Shone toward them Aphroditê, not by firm,
Imperial footfalls, but in measureless
Procession, even as, wafted by her doves,
She kissed the faces of the yearning waves
From Cyprus to the high Thessalian mount,
Claiming her throne in Heaven; so light she stept,
Untended by her Graces; only he,
Erôs, th’ eternal child, with welcomings
Sprang forward to Arês, like a beam of light
Flashed from a coming brightness, ere it comes;
And the ambrosial mother to his glee
Joined her own joy, coy as she glided near
Arês, till Arês closed her in his arms
An instant, with the perfect love of Gods.
And the wide chamber gleamed with their delight,
And infinite tinkling laughters rippled through
Far halls, wherefrom no boding echoes came.
But when the passion of their meeting fell
To dalliance, the mighty lovers, sunk
Within those ivory couches golden-fleeced,
Made wassail at the wondrous board, and held
Sweet stolen converse till the middle night.
And soulless servitors came gliding in,
Handmaidens, wrought of gold, the marvellous work
Of lame Hêphæstos; having neither will,
Nor voice, yet bearing on their golden trays
Lush fruits and Cyprian wine, and, intermixt,
Olympian food and nectar, earth with heaven.
These Erôs and Alectryôn took therefrom,
And placed before the lovers; and, meanwhile,
Melodious breathings from unfingered lutes,
Warblings from unseen nightingales, and songs
From lips uncrimsoned, scattered music round.
So fled the light-shod moments, hour by hour,
While the grim husband clanged upon his forge
In lurid caverns of the distant isle,
Unboding, and unheeded in his home,
Save with a scornful jest. Till now the crown
Of Artemis shone at her topmost height:
Then rose the impassioned lovers, with rapt eyes
Fixed each on each, and passed beyond the hall,
Through curtains of that chamber whence all winds
Of love flow ever toward the fourfold Earth;
At whose dim vestibule Alectryôn
Disposed him, mindful of his master’s word;
But Erôs, heavy-eyed, long since had slept,
Deep-muffled in the softness of his plumes.
And all was silence in the House of Fire.
Only Alectryôn, through brazen bars,
Watched the blue East for Eôs, she whose torch
Should warn him of the coming of the Sun.
Even thus he kept his vigils; but, ere half
Her silvery downward path the Huntress knew,
His senses by that rich immortal food
Grew numbed with languor. Then the shadowy hall’s
Deep columns glimmered, interblent with dreams,—
Thick forests, running waters, darkling caves
Of Thrace; and half in thought he grasped the bow;
Hunted once more within his native wilds,
Cheering the hounds; until before his eyes
The drapery of all nearer pictures fell,
And his limbs drooped. Whereat the imp of Sleep,
Hypnos, who hid him at the outer gate,
Slid in with silken-sandalled feet, and laid
A subtle finger on his lids. And so,
Crouched at the warder-post, Alectryôn slept.
Meanwhile the God and Goddess, recking nought
Of evil, trusting to the faithful boy,
Sank satiate in the calm of trancéd rest.
And past the sleeping warder, deep within
The portals of that chamber whence all winds
Of love flow ever toward the fourfold Earth,
Hypnos kept on, walking, yet half afloat
In the sweet air; and fluttering with cool wings
Above their couch fanned the reposeful pair
To slumber. Thus, a careless twilight hour,
Unknowing Eôs and her torch, they slept.
Ill-fated rest! Awake, ye fleet-winged Loves,
Your mistress! Eôs, rouse the sleeping God,
And warn him of the coming of the Day!
Alectryôn, wake! In vain: Eôs swept by,
Radiant, a blushing finger on her lips.
In vain! Close on her flight, from furthest East,
The peering Hêlios drove his lambent car,
Casting the tell-tale beams on earth and sky,
Until Olympos laughed within his light,
And all the House of Fire grew roofed with gold;
And through its brazen windows Hêlios gazed
Upon the sleeping lovers: thence away
To Lemnos flashed, across the rearward sea,
A messenger, from whom the vengeful smith,
Hêphæstos, learned the story of his wrongs;
Whence afterward rude scandal spread through Heaven.
But they, the lovers, startled from sweet sleep
By garish Day, stood timorous and mute,
Even as a regal pair, the hart and hind,
When first the keynote of the clarion horn
Pierces their covert, and the deep-mouthed hound
Bays, following on the trail; then, with small pause
For amorous partings, sped in diverse ways.
She, Aphroditê, clothed in pearly cloud,
Dropt from Olympos to the eastern shore;
Thence floated, half in shame, half laughter-pleased,
Southward across the blue Ægæan sea,
That had a thousand little dimpling smiles
At her discomfort, and a thousand eyes
To shoot irreverent glances. But her conch
Passed the Eubœan coasts, and softly on
By rugged Dêlos, and the gentler slope
Of Naxos, to Icarian waves serene;
Thence sailed betwixt fair Rhodos, on the left,
And windy Carpathos, until it touched
Cyprus; and soon the conscious Goddess found
Her bower in the hollow of the isle;
And wondering nymphs in their white arms received
Their white-armed mistress, bathing her fair limbs
In fragrant dews, twining her lucent hair
With roses, and with kisses soothing her;
Till, glowing in fresh loveliness, she sank
To stillness, tended in the sacred isle,
And hid herself awhile from all her peers.
But angry Arês faced the treacherous Morn,
Spurning the palace tower; nor looked behind,
Disdainful of himself and secret joys
That stript him to the laughter of the Gods.
Toward the East he made, and overhung
The broad Thermaic gulf; then, shunning well
The crags of Lemnos, by Mount Athôs stayed
A moment, mute; thence hurtled sheer away,
Across the murmuring Northern sea, whose waves
Are swollen in billows ruffled with the cuffs
Of endless winds; so reached the shores of Thrace,
And spleen pursued him in the tangled wilds.
Hither at eventide remorseful came
Alectryôn; but the indignant God,
With harsh revilings, changed him to the Cock,
That evermore, remembering his fault,
Heralds with warning voice the coming Day.
THE TEST.
Seven women loved him. When the wrinkled pall
Enwrapt him from their unfulfilled desire
(Death, pale, triumphant rival, conquering all,)
They came, for that last look, around his pyre.
One strewed white roses, on whose leaves were hung
Her tears, like dew; and in discreet attire
Warbled her tuneful sorrow. Next among
The group, a fair-haired virgin moved serenely,
Whose saintly heart no vain repinings wrung,
Reached the calm dust, and there, composed and queenly,
Gazed, but the missal trembled in her hand:
“That’s with the past,” she said, “nor may I meanly
Give way to tears!” and passed into the land.
The third hung feebly on the portals, moaning,
With whitened lips, and feet that stood in sand,
So weak they seemed,—and all her passion owning.
The fourth, a ripe, luxurious maiden, came,
Half for such homage to the dead atoning
By smiles on one who fanned a later flame
In her slight soul, her fickle steps attended.
The fifth and sixth were sisters; at the same
Wild moment both above the image bended,
And with immortal hatred each on each
Glared, and therewith her exultation blended,
To know the dead had ’scaped the other’s reach!
Meanwhile, through all the words of anguish spoken,
One lowly form had given no sound of speech,
Through all the signs of woe, no sign nor token;
But when they came to bear him to his rest,
They found her beauty paled,—her heart was broken:
And in the Silent Land his shade confest
That she, of all the seven, loved him best.
THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW.
Once more on the fallow hillside, as of old, I lie at rest
For an hour, while the sunshine trembles through the walnut-tree to
the west,—
Shakes on the rocks and fragrant ferns, and the berry-bushes around;
And I watch, as of old, the cattle graze in the lower pasture-ground.
Of the Saxon months of blossom, when the merle and mavis sing,
And a dust of gold falls everywhere from the soft mid-summer’s wing,
I only know from my poets, or from pictures that hither come,
Sweet with the smile of the hawthorn-hedge and the scent of the
harvest-home.
But July in our own New England—I bask myself in its prime,
As one in the light of a face he loves, and has not seen for a time!
Again the perfect blue of the sky; the fresh green woods; the call
Of the crested jay; the tangled vines that cover the frost-thrown wall:
Sounds and shadows remembered well! the ground-bee’s droning hum;
The distant musical tree-tops; the locust beating his drum;
And the ripened July warmth, that seems akin to a fire which stole,
Long summers since, through the thews of youth, to soften and harden
my soul.
Here it was that I loved her—as only a stripling can,
Who doats on a girl that others know no mate for the future man;
It was well, perhaps, that at last my pride and honor outgrew her art,
That there came an hour, when from broken chains I fled—with a broken
heart.
’Twas well: but the fire would still flash up in sharp, heat-lightning
gleams,
And ever at night the false, fair face shone into passionate dreams;
The false, fair form, through many a year, was somewhere close at my
side,
And crept, as by right, to my very arms and the place of my patient
bride.
Bride and vision have passed away, and I am again alone;
Changed by years; not wiser, I think, but only different grown:
Not so much nearer wisdom is a man than a boy, forsooth,
Though, in scorn of what has come and gone, he hates the ways of his
youth.
In seven years, I have heard it said, a soul shall change its frame;
Atom for atom, the man shall be the same, yet not the same;
The last of the ancient ichor shall pass away from his veins,
And a new-born light shall fill the eyes whose earlier lustre wanes.
In seven years, it is written, a man shall shift his mood;
Good shall seem what was evil, and evil the thing that was good:
Ye that welcome the coming and speed the parting guest,
Tell me, O winds of summer! am I not half-confest?
For along the tide of this mellow month new fancies guide my helm,
Another form has entered my heart as rightful queen of the realm;
From under their long black lashes new eyes—half-blue, half-gray—
Pierce through my soul, to drive the ghost of the old love quite away.
Shadow of years! at last it sinks in the sepulchre of the past,—
A gentle image and fair to see; but was my passion so vast?
“For you,” I said, “be you false or true, are ever life of my life!”
Was it myself or another who spoke, and asked her to be his wife?
For here, on the dear old hillside, I lie at rest again,
And think with a quiet self-content of all the passion and pain,
Of the strong resolve and the after-strife; but the vistas round me seem
So little changed that I hardly know if the past is not a dream.
Can I have sailed, for seven years, far out in the open world;
Have tacked and drifted here and there, by eddying currents whirled;
Have gained and lost, and found again; and now, for a respite, come
Once more to the happy scenes of old, and the haven I voyaged from?
Blended, infinite murmurs of True Love’s earliest song,
Where are you slumbering out of the heart that gave you echoes so long?
But chords that have ceased to vibrate the swell of an ancient strain
May thrill with a soulful music when rightly touched again.
Rock and forest and meadow,—landscape perfect and true!
O, if ourselves were tender and all unchangeful as you,
I should not now be dreaming of seven years that have been,
Nor bidding old love good by forever, and letting the new love in!
ESTELLE.
“How came he mad?”—HAMLET.
Of all the beautiful demons who fasten on human hearts
To fetter the bodies and souls of men with exquisite, mocking arts,
The cruellest, and subtlest, and fairest to mortal sight,
Is surely a woman called Estelle, who tortures me day and night.
The first time that I saw her she passed with sweet lips mute,
As if in scorn of the vacant praise of those who made her suit;
A hundred lustres flashed and shone as she rustled through the crowd,
And a passion seized me for her there,—so passionless and proud.
The second time that I saw her she met me face to face;
Her bending beauty answered my bow in a tremulous moment’s space;
With an upward glance that instantly fell she read me through and
through,
And found in me something worth her while to idle with and subdue;
Something, I know not what: perhaps the spirit of eager youth,
That named her a queen of queens at once, and loved her in very truth;
That threw its pearl of pearls at her feet, and offered her, in a breath,
The costliest gift a man can give from his cradle to his death.
The third time that I saw her—this woman called Estelle—
She passed her milk-white arm through mine and dazzled me with her spell;
A blissful fever thrilled my veins, and there, in the moon-beams white,
I yielded my soul to the fierce control of that maddening delight!
And at many a trysting afterwards she wove my heart-strings round
Her delicate fingers, twisting them, and chanting low as she wound;
The rune she sang rang sweet and clear like the chime of a witch’s bell;
Its echo haunts me even now, with the word, Estelle! Estelle!
Ah, then, as a dozen before me had, I lay at last at her feet,
And she turned me off with a calm surprise when her triumph was all
complete:
It made me wild, the stroke which smiled so pitiless out of her eyes,
Like lightning fallen, in clear noonday, from cloudless and bluest skies!
The whirlwind followed upon my brain and beat my thoughts to rack:
Who knows the many a month I lay ere memory floated back?
Even now, I tell you, I wonder whether this woman called Estelle
Is flesh and blood, or a beautiful lie, sent up from the depths of hell.
For at night she stands where the pallid moon streams into this grated
cell,
And only gives me that mocking glance when I speak her name—_Estelle_!
With the old resistless longing often I strive to clasp her there,
But she vanishes from my open arms and hides I know not where.
And I hold that if she were human she could not fly like the wind,
But her heart would flutter against my own, in spite of her scornful
mind:
Yet, oh! she is not a phantom, since devils are not so bad
As to haunt and torture a man long after their tricks have made him mad!
EDGED TOOLS.
Well, Helen, quite two years have flown
Since that enchanted, dreamy night,
When you and I were left alone,
And wondered whether they were right
Who said that each the other loved;
And thus debating, yes and no,
And half in earnest, as it proved,
We bargained to pretend ’twas so.
Two sceptic children of the world,
Each with a heart engraven o’er
With broken love-knots, quaintly curled,
Of hot flirtations held before;
Yet, somehow, either seemed to find,
This time, a something more akin
To that young, natural love,—the kind
Which comes but once, and breaks us in.
What sweetly stolen hours we knew,
And frolics perilous as gay!
Though lit in sport, Love’s taper grew
More bright and burning day by day.
We knew each heart was only lent,
The other’s ancient scars to heal:
The very thought a pathos blent
With all the mirth we tried to feel.
How bravely, when the time to part
Came with the wanton season’s close,
Though nature with our mutual art
Had mingled more than either chose,
We smothered Love, upon the verge
Of folly, in one last embrace,
And buried him without a dirge,
And turned, and left his resting-place.
Yet often (tell me what it means!)
His spirit steals upon me here,
Far, far away from all the scenes
His little lifetime held so dear;
He comes: I hear a mystic strain
In which some tender memory lies;
I dally with your hair again;
I catch the gleam of violet eyes.
Ah, Helen! how have matters been
Since those rude obsequies, with you?
Say, is my partner in the sin
A sharer of the penance too?
Again the vision’s at my side:
I drop my head upon my breast,
And wonder if he really died,
And why his spirit will not rest.
THE SWALLOW.
Had I, my love declared, the tireless wing
That wafts the swallow to her northern skies,
I would not, sheer within the rich surprise
Of full-blown Summer, like the swallow, fling
My coyer being; but would follow Spring,
Melodious consort, as she daily flies,
Apace with suns, that o’er new woodlands rise
Each morn—with rains her gentler stages bring.
My pinions should beat music with her own;
Her smiles and odors should delight me ever,
Gliding, with measured progress, from the zone
Where golden seas receive the mighty river,
Unto yon lichened cliffs, whose ridges sever
Our Norseland from the arctic surge’s moan.
REFUGE IN NATURE.
When the rude world’s relentless war has pressed
Fiercely upon them, and the hot campaign
Closes with battles lost, some yield their lives,
Or linger in the ruins of the fight—
Unwise, and comprehending not their fate,
Nor gathering that affluent recompense
Which the all-pitying Earth has yet in store.
Surely such men have never known the love
Of Nature; nor had recourse to her fount
Of calm delights, whose influences heal
The wounded spirits of her vanquished sons;
Nor ever—in those fruitful earlier days,
Wherein her manifest forms do most enrich
Our senses void of subtler cognizance—
Wandered in summer fields, climbed the free hills,
Pursued the murmuring music of her streams,
And found the borders of her sounding sea.
But thou—when, in the multitudinous lists
Of traffic, all thine own is forfeited
At some wild hazard, or by weakening drains
Poured from thee; or when, striving for the meed
Of place, thou failest, and the lesser man
By each ignoble method wins thy due;
When the injustice of the social world
Environs thee; when ruthless public scorn,
Black slander, and the meannesses of friends
Have made the bustling practice of the world
To thee a discord and a mockery;
Or even if that last extremest pang
Be thine, and, added to such other woes,
The loss of that forever faithful love
Which else had balanced all: the putting out,
Untimely, of the light in dearest eyes;—
At such a time thou well may’st count the days
Evil, and for a season quit the field;
Yet not surrendering all human hopes,
Nor the rich physical life which still remains
God’s boon and thy sustainer. It were base
To join alliance with the hosts of Fate
Against thyself, crowning their victory
By loose despair, or seeking rest in death.
More wise, betake thee to those sylvan haunts
Thou knewest when young, and, once again a child,
Let their perennial loveliness renew
Thy natural faith and childhood’s heart serene.
Forgetting all the toilsome pilgrimage,
Awake from strife and shame, as from a dream
Dreamed by a boy, when under waving trees
He sleeps and dreams a languid afternoon.
Once more from these harmonious beauties gain
Repose and ransom, and a power to feel
The immortal gladness of inanimate things.
There is the mighty Mother, ever young
And garlanded, and welcoming her sons.
There are her thousand charms to soothe thy pain,
And merge thy little, individual woe
In the broad health and happy fruitfulness
Of all that smiles around thee. For thy sake
The woven arches of her forests breathe
Perpetual anthems, and the blue skies smile
Between, to heal thee with their infinite hope.
There are her crystal waters: lave thy brows,
Hot with long turmoil, in their purity;
Wash off the battle-dust from those poor limbs
Blood-stained and weary. Holy sleep shall come
Upon thee; waking, thou shalt find in bloom
The lilies, fresh as in the olden days;
And once again, when Night unveils her stars,
Thou shalt have sight of their high radiance,
And feel the old, mysterious awe subdue
The phantoms of thy pain.
And from that height
A voice shall whisper of the faith, through which
A man may act his part until the end.
Anon thy ancient yearning for the fight
May come once more, tempered by poise of chance,
And guided well with all experience.
Invisible hands may gird thy armor on,
And Nature put new weapons in thy hands,
Sending thee out to try the world again,—
Perchance to conquer, being cased in mail
Of double memories; knowing smaller griefs
Can add no sorrow to the woful past;
And that, howbeit thou mayest stand or fall,
Earth proffers men her refuge everywhere,
And Heaven’s promise is for aye the same.
MONTAGU.
Queen Katherine of Arragon
In gray Kimbolton dwelt,
A joyous bride, ere bluff King Hal
To Anne’s beauty knelt.
Still in her haughty Spanish eyes
Their childhood’s lustre shone,
That lit with love two royal hearts,
And won the English throne.
From gray Kimbolton’s castle-gate
She rode, each summer’s day,
And blithely led the greenwood chase
With hawk and hound away.
And ever handsome Montagu,
Her Master of the Horse,
To guard his mistress kept her pace
O’er heather, turf, and gorse.
O, who so brave as Montagu
To leap the hedges clear!
And who so fleet as he to find
The coverts of the deer!
And who so wild as Montagu,
To seek his sovereign’s love!
More hopeless than a child, who craves
The brightest star above.
Day after day her presence fed
The fever at his heart;
Yet loyally the young knight scorned
To play a traitor’s part.
Only, when at her palfrey’s side
He bowed him by command,
Lightening her footfall to the earth,
He pressed her dainty hand;
A tender touch, as light as love,
Soft as his heart’s desire;
But aye, in Katherine’s artless blood,
It woke no answering fire.
King Hal to gray Kimbolton came
Erelong, and true love’s sign,
Unused in colder Arragon,
She prayed him to divine:
“Canst tell me, Sire,” she said, “what mean
The gentry of your land,
When softly, thus, and thus, they take
And press a lady’s hand?”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Hal, “but tell me, Chick,
Each answering in course,
Do any press your hand?” “O yes,
My Master of the Horse.”
Off to the wars her gallant went,
And pushed the foremost dikes,
And gashed his fair young form against
A score of Flemish pikes.
Heart’s blood ebbed fast; but Montagu,
Dipping a finger, wove
These red words in his shield: “Dear Queen,
I perish of your love!”
Kimbolton, after many a year,
Again met Katherine’s view:
The banished wife, with half a sigh,
Remembered Montagu.
WILD WINDS WHISTLE.
1. Sir Ulric a Southern dame has wed;
_Wild winds whistle and snow is come_;
He has brought her home to his bower and bed.
_Hither and thither the birds fly home._
Her hair is darker than thick of night;
_Wild winds whistle, &c._
Her hands are fair, and her step is light.
_Hither and thither, &c._
From out his castel in the North
Sir Ulric to hunt rode lightly forth.
Three things he left her for good or ill,—
A bonny bird that should sing at will,
With carol sweeter than silver bell,
Day and night in the old castel;
A lithe little page to gather flowers;
And a crystal dial to mark the hours.
2. Lady Margaret watched Sir Ulric speed
Away to the chase on his faithful steed.
From morning till night, the first day long,
She sat and listened the bonny bird’s song.
The second day long, with fingers fair,
She curled and combed her page’s hair.
The third day’s sun rose up on high;
By the dial she was seated nigh:
She loathed the bird and the page’s face,
And counted the shadow’s creeping pace.
3. The strange knight drew his bridle-rein;
He looked at the sky and he looked at the plain.
“O lady!” he said, “’twas a sin and shame
To leave for the chase so fair a dame.
“O lady!” he said, “we two will flee
To the blithesome land of Italie;
“There the orange grows, and the fruitful vine,
And a bower of myrtle shall be thine.”
He has taken her hand and kissed her mouth:
Now Ho! sing Ho! for the sunny South.
He has kissed her mouth and clasped her waist:
Now, good gray steed, make haste, make haste!
4. Sir Ulric back from the chase has come,
And sounds the horn at his castel-home.
Or ever he drew his bridle-rein,
He saw the dial split in twain;
The bonny blithe bird was stark and dead,
And the lithe little page hung down his head.
The lithe little page hung down his head;
_Wild winds whistle and snow is come_;
“O where, Sir Page, has my lady fled?”
_Hither and thither the birds fly home._
PETER STUYVESANT’S NEW YEAR’S CALL.
1 JAN. A. C. 1661.
Where nowadays the Battery lies,
New York had just begun,
A new-born babe, to rub its eyes,
In Sixteen Sixty-One.
They christened it Nieuw Amsterdam,
Those burghers grave and stately,
And so, with schnapps and smoke and psalm,
Lived out their lives sedately.