and so, with hate\nOf man's injustice and the gods', who knew\nMe blameless, and yet punished me; and sick\nOf life and love, and loathing earth and sky,\nAnd feeding on my sorrow, Hate at last\nLeft me a Fury.\n Ah, the load of life\nWhich lives for hatred! We are made to love--\nWe women, and the injury which turns\nThe honey of our lives to gall, transforms\nThe angel to the fiend. For it is sweet\nTo know the dreadful sense of strength, and smite\nAnd leave the tyrant dead with a glance; ay! sweet,\nIn that fierce lust of power, to slay the life\nWhich harmed not, when the suppliants' cry ascends\nTo ears which hate has deafened. So I lived\nLong time in misery; to my sleepless eyes\nNo healing slumbers coming; but at length,\nZeus and the goddess pitying, I knew\nSoft rest once more veiling my dreadful gaze\nIn peaceful slumbers. Then a blessed dream\nI dreamt. For, lo! a god-like knight in mail\nOf gold, who sheared with his keen flashing blade;\nWith scarce a pang of pain, the visage cold\nWhich too great sorrow left me; at one stroke\nClean from the trunk, and then o'er land and sea,\nInvisible, sped with winged heels, to where,\nUpon a sea-worn cape, a fair young maid,\nMore blameless even than I was, chained and bound,\nWaited a monster from the deep and stood\nIn innocent nakedness. Then, as he rose,\nLoathsome, from out the depths, a monstrous growth,\nA creature wholly serpent, partly man,\nThe wrongs that I had known, stronger than death,\nRose up with such black hate in me again,\nAnd wreathed such hissing poison through my hair,\nAnd shot such deadly glances from my eyes,\nThat nought that saw might live. And the vile worm\nWas slain, and she delivered. Then I dreamt\nMy mistress, whom I thought so stern to me,\nAthene, set those dreadful staring eyes,\nAnd that despairing visage, on her shield\nOf chastity, and bears it evermore\nTo fright the waverer from the wrong he would,\nAnd strike the unrepenting spoiler, dead.\"\n\n Then for a little paused she, while I saw\nAgain her eyes grown dreadful, till once more,\nAnd with a softer glance:\n \"From that blest dream\nI woke not on the earth, but only here.\nAnd now my pain is lightened since I know\nMy dream, which was a dream within the dream\nWhich is our life, fulfilled. And I have saved\nAnother through my suffering, and through her\nA people. Oh, strange chain of sacrifice,\nThat binds an innocent life, and from its blood\nAnd sorrow works out joy! Oh, mystery\nOf pain and evil! wrong grown salutary,\nAnd mighty to redeem! If thou shouldst see\nA woman on the earth, who pays to-day\nLike penalty of sin, and the new gods\n(For after Saturn, Zeus ruled; after him\nIt may be there are others) love to take\nThe tender heart of girlhood, and to immure\nWithin a cold and cloistered cell the life\nWhich nature meant to bless, and if Love come\nHold her accursed; or to some poor maid,\nForlorn and trusting, still the tempter comes\nAnd works his wrong, and leaves her in despair\nAnd shame and all abhorrence, while he goes\nHis way unpunished,--if thou know her eyes\nFreeze thee like mine--oh! bid her lose her pain\nIn succouring others--say to her that Time\nAnd Death have healing hands, and here there comes\nTo the forgiven transgressor only pain\nEnough to chasten joy!\"\n And a soft tear\nTrembled within her eyes, and her sweet gaze\nWas as the Magdalen's, the horror gone\nAnd a great radiance come.\n\n\n\n\n Then as I passed\nTo upper air, I saw two figures rise\nTogether, one a woman with a grave\nFair face not all unhappy, and the robes\nAnd presence of a queen; and with her walked\nThe fairest youth that ever maiden's dream\nConceived. And as they came, the throng of ghosts,\nFor these who were not wholly ghosts, arose,\nAnd did them homage. Not the chain of love\nBound them, but such calm kinship as is bred\nOf long and difficult pilgrimages borne\nThrough common perils by two souls which share\nA common weary exile. Nor as ghosts\nThese showed, but rather like two lives which hung\nSuspended in a trance. A halo of life\nPlayed round them, and they brought a sweet brisk air\nTasting of earth and heaven, like sojourners\nWho stayed but for awhile, and knew a swift\nRelease await them. First the youth it was\nWho spake thus as they passed:\n \"Dread Queen, once more\nI feel life stir within me, and my blood\nRun faster, while a new strange cycle turns\nAnd grows completed. Soon on the dear earth\nUnder the lively light of fuller day,\nI shall revive me of my wound; and thou,\nPassing with me yon cold and lifeless stream,\nAnd the grim monster who will fawn on thee,\nShalt issue in royal pomp, and wreathed with flowers,\nUpon the cheerful earth, leaving behind\nA deeper winter for the ghosts who dwell\nWithin these sunless haunts; and I shall lie\nOnce more within loved arms, and thou shalt see\nThy early home, and kiss thy mother's cheek,\nAnd be a girl again. But not for long;\nFor ere the bounteous Autumn spreads her hues\nOf gold and purple, a cold voice will call\nAnd bring us to these wintry lands once more,\nAs erst so often. Blest are we, indeed,\nAbove the rest, and yet I would I knew\nThe careless joys of old.\n For in hot youth,\nOh, it was sweet to greet the balmy night\nThat was love's nurse, and feel the weary eyes\nClosed by soft kisses,--sweet at early dawn\nTo wake refreshed and, scarce from loving arms\nLeaping, to issue forth, with winding horn,\nBy dewy heath and brake, and taste the fair\nYoung breath of early morning; and 'twas sweet\nTo chase the bounding quarry all day long\nWith my true hounds and rapid steed, and gay\nCompanions of my youth, and with the eve\nTo turn home laden with the spoil, and take\nThe banquet which awaited, and sweet wine\nPoured out, and kisses pressed on loving lips;\nCircled by snowy arms. Oh, it was sweet\nTo be alive and young!\n For sure it is\nThe gods gave not quick pulses and hot blood\nAnd strength and beauty for no end, but would\nThat we should use them wisely; and the fair,\nSweet mistress of my service was, indeed,\nWorthy of all observance. Oh, her eyes\nWhen I lay bleeding! All day long we rode,\nI and my youthful peers, with horse and hound,\nAnd knew the joy of swift pursuit and toil\nAnd peril. At the last, a fierce boar turned\nAt bay, and with his gleaming tusks o'erthrew\nMy steed, and as I fell upon the flowers,\nPierced me as with a sword. Then, as I lay,\nI knew the strange slow chill which, stealing, tells\nThe young that it is death. Yet knew I not\nOf pain or fear, only great pity, indeed,\nThat she should lose her love, who was so fond\nAnd gracious. But when, lifting my dim gaze,\nI saw her bend o'er me,--the lovely eyes\nSuffused with tears, and her sweet smile replaced\nBy agonized sorrow,--for a while I stayed\nLife's ebbing tide, and raised my cold, white lips,\nWith a faint smile, to hers. Then, with a kiss--\nOne long last kiss, we mingled, and I knew\nNo more.\n But even in death, so strong is Love,\nI could not wholly die; and year by year,\nWhen the bright springtime comes, and the earth lives,\nLove opens these dread gates, and calls me forth\nAcross the gulf. Not here, indeed, she comes,\nBeing a goddess and in heaven, but smooths\nMy path to the old earth, where still I know\nOnce more the sweet lost days, and once again\nBlossom on that soft breast, and am again\nA youth, and rapt in love; and yet not all\nAs careless as of yore; but seem to know\nThe early spring of passion, tamed by time\nAnd suffering, to a calmer, fuller flow,\nLess fitful, but more strong.\"\n Then the sad Queen\n\"Fair youth, thy lot I know, for I am old\nAs the old earth and yet as young as is\nThe budding spring, and I was here a Queen,\nWhen Love was not or Time, and to my arms\nThou camest as a little child, to dwell\nWithin the halls of Death, for without Death\nThere were nor Birth nor Love, nor would Life yearn\nTo lose itself within another life,\nAnd dying, to be born. I, too, have died\nFor love in part, and live again through love;\nFor in the far-off years, when Time was young,\nAnd Love unborn on earth, and Zeus in heaven\nRuled, a young sovereign; I, a maiden, dwelt\nWith dread Demeter on the lovely plains\nOf sunny Sicily. There, day by day,\nI sported with the maiden goddesses,\nIn virgin freedom. Budding age made gay\nOur lightsome feet, and on the flowery slopes\nWe wandered daily, gathering flowers to weave\nIn careless garlands for our locks, and passed\nThe days in innocent gladness. Thought of Love\nThere came not to us, for as yet the earth\nWas virginal, nor yet had Eros come\nWith his delicious pain.\n And one fair morn--\nNot all the ages blot it--on the side\nOf AEtna we were straying. There was then\nSummer nor winter, springtide nor the time\nOf harvest, but the soft unfailing sun\nShone always, and the sowing time was one\nWith reaping; fruit and flower together sprung\nUpon the trees; and blade and ripened ear\nTogether clothed the plains. There, as I strayed,\nSudden a black cloud down the rugged side\nOf AEtna, mixed with fire and dreadful sound\nOf thunder, rolled around me, and I heard\nThe maids who were my fellows turn and flee\nWith shrieks and cries for me.\n But I, I knew\nNo terror while the god o'ershadowed me,\nHiding my life in his, nor when I wept\nMy flowers all withered, and my blood ran slow\nWithin a wintry land. Some voice there was\nWhich said, 'Fear not. Thou shalt return and see\nThy mother again, only a little while\nFate wills that thou shouldst tarry, and become\nQueen of another world. Thou seest that all\nThy flowers are faded. They shall live again\nOn earth, as thou shalt, as thou livest now\nThe Life of Death--for what is Death but Life\nSuspended as in sleep? The changeless rule\nWhere life was constant, and the sun o'erhead,\nBlazed forth for ever, changes and is hidden\nAwhile. This region which thou seest, where all\nThe trees are lifeless, and the flowers are dead,\nIs but the self-same earth on which erewhile\nThou sportedst fancy free.'\n So, without fear\nI wandered on this bare land, seeing far\nUpon the sky the peaks of my own hills\nAnd crests of my own woods. Till, when I grew\nHungered, ere yet another form I saw;\nAlong the silent alleys journeying,\nAnd leafless groves; a fair and mystic tree\nRose like a heart in shape, and 'mid its leaves\nOne golden mystic fruit with a fair seed\nHid in it. This, with childish hand, I took\nAnd ate, and straight I knew the tree was Life,\nAnd the fruit Death, and the hid seed was Love.\n\n Ah, sweet strange fruit! the which if any taste\nThey may no longer keep their lives of old\nOr their own selves unchanged, but some weird change\nAnd subtle alchemy comes which can transmute\nThe blood, and mould the spirits of gods and men\nIn some new magical form. Not as before,\nOur life comes to us, though the passion cools,\nNo, never as before. My mother came\nToo late to seek me. She had power to raise\nA life from out Death's grasp, but from the arms\nOf Love she might not take me, nor undo\nLove's past for all her strength. She came and sought\nWith fires her daughter over land and sea,\nBeyond the paths of all the setting stars,\nIn vain, and over all the earth in vain,\nSeeking whom love disguised. Then on all lands\nShe cast the spell of barrenness; the wheat\nWas blighted in the ear, the purple grapes\nBlushed no more on the vines, and all the gods\nWere sorrowful, seeing the load of ill\nMy rape had laid on men. Last, Zeus himself,\nPitying the evil that was done, sent forth\nHis messenger beyond the western rim\nTo fetch me back to earth.\n But not the same\nHe found me who had eaten of Love's seed,\nBut changed into another; nor could his power\nPrevail to keep me wholly on the earth,\nOr make me maid again. The wintry life\nIs homelier often than the summer blaze\nOf happiness unclouded; so, when Spring\nComes on the world, I, coming, cross with thee,\nYear after year, the cruel icy stream;\nAnd leave this anxious sceptre and the shades\nOf those in hell, or those for whom, though blest,\nNo Spring comes, till the last great Spring which brings\nNew heavens and new earth; and lay my head\nUpon my mother's bosom, and grow young,\nAnd am a girl again.\n A soft air breathes\nAcross the stream and fills these barren fields\nWith the sweet odours of the earth. I know\nAgain the perfume of the violets\nWhich bloom on AEtna's side. Soon we shall pass\nTogether to our home, while round our feet\nThe crocus flames like gold, the wind-flowers white\nWave their soft petals on the breeze, and all\nThe choir of flowers lift up their silent song\nTo the unclouded heavens. Thou, fair boy,\nShalt lie within thy love's white arms again,\nAnd I within my mother's. Sweet is Love\nIn ceasing and renewal; nay, in these\nIt lives and has its being. Thou couldst not keep\nThy youth as now, if always on the breast\nOf love too late a lingerer thou hadst known\nPossession sate thee. Nor might I have kept\nMy mother's heart, if I had lived to ripe\nAnd wither on the stalk. Time calls and Change\nCommands both men and gods, and speeds us on\nWe know not whither; but the old earth smiles\nSpring after Spring, and the seed bursts again\nOut of its prison mould, and the dead lives\nRenew themselves, and rise aloft and soar\nAnd are transformed, clothing themselves with change\nTill the last change be done.\"\n As thus she spake,\nI saw a gleam of light flash from the eyes\nOf all the listening shades, and a great joy\nThrill through the realms of Death.\n\n\n\n\n And then again\nA youthful shade I saw, a comely boy,\nWith lip and cheek just touched with manly down,\nAnd strong limbs wearing Spring; in mien and garb\nA youthful chieftain, with a perfect face\nOf fresh young beauty, clustered curls divine,\nAnd chiselled features like a sculptured god,\nBut warm and breathing life; only the eyes,\nThe fair large eyes, were full of dreaming thought,\nAnd seemed to gaze beyond the world of sight,\nOn a hid world of beauty. Him I stayed,\nAccosting with soft words of courtesy;\nAnd, on a bank of scentless flowers reclined,\nHe answered thus:\n \"Not for the garish sun\nI long, nor for the splendours of high noon\nIn this dim land I languish; for of yore\nFull often, when the swift chase swept along\nThrough the brisk morn, or when my comrades called\nTo wrestling, or the foot-race, or to cleave\nThe sunny stream, I loved to walk apart,\nSelf-centred, sole; and when the laughing girls\nTo some fair stripling's oaten melody\nMade ready for the dance, I heeded not;\nNor when to the loud trumpet's blast and blare\nMy peers rode forth to battle. For, one eve,\nIn Latmos, after a long day in June,\nI stayed to rest me on a sylvan hill,\nWhere often youth and maid were wont to meet\nTowards moonrise; and deep slumber fell on me\nMusing on Love, just as the ruddy orb\nRose on the lucid night, set in a frame\nOf blooming myrtle and sharp tremulous plane;\nDeep slumber fell, and loosed my limbs in rest.\n\n Then, as the full orb poised upon the peak,\nThere came a lovely vision of a maid,\nWho seemed to step as from a golden car\nOut of the low-hung moon. No mortal form,\nSuch as ofttimes of yore I knew and clasped\nAt twilight 'mid the vines at the mad feast\nOf Dionysus, or the fair maids cold\nWho streamed in white processions to the shrine\nOf the chaste Virgin Goddess; but a shape\nRicher and yet more pure. No thinnest veil\nObscured her; but each exquisite limb revealed,\nGleamed like a golden statue subtly wrought\nBy a great sculptor on the architrave\nOf some high temple-front--only in her\nThe form was soft and warm, and charged with life,\nAnd breathing. As I seemed to gaze on her,\nNearer she drew and gazed; and as I lay\nSupine, as in a spell, the radiance stooped\nAnd kissed me on the lips, a chaste, sweet kiss,\nWhich drew my spirit with it. So I slept\nEach night upon the hill, until the dawn\nCame in her silver chariot from the East,\nAnd chased my Love away. But ever thus\nDissolved in love as in a heaven-sent dream,\nWhenever the bright circle of the moon\nClimbed from the hills, whether in leafy June\nOr harvest-tide, or when they leapt and pressed\nRed-thighed the spouting must, I walked apart\nFrom all, and took no thought for mortal maid,\nNor nimble joys of youth; but night by night\nI stole, when all were sleeping, to the hill,\nAnd slumbered and was blest; until I grew\nPossest by love so deep, I seemed to live\nIn slumber only, while the waking day\nShowed faint as any vision.\n So I turned\nPaler and paler with the months, and climbed\nThe steep with laboured steps and difficult breath,\nBut still I climbed. Ay, though the wintry frost\nChained fast the streams and whitened all the fields,\nI sought my mistress through the leafless groves,\nAnd slumbered and was happy, till the dawn\nReturning found me stretched out, cold and stark,\nWith life's fire nigh burnt out. Till one clear night,\nWhen the birds shivered in the pines, and all\nThe inner heavens stood open, lo! she came,\nBrighter and kinder still, and kissed my eyes\nAnd half-closed lips, and drew my soul through them,\nAnd in one precious ecstasy dissolved\nMy life. And thenceforth, ever on the hill\nI lie unseen of man; a cold, white form,\nStill young, through all the ages; but my soul,\nClothed in this thin presentment of old days,\nWalks this dim land, where never moonrise comes,\nNor day-break, but a twilight waiting-time,\nNo more; and, ah! how weary! Yet I judge\nMy lot a higher far than his who spends\nHis youth on swift hot pleasure, quickly past;\nOr theirs, my equals', who through long calm years\nGrew sleek in dull content of wedded lives\nAnd fair-grown offspring. Many a day for them,\nWhile I was wandering here, and my bones bleached\nUpon the rocks, the sweet autumnal sun\nBeamed, and the grapes grew purple. Many a day\nThey heaped up gold, they knelt at festivals,\nThey waxed in high report and fame of men,\nThey gave their girls in marriage; while for me\nUpon the untrodden peaks, the cold, grey morn,\nThe snows, the rains, the winds, the untempered blaze,\nBeat year by year, until I turned to stone,\nAnd the great eagles shrieked at me, and wheeled\nAffrighted. Yet I judge it better indeed\nTo seek in life, as now I know I sought,\nSome fair impossible Love, which slays our life,\nSome fair ideal raised too high for man;\nAnd failing to grow mad, and cease to be,\nThan to decline, as they do who have found\nBroad-paunched content and weal and happiness:\nAnd so an end. For one day, as I know,\nThe high aim unfulfilled fulfils itself;\nThe deep, unsatisfied thirst is satisfied;\nAnd through this twilight, broken suddenly,\nThe inmost heaven, the lucent stars of God,\nThe Moon of Love, the Sun of Life; and I,\nI who pine here--I on the Latmian hill\nShall soar aloft and find them.\"\n With the word,\nThere beamed a shaft of dawn athwart the skies,\nAnd straight the sentinel thrush within the yew\nSang out reveille to the hosts of day,\nSoldierly; and the pomp and rush of life\nBegan once more, and left me there alone\nAmid the awaking world.\n\n\n\n\n Nay, not alone.\nOne fair shade lingered in the fuller day,\nThe last to come, when now my dream had grown\nHalf mixed with waking thoughts, as grows a dream\nIn summer mornings when the broader light\nDazzles the sleeper's eyes; and is most fair\nOf all and best remembered, and becomes\nPart of our waking life, when older dreams\nGrow fainter, and are fled. So this remained\nThe fairest of the visions that I knew,\nMost precious and most dear.\n The increasing light\nShone through her, finer than the thinnest shade,\nAnd yet most full of beauty; golden wings,\nFrom her fair shoulders springing, seemed to lift\nHer stainless feet from the cold ground and snatch\nTheir wearer into air; and in her eyes\nWas such fair glance as comes from virgin love,\nLong chastened and triumphant. Every trace\nOf earth had vanished from her, and she showed\nAs one who walks a saint already in life,\nVirgin or mother. Immortality\nBreathed from those radiant eyes which yet had passed\nBetween the gates of death. I seemed to hear\nThe Soul of mortals speaking:\n \"I was born\nOf a great race and mighty, and was grown\nFair, as they said, and good, and kept a life\nPure from all stain of passion. Love I knew not,\nWho was absorbed in duty; and the Mother\nOf gods and men, seeing my life more calm\nThan human, hating my impassive heart,\nSent down her perfect son in wrath to earth,\nAnd bade him break me.\n But when Eros came,\nIt did repent him of the task, for Love\nIs kin to Duty.\n And within my life\nI knew miraculous change, and a soft flame\nWherefrom the snows of Duty flushed to rose,\nAnd the chill icy flow of mind was turned\nTo a warm stream of passion. Long I lived\nNot knowing what had been, nor recognized\nA Presence walking with me through my life,\nAs if by night, his face and form concealed:\nA gracious voice alone, which none but I\nMight hear, sustained me, and its name was Love.\n\n Not as the earthly loves which throb and flush\nRound earthly shrines was mine, but a pure spirit,\nLovelier than all embodied love, more pure\nAnd wonderful; but never on his eyes\nI looked, which still were hidden, and I knew not\nThe fashion of his nature; for by night,\nWhen visual eyes are blind, but the soul sees,\nCame he, and bade me seek not to enquire\nOr whence he came or wherefore. Nor knew I\nHis name. And always ere the coming day,\nAs if he were the Sun-god, lingering\nWith some too well-loved maiden, he would rise\nAnd vanish until eve. But all my being\nThrilled with my fair unearthly visitant\nTo higher duty and more glorious meed\nOf action than of old, for it was Love\nThat came to me, who might not know his name.\n\n Thus, ever rapt by dreams divine, I knew\nThe scorn that comes from weaker souls, which miss,\nBeing too low of nature, the great joy\nRevealed to others higher; nay, my sisters,\nWho being of one blood with me, made choice\nTo tread the lower ways of daily life,\nGrew jealous of me, bidding me take heed\nLest haply 'twas some monstrous fiend I loved,\nSuch as in fable ofttimes sought and won\nThe innocent hearts of maids. Long time I held\nMy love too dear for doubt, who was so sweet\nAnd lovable. But at the last the sneers,\nThe mystery which hid him, the swift flight\nBefore the coming dawn, the shape concealed,\nThe curious girlish heart, these worked on me\nWith an unsatisfied thirst. Not his own words:\n'Dear, I am with thee only while I keep\nMy visage hidden; and if thou once shouldst see\nMy face, I must forsake thee: the high gods\nLink Love with Faith, and he withdraws himself\nFrom the full gaze of Knowledge'--not even these\nCould cure me of my longing, or the fear\nThose mocking voices worked; who fain would learn\nThe worst that might befall.\n And one sad night,\nJust as the day leapt from the hills and brought\nThe hour when he should go: with tremulous hands,\nLighting my midnight lamp in fear, I stood\nLong time uncertain, and at length turned round\nAnd gazed upon my love. He lay asleep,\nAnd oh, how fair he was! The flickering light\nFell on the fairest of the gods, stretched out\nIn happy slumber. Looking on his locks\nOf gold, and faultless face and smile, and limbs\nMade perfect, a great joy and trembling took me\nWho was most blest of women, and in awe\nAnd fear I stooped to kiss him. One warm drop--\nFrom the full lamp within my trembling hand,\nOr a glad tear from my too happy eyes,\nFell on his shoulder.\n Then the god unclosed\nHis lovely eyes, and with great pity spake:\n'Farewell! There is no Love except with Faith,\nAnd thine is dead! Farewell! I come no more.'\nAnd straightway from the hills the full red sun\nLeapt up, and as I clasped my love again,\nThe lovely vision faded from his place,\nAnd came no more.\n Then I, with breaking heart,\nKnowing my life laid waste by my own hand,\nWent forth and would have sought to hide my life\nWithin the stream of Death; but Death came not\nTo aid me who not yet was meet for Death.\n\n Then finding that Love came not back to me,\nI thought that in the temples of the gods\nHaply he dwelt, and so from fane to fane\nI wandered over earth, and knelt in each,\nEnquiring for my Love; and I would ask\nThe priests and worshippers, 'Is this Love's shrine?\nSirs, have you seen the god?' But never at all\nI found him. For some answered, 'This is called\nThe Shrine of Knowledge;' and another, 'This,\nThe Shrine of Beauty;' and another, 'Strength;'\nAnd yet another, 'Youth.' And I would kneel\nAnd say a prayer to my Love, and rise\nAnd seek another. Long, o'er land and sea,\nI wandered, till I was not young or fair,\nGrown wretched, seeking my lost Love; and last,\nCame to the smiling, hateful shrine where ruled\nThe queen of earthly love and all delight,\nCypris, but knelt not there, but asked of one\nWho seemed her priest, if Eros dwelt with her.\n\n Then to the subtle-smiling goddess' self\nThey led me. She with hatred in her eyes:\n'What! thou to seek for Love, who art grown thin\nAnd pale with watching! He is not for thee.\nWhat Love is left for such? Thou didst despise\nLove, and didst dwell apart. Love sits within\nThe young maid's eyes, making them beautiful.\nLove is for youth, and joy, and happiness;\nAnd not for withered lives. Ho! bind her fast.\nTake her and set her to the vilest tasks,\nAnd bend her pride by solitude and tears,\nWho will not kneel to me, but dares to seek\nA disembodied love. My son has gone\nAnd left thee for thy fault, and thou shalt know\nThe misery of my thralls.'\n Then in her house\nThey bound me to hard tasks and vile, and kept\nMy life from honour, chained among her slaves\nAnd lowest ministers, taking despite\nAnd injury for food, and set to bind\nTheir wounds whom she had tortured, and to feed\nThe pitiful lives which in her prisons pent\nLanguished in hopeless pain. There is no sight\nOf suffering but I saw it, and was set\nTo succour it; and all my woman's heart\nWas torn with the ineffable miseries\nWhich love and life have worked; and dwelt long time\nIn groanings and in tears.\n And then, oh joy!\nOh miracle! once more at length again\nI felt Love's arms around me, and the kiss\nOf Love upon my lips, and in the chill\nOf deepest prison cells, 'mid vilest tasks,\nThe glow of his sweet breath, and the warm touch\nOf his invisible hand, and his sweet voice,\nAy, sweeter than of old, and tenderer,\nSpeak to me, pierce me, hold me, fold me round\nWith arms Divine, till all the sordid earth\nWas hued like heaven, and Life's dull prison-house\nTurned to a golden palace, and those low tasks\nGrew to be higher works and nobler gains\nThan any gains of knowledge, and at last\nHe whispered softly, 'Dear, unclose thine eyes.\nThou mayst look on me now. I go no more,\nBut am thine own for ever.'\n Then with wings\nOf gold we soared, I looking in his eyes,\nOver yon dark broad river, and this dim land,\nScarce for an instant staying till we reached\nThe inmost courts of heaven.\n But sometimes still\nI come here for a little, and speak a word\nOf peace to those who wait. The slow wheel turns,\nThe cycles round themselves and grow complete,\nThe world's year whitens to the harvest-tide,\nAnd one word only am I sent to say\nTo those dear souls, who wait here, or who now\nBreathe earthly air--one universal word\nTo all things living, and the word is 'Love.'\"\n\n Then soared she visibly before my gaze,\nAnd the heavens took her, and I knew my eyes\nHad seen the soul of man, the deathless soul,\nDefeated, struggling, purified, and blest.\n\n\n\n\n Then all the choir of happy waiting shades,\nHeroes and queens, fair maidens and brave youths,\nSwept by me, rhythmic, slow, as if they trod\nSome unheard measure, passing where I stood\nIn fair procession, each with a faint smile\nUpon the lip, signing \"Farewell, oh shade!\nIt shall be well with thee, as 'tis with us,\nIf only thou art true. The world of Life,\nThe world of Death, are but opposing sides\nOf one great orb, and the Light shines on both.\nOh, happy happy shade! Farewell! Farewell!\"\nAnd so they passed away.\n\n\n\n\n END OF BOOK II.\n\n\n\n\n BOOK III.\n\n OLYMPUS.\n\n\n\n\n But I, my gaze\nFollowing the soaring soul which now was lost\nIn the awakening skies, floated with her,\nAs in a trance, beyond the golden gates\nWhich separate Earth from Heaven; and to my thought\nGladdened by that broad effluence of light,\nThis old earth seemed transfigured, and the fields,\nSo dim and bare, grew green and clothed themselves\nWith lustrous hues. A fine ethereal air\nPlayed round me as I mused, and filled the soul\nWith an ineffable content. What need\nOf words to tell of things unreached by words?\nOr seek to engrave upon the treacherous thought\nThe fair and fugitive fancies of a dream,\nWhich vanish ere we fix them?\n But methinks\nHe knows the scene, who knows the one fair day,\nOne only and no more, which year by year\nIn springtime comes, when lingering winter flies,\nAnd lo! the trees blossom in white and pink.\nAnd golden clusters, and the glades are filled\nWith delicate primrose and deep odorous beds\nOf violets, and on the tufted meads\nWith kingcups starred, and cowslip bells, and blue\nSweet hyacinths, and frail anemones,\nThe broad West wind breathes softly, and the air\nIs tremulous with the lark, and thro' the woods\nThe soft full-throated thrushes all day long\nFlood the green dells with joy, and thro' the dry\nBrown fields the sower strides, sowing his seed,\nAnd all is life and song. Or he who first,\nWhether in fair free boyhood, when the world\nIs his to choose, or when his fuller life\nBeats to another life, or afterwards,\nKeeping his youth within his children's eyes,\nLooks on the snow-clad everlasting hills,\nAnd marks the sunset smite them, and is glad\nOf the beautiful fair world.\n A springtide land\nIt seemed, where East winds came not. Sweetest song\nWas everywhere, by glade or sunny plain;\nAnd thro' the golden valleys winding streams\nRippled in glancing silver, and above,\nThe blue hills rose, and over all a peak,\nWhite, awful, with a constant fleece of cloud\nVeiling its summit, towered. Unfailing Day\nLighted it, for no turn of dawn and eve\nCame there, nor changing seasons, but a broad\nFixed joy of Being, undisturbed by Time.\n\n There, in a happy glade shut in by groves\nOf laurel and sweet myrtle, on a green\nAnd flower-lit lawn, I seemed to see the ghosts\nOf the old gods. Upon the gentle slope\nOf a fair hill, a joyous company,\nThe Immortals lay. Hard by, a murmurous stream\nFell through the flowers; below them, space on space,\nLaughed the immeasurable plains; beyond,\nThe mystic mountain soared. Height after height\nOf bare rock ledges left the climbing pines,\nAnd reared their giddy, shining terraces\nInto the ethereal air. Above, the snows\nOf the white summit cleft the fleece of cloud\nWhich always clothed it round.\n Ah, fail-and sweet,\nYet with a ghostly fairness, fine and thin,\nThose godlike Presences. Not dreams indeed,\nBut something dream-like, were they. Blessed Shades\nHeroic and Divine, as when, in days\nWhen Man was young, and Time, the vivid thought\nTranslated into Form the unattained\nImpossible Beauty of men's dreams, and fixed\nThe Loveliness in marble.\n As with awe\nFollowing my spotless guide, I stood apart,\nNot daring to draw near; a shining form\nRose from the throng, and floated, light as air,\nTo where I trembled. And I knew the face\nAnd form of Artemis, the fair, the pure,\nThe undefiled. A crescent silvery moon\nShone thro' her locks, and by her side she bore\nA quiver of golden darts. At sight of whom\nI felt a sudden chill, like his who once\nLooked upon her and died; yet could not fear,\nSeeing how fair she was. Her sweet voice rang\nClear as a bird's:\n \"Mortal, what fate hath brought\nThee hither, uncleansed by death? How canst thou breathe\nImmortal air, being mortal? Yet fear not,\nSince thou art come. For we too are of earth\nWhom here thou seest: there were not a heaven\nWere there no earth, nor gods, had men not been,\nBut each the complement of each and grown\nThe other's creature, is and has its being,\nA double essence, Human and Divine.\nSo that the God is hidden in the man,\nAnd something Human bounds and forms the God;\nWhich else had shown too great and undefined\nFor mortal sight, and having no human eye\nTo see it, were unknown. But we who bore\nSway of old time, we were but attributes\n[3]Of the great God who is all Things that be--\nThe Pillar of the Earth and starry Sky,\nThe Depth of the great Deep; the Sun, the Moon,\nThe Word which Makes; the All-compelling Love--\nFor all Things lie within His Infinite Form.\"\n\n Even as she spake, a throng of heavenly forms\nFloated around me, filling all my soul\nWith fair unearthly beauty, and the air\nWith such ambrosial perfume as is born.\nWhen morning bursts upon a tropic sea,\nFrom boundless wastes of flowers; and as I knelt\nIn rapture, lo! the same clear voice again\nFrom out the throng of gods:\n \"Those whom thou seest\nWere even as I, embodiments of Him\nWho is the Centre of all Life: myself\nThe Maiden-Queen of Purity; and Strength,\nDivine when unabused; Love too, the Spring\nAnd Cause of Things; and Knowledge, which lays bare\nTheir secret; and calm Duty, Queen of all,\nAnd Motherhood in one; and Youth, which bears,\nBeauty of Form and Life and Light, and breathes\nThe breath of Inspiration; and the Soul,\nThe particle of God, sent down to man,\nWhich doth in turn reveal the world and God.\n\n Wherefore it is men called on Artemis,\nThe refuge of young souls; for still in age\nThey keep some dim reflection uneffaced\nOf a Diviner Purity than comes\nTo the spring days of youth, when all the world\nSmiles, and the rapid blood thro' the young veins\nCourses, and all is glad; yet knowing too\nThat innocence is young--before the soil\nAnd smirch of sadder knowledge, settling on it,\nSully its primal whiteness. So they knelt\nAt my white shrines, the eager vigorous youths,\nTo whom life's road showed like a dewy field\nIn early summer dawns, when to the sound\nOf youth's clear voice, and to the cheerful rush\nOf the tumultuous feet and clamorous tongues\nCareering onwards, fair and dappled fawns,\nStrange birds with jewelled plumes, fierce spotted pards,\nRise in the joyous chase, to be caught and bound\nBy the young conqueror; nor yet the charm\nOf sensual ease allures. And they knelt too,\nThe pure sweet maidens fair and fancy-free,\nWhose innocent virgin hearts shrank from the touch\nOf passion as from wrong--sweet moonlit lives\nWhich fade, and pale, and vanish, in the glare\nOf Love's hot noontide: these came robed in white,\nWith holy hymns and soaring liturgies:\nAnd so men fabled me, a huntress now,\nBorne thro' the flying woodlands, fair and free;\nAnd now the pale cold Moon, Light without warmth,\nZeal without touch of passion, heavenly love\nFor human, and the altar for the home.\n\n But oh, how sweet it was to take the love\nAnd awe of my young worshippers; to watch\nThe pure young gaze and hear the pure young voice\nMount in the hymn, or see the gay troop come\nWith the first dawn of day, brushing the dew\nFrom the unpolluted fields, and wake to song\nThe slumbering birds; strong in their innocence!\nI did not envy any goddess of all\nThe Olympian company her votaries!\nAh, happy days of old which now are gone!\nA memory and a dream! for now on earth\nI rule no longer o'er young willing hearts\nIn voluntary fealty, which should cease\nWhen Love, with fiery accents calling, woke\nThe slumbering soul; as now it should for those\nWho kneel before the purer, sadder shrine\nWhich has replaced my own. But ah! too oft,\nNot always, but too often, shut from life\nWithin pale life-long cloisters and the bars\nOf deadly convent prisons, year by year,\nAge after age, the white souls fade and pine\nWhich simulate the joyous service free\nOf those young worshippers. I would that I\nMight loose the captives' chain; or Herakles,\nWho was a mortal once.\"\n\n\n\n\n But he who stood\nColossal at my side:\n \"I toil no more\nOn earth, nor wield again the mighty strength\nWhich Zeus once gave me for the cure of ill.\nI have run my race; I have done my work; I rest\nFor ever from the toilsome days I gave\nTo the suffering race of men. And yet, indeed,\nMethinks they suffer still. Tyrannous growths\nAnd monstrous vex them still. Pestilence lurks\nAnd sweeps them down. Treacheries come, and wars,\nAnd slay them still. Vaulting ambition leaps\nAnd falls in bloodshed still. But I am here\nAt rest, and no man kneels to me, or keeps\nReverence for strength mighty yet unabused--\nStrength which is Power, God's choicest gift, more rare\nAnd precious than all Beauty, or the charm\nOf Wisdom, since it is the instrument\nThro' which all Nature works. For now the earth\nIs full of meekness, and a new God rules,\nTeaching strange precepts of humility\nAnd mercy and forgiveness. Yet I trow\nThere is no lack of bloodshed and deceit\nAnd groanings, and the tyrant works his wrong\nEven as of old; but now there is no arm\nLike mine, made strong by Zeus, to beat him down,\nHim and his wrong together. Yet I know\nI am not all discrowned. The strong brave souls,\nThe manly tender hearts, whom tale of wrong\nTo woman or child, to all weak things and small,\nFires like a blow; calling the righteous flush\nOf anger to the brow; knotting the cords\nOf muscle on the arm; with one desire\nTo hew the spoiler down, and make an end,\nAnd go their way for others; making light\nOf toil and pain, and too laborious days,\nAnd peril; beat unchanged, albeit they serve\nA Lord of meekness. For the world still needs\nIts champion as of old, and finds him still.\nNot always now with mighty sinews and thews\nLike mine, though still these profit, but keen brain\nAnd voice to move men's souls to love the right\nAnd hate the wrong; even tho' the bodily form\nBe weak, of giant strength, strong to assail\nThe hydra heads of Evil, and to slay\nThe monsters that now waste them: Ignorance,\nSelf-seeking, coward fears, the hate of Man,\nDisguised as love of God. These there are still\nWith task as hard as mine. For what was it\nTo strive with bodily ills, and do great deeds\nOf daring and of strength, and bear the crown,\nTo his who wages lifelong, doubtful strife\nWith an impalpable foe; conquering indeed,\nBut, ere he hears the paean or sees the pomp\nLaid low in the arms of Death? And tho' men cease\nTo worship at my shrine, yet not the less\nI hold, it is the toils I knew, the pains\nI bore for others, which have kept the heart\nOf manhood undefiled, and nerved the arm\nOf sacrifice, and made the martyr strong\nTo do and bear, and taught the race of men\nHow godlike 'tis to suffer thro' life, and die\nAt last for others' good!\"\n The strong god ceased,\nAnd stood a little, musing; blest indeed,\nBut bearing, as it seemed, some faintest trace\nOf earthly struggle still, not the gay ease\nOf the elder heaven-born gods.\n\n\n\n\n And then there came\nBeauty and Joy in one, bearing the form\nOf woman. How to reach with halting words\nThat infinite Perfection? All have known\nThe breathing marbles which the Greek has left\nWho saw her near, and strove to fix her charms,\nAnd exquisitely failed; or those fair forms\nThe Painter offered at a later shrine,\nAnd failed. Nay, what are words?--he knows it well\nWho loves, or who has loved.\n She with a smile\nPlaying around her rosy lips; as plays\nThe sunbeam on a stream:\n \"Shall I complain\nMen kneel to me no longer, taking to them\nSome graver, sterner worship; grown too wise\nFor fleeting joys of Love? Nay, Love is Youth,\nAnd still the world is young. Still shall I reign\nWithin the hearts of men, while Time shall last\nAnd Life renews itself. All Life that is,\nFrom the weak things of earth or sea or air,\nWhich creep or float for an hour; to godlike man--\nAll know me and are mine. I am the source\nAnd mother of all, both gods and men; the spring\nOf Force and Joy, which, penetrating all\nWithin the hidden depths of the Unknown,\nSets the blind seed of Being, and from the bond\nOf incomplete and dual Essences\nEvolves the harmony which is Life. The world\nWere dead without my rays, who am the Light\nWhich vivifies the world. Nay, but for me,\nThe universal order which attracts\nSphere unto sphere, and keeps them in their paths\nFor ever, were no more. All things are bound\nWithin my golden chain, whose name is Love.\n\n And if there be, indeed, some sterner souls\nOr sunk in too much learning, or hedged round\nBy care and greed, or haply too much rapt\nBy pale ascetic fervours, to delight\nTo kneel to me, the universal voice\nScorns them as those who, missing willingly\nThe good that Nature offers, dwell unblest\nWho might be blest, but would not. Every voice\nOf bard in every age has hymned me. All\nThe breathing marbles, all the heavenly hues\nOf painting, praise me. Even the loveless shades\nOf dim monastic cloisters show some gleam,\nTho' faint, of me. Amid the busy throngs\nOf cities reign I, and o'er lonely plains,\nBeyond the ice-fields of the frozen North,\nAnd the warm waves of undiscovered seas.\n\n For I was born out of the sparkling foam\nWhich lights the crest of the blue mystic wave,\nStirred by the wandering breath of Life's pure dawn\nFrom a young soul's calm depths. There, without voice,\nStretched on the breathing curve of a young breast,\nFluttering a little, fresh from the great deep\nOf life, and creamy as the opening rose,\nNaked I lie, naked yet unashamed,\nWhile youth's warm tide steals round me with a kiss,\nAnd floods each limb with fairness. Shame I know not--\nShame is for wrong, and not for innocence--\nThe veil which Error grasps to hide itself\nFrom the awful Eye. But I, I lie unveiled\nAnd unashamed--the livelong day I lie,\nThe warm wave murmuring to me; and, all night,\nHidden in the moonlit caves of happy Sleep,\nI dream until the morning and am glad.\n\n Why should I seek to clothe myself, and hide\nThe treasure of my Beauty? Shame may wait\nOn those for whom 'twas given. The sties of sense\nAre none of mine; the brutish, loveless wrong,\nThe venal charm, the simulated flush\nOf fleshly passion, they are none of mine,\nOnly corruptions of me. Yet I know\nThe counterfeit the stronger, since gross souls\nAnd brutish sway the earth; and yet I hold\nThat sense itself is sacred, and I deem\n'Twere better to grow soft and sink in sense\nThan gloat o'er blood and wrong.\n My kingdom is\nOver infinite grades of being. All breathing things,\nFrom the least crawling insect to the brute,\nFrom brute to man, confess me. Yet in man\nI find my worthiest worship. Where man is,\nA youth and a maid, a youth and a maid, nought else\nIs wanting for my temple. Every clime\nKneels to me--the long breaker swells and falls\nUnder the palms, mixed with the merry noise\nOf savage bridals, and the straight brown limbs\nKnow me, and over all the endless plains\nI reign, and by the tents on the hot sand\nAnd sea-girt isles am queen, and on the side\nOf silent mountains, where the white cots gleam\nUpon the green hill pastures, and no sound\nBut the thunder of the avalanche is borne\nTo the listening rocks around; and in fair lands\nWhere all is peace; where thro' the happy hush\nOf tranquil summer evenings, 'mid the corn,\nOr thro' cool arches of the gadding vines,\nThe lovers stray together hand in hand,\nHymning my praise; and by the stately streets\nOf echoing cities--over all the earth,\nPalace and cot, mountain and plain and sea,\nThe burning South, the icy North, the old\nAnd immemorial East, the unbounded West,\nNo new god comes to spoil me utterly--\nAll worship and are mine!\"\n With a sweet smile\nUpon her rosy mouth, the goddess ceased;\nAnd when she spake no more, the silence weighed\nAs heavy on my soul as when it takes\nSome gracious melody, and leaves the ear\nUnsatisfied and longing, till the fount\nOf sweetness springs again.\n\n\n\n\n But while I stood\nExpectant, lo! a fair pale form drew near\nWith front severe, and wide blue eyes which bore\nMild wisdom in their gaze. Great purity\nShone from her--not the young-eyed innocence\nOf her whom first I saw, but that which comes\nFrom wider knowledge, which restrains the tide\nOf passionate youth, and leads the musing soul\nBy the calm deeps of Wisdom. And I knew\nMy eyes had seen the fair, the virgin Queen,\nWho once within her shining Parthenon\nBeheld the sages kneel.\n She with clear voice\nAnd coldly sweet, yet with a softness too,\nAs doth befit a virgin:\n \"She does right\nTo boast her sway, my sister, seeing indeed\nThat all things are as by a double law,\nAnd from a double root the tree of Life\nSprings up to the face of heaven. Body and Soul,\nMatter and Spirit, lower joys of Sense\nAnd higher joys of Thought, I know that both\nBuild up the shrine of Being. The brute sense\nLeaves man a brute; but, winged with soaring thought\nMounts to high heaven. The unembodied spirit,\nDwelling alone, unmated, void of sense,\nIs impotent. And yet I hold there is,\nFar off, but not too far for mortal reach,\nA calmer height, where, nearer to the stars,\nThought sits alone and gazes with rapt gaze,\nA large-eyed maiden in a robe of white.\nWho brings the light of Knowledge down, and draws\nTo her pontifical eyes a bridge of gold,\nWhich spans from earth to heaven.\n For what were life,\nIf things of sense were all, for those large souls\nAnd high, which grudging Nature has shut fast\nWithin unlovely forms, or those from whom\nThe circuit of the rapid gliding years\nSteals the brief gift of beauty? Shall we hold,\nWith idle singers, all the treasure of hope\nIs lost with youth--swift-fleeting, treacherous youth,\nWhich fades and flies before the ripening brain\nCrowns life with Wisdom's crown? Nay, even in youth,\nIs it not more to walk upon the heights\nAlone--the cold free heights--and mark the vale\nLie breathless in the glare, or hidden and blurred\nBy cloud and storm; or pestilence and war\nCreep on with blood and death; while the soul dwells\nApart upon the peaks, outfronts the sun\nAs the eagle does, and takes the coming dawn\nWhile all the vale is dark, and knows the springs\nOf tiny rivulets hurrying from the snows,\nWhich soon shall swell to vast resistless floods,\nAnd feed the Oceans which divide the World?\n\n Oh, ecstasy! oh, wonder! oh, delight!\nWhich neither the slow-withering wear of Time,\nThat takes all else--the smooth and rounded cheek\nOf youth; the lightsome step; the warm young heart\nWhich beats for love or friend; the treasure of hope\nImmeasurable; the quick-coursing blood\nWhich makes it joy to be,--ay, takes them all\nAnd leaves us naught--nor yet satiety\nBorn of too full possession, takes or mars!\nOh, fair delight of learning! which grows great\nAnd stronger and more keen, for slower limbs,\nAnd dimmer eyes and loneliness, and loss\nOf lower good--wealth, friendship, ay, and Love--\nWhen the swift soul, turning its weary gaze\nFrom the old vanished joys, projects itself\nInto the void and floats in empty space,\nStriving to reach the mystic source of Things,\nThe secrets of the earth and sea and air,\nThe Law that holds the process of the suns,\nThe awful depths of Mind and Thought; the prime\nUnfathomable mystery of God!\n\n Is there, then, any who holds my worship cold\nAnd lifeless? Nay, but 'tis the light which cheers\nThe waning life! Love thou thy love, brave youth!\nCleave to thy love, fair maid! it is the Law\nWhich dominates the world, that bids ye use\nYour nature; but, when now the fuller tide\nSlackens a little, turn your calmer eyes\nTo the fair page of Knowledge. It is power\nI give, and power is precious. It is strength\nTo live four-square, careless of outward shows,\nAnd self-sufficing. It is clearer sight\nTo know the rule of life, the Eternal scheme;\nAnd, knowing it, to do and not to err,\nAnd, doing, to be blest.\"\n The calm voice soared\nHigher and higher to the close; the cold\nClear accents, fired as by a hidden fire,\nGlowed into life and tenderness, and throbbed\nAs with some spiritual ecstasy\nSweeter than that of Love.\n\n\n\n\n But as they died,\nI heard an ampler voice; and looking, marked\nA fair and gracious form. She seemed a Queen\nWho ruled o'er gods and men; the majesty\nOf perfect womanhood. No opening bud\nOf beauty, but the full consummate flower\nWas hers; and from her mild large eyes looked forth\nGentle command, and motherhood, and home,\nAnd pure affection. Awe and reverence\nO'erspread me, as I knew my eyes had looked\nOn sovereign Here, mother of the gods.\n\n She, with clear, rounded utterance, sweet and calm\n\"I know Love's fruit is good and fair to see\nAnd taste, if any gain it, and I know\nHow brief Life's Passion-tide, which when it ends\nMay change to thirst for Knowledge, and I know\nHow fair the realm of Mind, wherein the soul\nThirsting to know, wings its impetuous way\nBeyond the bounds of Thought; and yet I hold\nThere is a higher bliss than these, which fits\nA mortal life, compact of Body and Soul,\nAnd therefore double-natured--a calm path\nWhich lies before the feet, thro' common ways\nAnd undistinguished crowds of toiling men,\nAnd yet is hard to tread, tho' seeming smooth,\nAnd yet, tho' level, earns a worthier crown.\n\n For Knowledge is a steep which few may climb,\nWhile Duty is a path which all may tread.\nAnd if the Soul of Life and Thought be this,\nHow best to speed the mighty scheme, which still\nFares onward day by day--the Life of the World,\nWhich is the sum of petty lives, that live\nAnd die so this may live--how then shall each\nOf that great multitude of faithful souls\nWho walk not on the heights, fulfil himself,\nBut by the duteous Life which looks not forth\nBeyond its narrow sphere, and finds its work,\nAnd works it out; content, this done, to fall\nAnd perish, if Fate will, so the great Scheme\nGoes onward?\n Wherefore am I Queen in Heaven\nAnd Earth, whose realm is Duty, bearing rule\nMore constant and more wide than those whose words\nThou heardest last. Mine are the striving souls\nOf fathers toiling day by day obscure\nAnd unrewarded, save by their own hearts,\nMid wranglings of the Forum or the mart;\nWho long for joys of Thought, and yet must toil\nUnmurmuring thro' dull lives from youth to age;\nWho haply might have worn instead the crown\nOf Honour and of Fame: mine the fair mothers\nWho, for the love of children and of home,\nWhen passion dies, expend their toilful years\nIn loving labour sweetened by the sense\nOf Duty: mine the statesman who toils on\nThro' vigilant nights and days, guiding his State.\nYet finds no gratitude; and those white souls\nWho give themselves for others all their years\nIn trivial tasks of Pity. The fine growths\nOf Man and Time are mine, and spend themselves\nFor me and for the mystical End which lies\nBeyond their gaze and mine, and yet is good,\nTho' hidden from men and gods.\n For as the flower\nOf the tiger-lily bright with varied hues\nIs for a day, then fades and leaves behind\nFairness nor fruit, while the green tiny tuft\nSwells to the purple of the clustering grape\nOr golden waves of wheat; so lives of men\nWhich show most splendid; fade and are deceased\nAnd leave no trace; while those, unmarked, unseen,\nWhich no man recks of, rear the stately tree\nOf Knowledge, not for itself sought out, but found\nIn the dusty ways of life--a fairer growth\nThan springs in cloistered shades; and from the sum\nOf Duty, blooms sweeter and more divine\nThe fair ideal of the Race, than comes\nFrom glittering gains of Learning.\n Life, full life,\nFull-flowered, full-fruited, reared from homely earth,\nRooted in duty, and thro' long calm years\nBearing its load of healthful energies;\nStretching its arms on all sides; fed with dews\nOf cheerful sacrifice, and clouds of care,\nAnd rain of useful tears; warmed by the sun\nOf calm affection, till it breathes itself\nIn perfume to the heavens--this is the prize\nI hold most dear, more precious than the fruit\nOf Knowledge or of Love.\"\n The goddess ceased\nAs dies some gracious harmony, the child\nOf wedded themes which single and alone\nWere discords, but united breathe a sound\nSweet as the sounds of heaven.\n\n\n\n\n And then stood forth\nThe last of the gods I saw, the first in rank\nAnd dignity and beauty, the young god\nWho grows not old, the Light of Heaven and Earth,\nThe Worker from afar, who sends the fire\nOf inspiration to the bard and bathes\nThe world in hues of heaven--the golden link\nBetween High God and Man.\n With a sweet voice\nWhose every note was sweetest melody--\nThe melody has fled, the words remain--\nApollo sang:\n \"I know how fair the face\nOf Purity; I know the treasure of Strength;\nI know the charm of Love, the calmer grace\nOf Wisdom and of Duteous well-spent lives:\nAnd yet there is a loftier height than these.\n\n There is a Height higher than mortal thought;\nThere is a Love warmer than mortal love;\nThere is a Life which taketh not its hues\nFrom Earth or earthly things; and so grows pure\nAnd higher than the petty cares of men,\nAnd is a blessed life and glorified.\n\n Oh, white young souls, strain upward, upward still,\nEven to the heavenly source of Purity!\nBrave hearts, bear on and suffer! Strike for right,\nStrong arms, and hew down wrong! The world hath need\nOf all of you--the sensual wrongful world!\n\n Hath need of you, and of thee too, fair Love.\nOh, lovers, cling together! the old world\nIs full of Hate. Sweeten it; draw in one\nTwo separate chords of Life; and from the bond\nOf twin souls lost in Harmony create\nA Fair God dwelling with you--Love, the Lord!\n\n Waft yourselves, yearning souls, upon the stars;\nSow yourselves on the wandering winds of space;\nWatch patient all your days, if your eyes take\nSome dim, cold ray of Knowledge. The dull world\nHath need of you--the purblind, slothful world!\n\n Live on, brave lives, chained to the narrow round\nOf Duty; live, expend yourselves, and make\nThe orb of Being wheel onward steadfastly\nUpon its path--the Lord of Life alone\nKnows to what goal of Good; work on, live on:\nAnd yet there is a higher work than yours.\n\n To have looked upon the face of the Unknown\nAnd Perfect Beauty. To have heard the voice\nOf Godhead in the winds and in the seas.\nTo have known Him in the circling of the suns,\nAnd in the changeful fates and lives of men.\n\n To be fulfilled with Godhead as a cup\nFilled with a precious essence, till the hand\nOn marble or on canvas falling, leaves\nCelestial traces, or from reed or string\nDraws out faint echoes of the voice Divine\nThat bring God nearer to a faithless world.\n\n Or, higher still and fairer and more blest,\nTo be His seer, His prophet; to be the voice\nOf the Ineffable Word; to be the glass\nOf the Ineffable Light, and bring them down\nTo bless the earth, set in a shrine of Song.\n\n For Knowledge is a barren tree and bare,\nBereft of God, and Duty but a word,\nAnd Strength but Tyranny, and Love, Desire,\nAnd Purity a folly; and the Soul,\nWhich brings down God to Man, the Light to the world;\nHe is the Maker, and is blest, is blest!\"\n\n He ended, and I felt my soul grow faint\nWith too much sweetness.\n In a mist of grace\nThey faded, that bright company, and seemed\nTo melt into each other and shape themselves\nInto new forms, and those fair goddesses\nBlent in a perfect woman--all the calm\nHigh motherhood of Here, the sweet smile\nOf Cypris, fair Athene's earnest eyes,\nAnd the young purity of Artemis,\nBlent in a perfect woman; and in her arms,\nFused by some cosmic interlacing curves\nOf Beauty into a new Innocence,\nA child with eyes divine, a little child,\nA little child--no more.\n And those great gods\nOf Power and Beauty left a heavenly form\nStrong not to act, but suffer; fair and meek,\nNot proud and eager; with soft eyes of grace,\nNot bold with joyous youth; and for the fire\nOf song, and for the happy careless life,\nA sorrowful pilgrimage--changed, yet the same\nOnly Diviner far; and keeping still\nThe Life God-lighted and the sacrifice.\n\n And when these faded wholly, at my side,\nTho' hidden before by those too-radiant forms,\nI was aware once more of her, my guide\nPsyche, who had not left me, floating near\nOn golden wings; and all the plains of heaven\nWere left to us, me and my soul alone.\n\n Then when my thought revived again, I said\nWhispering, \"But Zeus I saw not, the prime Source\nAnd Sire of all the gods.\"\n And she, bent low\nWith downcast eyes: \"Nay. Thou hast seen of Him\nAll that thine eyes can bear, in those fair forms\nWhich are but parts of Him and are indeed\nAttributes of the Substance which supports\nThe Universe of Things--the Soul of the World,\nThe Stream which flows Eternal, from no Source\nInto no Sea, His Purity, His Strength,\nHis Love, His Knowledge, His unchanging rule\nOf Duty, thou hast seen, only a part\nAnd not the whole, being a finite mind\nToo weak for infinite thought; nor, couldst thou see\nAll of Him visible to mortal sight,\nWouldst thou see all His essence, since the gods--\nGlorified essences of Human mould,\nWho are but Zeus made visible to men--\nSee Him not wholly, only some thin edge\nAnd halo of His glory; nor know they\nWhat vast and unsuspected Universes\nLie beyond thought, where yet He rules, like those\nVast Suns we cannot see, round which our Sun\nMoves with his system, or those darker still\nWhich not even thus we know, but yet exist\nTho' no eye marks, nor thought itself, and lurk\nIn the awful Depths of Space; or that which is\nNot orbed as yet, but indiscrete, confused,\nSown thro' the void--the faintest gleam of light\nWhich sets itself to Be. And yet is He\nThere too, and rules, none seeing. But sometimes\nTo this our heaven, which is so like to earth\nBut nearer to Him, for awhile He shows\nSome gleam of His own brightness, and methinks\nIt cometh soon; but thou, if thou shouldst gaze,\nThy Life will rush to His--the tiny spark\nAbsorbed in that full blaze--and what there is\nOf mortal fall from thee.\"\n But I: \"Oh, soul,\nWhat holdeth Life more precious than to know\nThe Giver and to die?\"\n Then she: \"Behold!\nLook upward and adore.\"\n And with the word,\nUnhasting, undelaying, gradual, sure,\nThe floating cloud which clothed the hidden peak\nRose slow in awful silence, laying bare\nSpire after rocky spire, snow after snow,\nWhiter and yet more dreadful, till at last\nIt left the summit clear.\n Then with a bound,\nIn the twinkling of an eye, in the flash of a thought,\nI knew an Awful Effluence of Light,\nFormless, Ineffable, Perfect, burst on me\nAnd flood my being round, and take my life\nInto itself. I saw my guide bent down\nProstrate, her wings before her face; and then\nNo more.\n\n\n\n\n But when I woke from my long trance\nBehold, it was no longer Tartarus,\nNor Hades, nor Olympus, but the bare\nAnd unideal aspect of the fields\nWhich Spring not yet had kissed--the strange old Earth\nSo far more fabulous now than in the days\nWhen Man was young, nor yet the mystery\nOf Time and Fate transformed it. From the hills,\nThe long night fled at last, the unclouded sun,\nThe dear, fair sun, leapt upward swift, and smote\nMy sight with rays of gold, and pierced my brain\nWith too much light ere my entranced eyes\nCould hide themselves.\n And I was on the Earth\nDreaming the dream of Life again, as late\nI dreamed the dream of Death.\n Another day\nDawned on the race of men; another world;\nNew heavens, and new earth.\n\n\n\n\n And as I went\nAcross the lightening fields, upon a bank\nI saw a single snowdrop glance, and bring\nPromise of Spring; and keeping my old thought\nIn the old fair Hellenic vesture dressed,\nI felt myself a ghost, and seemed to be\nNow fair Adonis hasting to the arms\nOf his lost love--now sad Persephone\nRestored to mother earth--or that high shade\nOrpheus, who gave up heaven to save his love,\nAnd is rewarded--or young Marsyas,\nWho spent his youth and life for song, and yet\nWas happy though in torture--or the fair\nAnd dreaming youth I saw, who still awaits,\nHopeful, the unveiling heaven, when he shall see\nHis fair ideal love. The birds sang blithe;\nThere came a tinkling from the waking fold;\nAnd on the hillside from the cot a girl\nTripped singing with her pitcher. All the sounds\nAnd thoughts which still are beautiful--Youth, Song,\nDawn, Spring, Renewal--and my soul was glad\nOf all the freshness, and I felt again\nThe youth and spring-tide of the world, and thought,\nWhich feigned those fair and gracious fantasies.\n\n For every dawn that breaks brings a new world,\nAnd every budding bosom a new life;\nThese fair tales, which we know so beautiful,\nShow only finer than our lives to-day\nBecause their voice was clearer, and they found\nA sacred bard to sing them. We are pent,\nWho sing to-day, by all the garnered wealth\nOf ages of past song. We have no more\nThe world to choose from, who, where'er we turn,\nTread through old thoughts and fair. Yet must we sing--\nWe have no choice; and if more hard the toil\nIn noon, when all is clear, than in the fresh\nWhite mists of early morn, yet do we find\nAchievement its own guerdon, and at last\nThe rounder song of manhood grows more sweet\nThan the high note of youth.\n For Age, long Age!\nNought else divides us from the fresh young days\nWhich men call ancient; seeing that we in turn\nShall one day be Time's ancients, and inspire\nThe wiser, higher race, which yet shall sing\nBecause to sing is human, and high thought\nGrows rhythmic ere its close. Nought else there is\nBut that weird beat of Time, which doth disjoin\nTo-day from Hellas.\n How should any hold\nThose precious scriptures only old-world tales\nOf strange impossible torments and false gods;\nOf men and monsters in some brainless dream,\nCoherent, yet unmeaning, linked together\nBy some false skein of song?\n Nay! evermore,\nAll things and thoughts, both new and old, are writ\nUpon the unchanging human heart and soul.\nHas Passion still no prisoners? Pine there now\nNo lives which fierce Love, sinking into Lust,\nHas drowned at last in tears and blood--plunged down\nTo the lowest depths of Hell? Have not strong Will\nAnd high Ambition rotted into Greed\nAnd Wrong, for any, as of old, and whelmed\nThe struggling soul in ruin? Hell lies near\nAround us as does Heaven, and in the World,\nWhich is our Hades, still the chequered souls\nCompact of good and ill--not all accurst\nNor altogether blest--a few brief years\nTravel the little journey of their lives,\nThey know not to what end. The weary woman\nSunk deep in ease and sated with her life,\nMuch loved and yet unloving, pines to-day\nAs Helen; still the poet strives and sings.\nAnd hears Apollo's music, and grows dumb,\nAnd suffers, yet is happy; still the young\nFond dreamer seeks his high ideal love,\nAnd finds her name is Death; still doth the fair\nAnd innocent life, bound naked to the rock,\nRedeem the race; still the gay tempter goes\nAnd leaves his victim, stone; still doth pain bind\nMen's souls in closer links of lovingness,\nThan Death itself can sever; still the sight\nOf too great beauty blinds us, and we lose\nThe sense of earthly splendours, gaining Heaven.\n\n And still the skies are opened as of old\nTo the entranced gaze, ay, nearer far\nAnd brighter than of yore; and Might is there,\nAnd Infinite Purity is there, and high\nEternal Wisdom, and the calm clear face\nOf Duty, and a higher, stronger Love\nAnd Light in one, and a new, reverend Name,\nGreater than any and combining all;\nAnd over all, veiled with a veil of cloud,\nGod set far off, too bright for mortal eyes.\n\n And always, always, with each soul that comes\nAnd goes, comes that fair form which was my guide,\nHovering, with golden wings and eyes divine,\nAbove the bed of birth, the bed of death,\nStill breathing heavenly airs of deathless love.\n\n For while a youth is lost in soaring thought,\nAnd while a maid grows sweet and beautiful,\nAnd while a spring-tide coming lights the earth,\nAnd while a child, and while a flower is born,\nAnd while one wrong cries for redress and finds\nA soul to answer, still the world is young!\n\n\n\n\n THE END.\n\n\n\n\n Footnotes:\n [1] Euripides, \"Hippolytus,\" lines 70-78.\n [2] Virgil, \"AEneid,\" vi. 740.\n [3] See the Orphic Hymns.\n\n\n PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,\n LONDON AND BECCLES.\n\n\n [Transcriber's Notes:\n This text is hemistichia, in that the end of one stanza\n is vertically aligned with the start of the next stanza.\n Inconsistent Hyphenation and text retained.]","title":"The Epic of Hades, in Three Books","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":37112}