Walked past the idle groups at gossipry,
Sought you, and laid my hand upon your wrist,
Drew you apart, and with no shaken voice
Spoke, while the swift, hard strokes my heart out-beat
Seemed growing audible, ‘Milanion,
I am your wife for freedom and fair deeds:
Choose: am I such an one a man could love?
What need you? Some soft song to soothe your life,
Or a clear cry at daybreak?’ And I ceased.
How deemed you that first moment? That the Gods
Had changed my heart? That I since morn had grown
Haunter of Aphrodite’s golden shrine,
Had kneeled before the victress, vowed my vow,
Besought her pardon, ‘Aphrodite, grace!
Accept the rueful Atalanta’s gifts,
Rose wreaths and snow-white doves’?
In the dim woods
There is a sacred place, a solitude
Within their solitude, a heart of strength
Within their strength. The rocks are heaped around
A goblet of great waters ever fed
By one swift stream which flings itself in air
With all the madness, mirth and melody
Of twenty rivulets gathered in the hills
Where might escapes in gladness. Here the trees
Strike deeper roots into the heart of earth,
And hold more high communion with the heavens;
Here in the hush of noon the silence broods
More full of vague divinity; the light
Slow-changing and the shadows as they shift
Seem characters of some inscrutable law,
And one who lingers long will almost hope
The secret of the world may be surprised
Ere he depart. It is a haunt beloved
Of Artemis, the echoing rocks have heard
Her laughter and her lore, and the brown stream
Flashed, smitten by the splendour of her limbs.
Hither I came; here turned, and dared confront
Pursuing thoughts; here held my life at gaze,
If ruined at least to clear loose wrack away,
Study its lines of bare dismantlement,
And shape a strict despair. With fixed hard lips,
Dry-eyed, I set my face against the stream
To deal with fate; the play of woven light
Gleaming and glancing on the rippled flood
Grew to a tyranny; and one visioned face
Would glide into the circle of my sight,
Would glide and pass away, so glad, so great
The imminent joy it brought seemed charged with fear.
I rose, and paced from trunk to trunk, brief track
This way and that; at least my will maintained
Her law upon my limbs; they needs must turn
At the appointed limit. A keen cry
Rose from my heart--‘Toils of the world grow strong,
‘Yield strength, yield strength to rend them to my hands;
‘Be thou apparent, Queen! in dubious ways
‘Lo my feet fail; cry down the forest glade,
‘Pierce with thy voice the tangle and dark boughs,
‘Call, and I follow thee.’
What things made up
Memorial for the Presence of the place
Thenceforth to hold? Only the torrent’s leap
Endlessly vibrating, monotonous rhythm
Of the swift footstep pacing to and fro,
Only a soul’s reiterated cry
Under the calm, controlling, ancient trees,
And tutelary ward and watch of heaven
Felt through steep inlets which the upper airs
Blew wider.
On the grass at last I lay
Seized by a peace divine, I know not how;
Passive, yet never so possessed of power,
Strong, yet content to feel not use my strength
Sustained a babe upon the breasts of life
Yet armed with adult will, a shining spear.
O strong deliverance of the larger law
Which strove not with the less! impetuous youth
Caught up in ampler force of womanhood!
Co-operant ardours of joined lives! the calls
Of heart to heart in chase of strenuous deeds!
Virgin and wedded freedom not disjoined,
And loyal married service to my Queen!
Husband, have lesser gains these seven good years
Been yours because you chose no gracious maid
Whose hands had woven in the women’s room
Many fair garments, while her dreaming heart
Had prescience of the bridal; one whose claims,
Tender exactions feminine, had pleased
Fond husband, one whose gentle gifts had pleased,
Soft playful touches, little amorous words,
Untutored thoughts that widened up toward yours,
With trustful homage of uplifted eyes,
And sweetest sorrows lightly comforted?
Have we two challenged each the other’s heart
Too highly? Have our joys been all too large,
No gleaming gems on finger or on neck
A man may turn and touch caressingly,
But ampler than this heaven we stand beneath--
Wide wings of Presences august? Our lives,
Were it not better they had stood apart
A little space, letting the sweet sense grow
Of distance bridged by love? Had that full calm,--
I may not question since you call it true,--
Found in some rightness of a woman’s will,
Been gladder through perturbing touch of doubt,
By brief unrest made exquisitely aware
Of all its dear possession? Have our eyes
Met with too calm directness--soul to soul
Turned with the unerroneous long regard,
Until no stuff remains for dreams to weave,
Nought but unmeasured faithfulness, clear depths
Pierced by the sun, and yielding to the eye
Which searches, yet not fathoms? Did my lips
Lay on your lips too great a pledge of love
With awe too rapturous? Teach me how I fail,
Recount what things your life has missed through me,
Appease me with new needs; my strength is weak
Trembling toward perfect service.”
In her eyes
Tears stood and utterance ceased. Wondering the boy
Parthenopœus stopped his play and gazed.
EUROPA
“He stood with head erect fronting the herd;
At the first sight of him I knew the God
And had no fear. The grass is sweet and long
Up the east land backed by a pale blue heaven:
Grey, shining gravel shelves toward the sea
Which sang and sparkled; between these he stood,
Beautiful, with imperious head, firm foot,
And eyes resolved on present victory,
Which swerved not from the full acquist of joy,
Calmly triumphant. Did I see at all
The creamy hide, deep dewlap, little horns,
Or hear the girls describe them? I beheld
Zeus, and the law of my completed life.
Therefore the ravishment of some great calm
Possessed me, and I could not basely start
Or scream; if there was terror in my breast
It was to see the inevitable bliss
In prone descent from heaven; apart I lived
Held in some solitude, intense and clear,
Even while amid the frolic girls I stooped
And praised the flowers we gathered, they and I,
Pink-streaked convolvulus the warm sand bears,
Orchids, dark poppies with the crumpled leaf,
And reeds and giant rushes from a pond
Where the blue dragon-fly shimmers and shifts.
All these were notes of music, harmonies
Fashioned to underlie a resonant song,
Which sang how no more days of flower-culling
Little Europa must desire; henceforth
The large needs of the world resumed her life,
So her least joy must be no trivial thing,
But ordered as the motion of the stars,
Or grand incline of sun-flower to the sun.
By this the God was near; my soul waxed strong,
And wider orbed the vision of the world
As fate drew nigh. He stooped, all gentleness,
Inviting touches of the tender hands,
And wore the wreaths they twisted round his horns
In lordly-playful wise, me all this while
Summoning by great mandates at my heart,
Which silenced every less authentic call,
Away, away, from girlhood, home, sweet friends,
The daily dictates of my mother’s will,
Agenor’s cherishing hand, and all the ways
Of the calm household. I would fain have felt
Some ruth to part from these, the tender ties
Severing with thrills of passion. Can I blame
My heart for light surrender of things dear,
And hardness of a little selfish soul?
Nay: the decree of joy was over me,
There was the altar, I, the sacrifice
Foredoomed to life, not death; the victim bound
Looked for the stroke, the world’s one fact for her,
The blissful consummation: straight to this
Her course had tended from the hour of birth.
Even till this careless morn of maidenhood
A sudden splendour changed to life’s high noon:
For this my mother taught me gracious things,
My father’s thoughts had dealt with me, for this
The least flower blossomed, the least cloud went by,
All things conspired for this; the glad event
Summed my full past and held it, as the fruit
Holds the fair sequence of the bud and flower
In soft matureness.
Now he bent the knee;
I never doubted of my part to do,
Nor lingered idly, since to veil command
In tender invitation pleased my lord;
I sat, and round his neck one arm I laid
Beyond all chance secure. Whether my weight
Or the soft pressure of the encircling arm
Quickened in him some unexpected bliss
I know not, but his flight was one steep rush.
O uncontrollable and joyous rage!
O splendour of the multitudinous sea!
Swift foam about my feet, the eager stroke
Of the strong swimmer, new sea-creatures brave,
And uproar of blown conch, and shouting lips
Under the open heaven; till Crete rose fair
With steadfast shining peak, and promontories.
Shed not a leaf, O plane-tree, not a leaf,
Let sacred shadow, and slumbrous sound remain
Alway, where Zeus looked down upon his bride.”
ANDROMEDA
“This is my joy--that when my soul had wrought
Her single victory over fate and fear,
He came, who was deliverance. At the first,
Though the rough-bearded fellows bruised my wrists
Holding them backwards while they drove the bolts,
And stared around my body, workman-like,
I did not argue nor bewail; but when
The flash and dip of equal oars had passed,
And I was left a thing for sky and sea
To encircle, gaze on, wonder at, not save--
The clear resolve which I had grasped and held,
Slipped as a dew-drop slips from some flower-cup
O’erweighted, and I longed to cry aloud
One sharp, great cry, and scatter the fixed will,
In fond self-pity. Have you watched night-long,
Above a face from which the life recedes,
And seen death set his seal before the dawn?
You do not shriek and clasp the hands, but just
When morning finds the world once more all good
And ready for wave’s leap and swallow’s flight,
There comes a drift from undiscovered flowers,
A drone of sailing bee, a dance of light
Among the awakened leaves, a touch, a tang,
A nameless nothing, and the world turns round,
And the full soul runs over, and tears flow,
And it is seen a piteous thing to die.
So fared it there with me; the ripple ran
Crisp to my feet; the tufted sea-pink bloomed
From a cleft rock, I saw the insects drop
From blossom into blossom; and the wide
Intolerable splendour of the sea,
Calm in a liquid hush of summer morn,
Girdled me, and no cloud relieved the sky.
I had refused to drink the proffered wine
Before they bound me, and my strength was less
Than needful: yet the cry escaped not, yet
My purpose had not fallen abroad in ruin;
Only the perfect knowledge I had won
Of things which fate decreed deserted me,
The vision I had held of life and death
Was blurred by some vague mist of piteousness,
Nor could I lean upon a steadfast will.
Therefore I closed both eyes resolved to search
Backwards across the abysm, and find Death there,
And hold him with my hand, and scan his face
By my own choice, and read his strict intent
On lip and brow,--not hunted to his feet
And cowering slavewise; ‘Death,’ I whispered, ‘Death,’
Calling him whom I needed: and he came.
Wherefore record the travail of the soul
Through darkness to grey light, the cloudy war,
The austere calm, the bitter victory?
It seemed that I had mastered fate, and held,
Still with shut eyes, the passion of my heart
Compressed, and cast the election of my will
Into that scale made heavy with the woe
Of all the world, and fair relinquished lives.
Suddenly the broad sea was vibrated,
And the air shaken with confused noise
Not like the steadfast plash and creak of oars,
And higher on my foot the ripple slid.
The monster was abroad beneath the sun.
This therefore was the moment--could my soul
Sustain her trial? And the soul replied
A swift, sure ‘Yes’: yet must I look forth once,
Confront my anguish, nor drop blindly down
From horror into horror: and I looked--
O thou deliverance, thou bright victory
I saw thee, and was saved! The middle air
Was cleft by thy impatience of revenge,
Thy zeal to render freedom to things bound:
The conquest sitting on thy brow, the joy
Of thy unerring flight became to me
Nowise mere hope, but full enfranchisement.
A sculptor of the isles has carved the deed
Upon a temple’s frieze; the maiden chained
Lifts one free arm across her eyes to hide
The terror of the moment, and her head
Sideways averted writhes the slender neck:
While with a careless grace in flying curve,
And glad like Hermes in his aery poise,
Toward the gaping throat a youth extends
The sword held lightly. When to sacrifice
I pass at morn with my tall Sthenelos,
I smile, but do not speak. No! when my gaze
First met him I was saved; because the world
Could hold so brave a creature I was free:
Here one had come with not my father’s eyes
Which darkened to the clamour of the crowd,
And gave a grieved assent; not with the eyes
Of anguish-stricken Cassiopeia, dry
And staring as I passed her to the boat.
Was not the beauty of his strength and youth
Warrant for many good things in the world
Which could not be so poor while nourishing him?
What faithlessness of heart could countervail
The witness of that brow? What dastard chains?
Did he not testify of sovereign powers
O’ermatching evil, awful charities
Which save and slay, the terror of clear joy,
Unquenchable intolerance of ill,
Order subduing chaos, beauty pledged
To conquest of all foul deformities?
And was there need to turn my head aside,
I, who had one sole thing to do, no more,
To watch the deed? I know the careless grace
My Perseus wears in manage of the steed,
Or shooting the swift disc: not such the mode
Of that victorious moment of descent
When the large tranquil might his soul contains
Was gathered for a swift abolishment
Of proud brute-tyranny. He seemed in air
A shining spear which hisses in its speed
And smites through boss and breastplate. Did he see
Andromeda, who never glanced at her
But set his face against the evil thing?
I know not; yet one truth I may not doubt
How ere the wallowing monster blind and vast
Turned a white belly to the sun, he stood
Beside me with some word of comfort strong
Nourishing the heart like choral harmonies.
O this was then my joy, that I could give
A soul not saved from wretched female fright,
Or anarchy of self-abandoned will,
But one which had achieved deliverance,
And wrought with shaping hands among the stuff
Which fate presented. Had I shrunk from Death?
Might I not therefore unashamed accept--
In a calm wonder of unfaltering joy--
Life, the fair gift he laid before my feet?
Somewhat a partner of his deed I seemed;
His equal? Nay, yet upright at his side
Scarce lower by a head and helmet’s height
Touching my Perseus’ shoulder.
He has wrought
Great deeds. Athena loves to honour him;
And I have borne him sons. Look, yonder goes
Lifting the bow, Eleios, the last-born.”
EURYDICE
“Now must this waste of vain desire have end:
Fetter these thoughts which traverse to and fro
The road which has no issue! We are judged.
O wherefore could I not uphold his heart?
Why claimed I not some partnership with him
In the strict test, urging my right of wife?
How have I let him fall? I, knowing thee
My Orpheus, bounteous giver of rich gifts,
Not all inured in practice of the will,
Worthier than I, yet weaker to sustain
An inner certitude against the blank
And silence of the senses; so no more
My heart helps thine, and henceforth there remains
No gift to thee from me, who would give all,
Only the memory of me growing faint
Until I seem a thing incredible,
Some high, sweet dream, which was not, nor could be.
Ay, and in idle fields of asphodel
Must it not be that I shall fade indeed,
No memory of me, but myself; these hands
Ceasing from mastery and use, my thoughts
Losing distinction in the vague, sweet air,
The heart’s swift pulses slackening to the sob
Of the forgetful river, with no deed
Pre-eminent to dare and to achieve,
No joy for climbing to, no clear resolve
From which the soul swerves never, no ill thing
To rid the world of, till I am no more
Eurydice, and shouldst thou at thy time
Descend, and hope to find a helpmate here,
I were grown slavish, like the girls men buy
Soft-bodied, foolish-faced, luxurious-eyed,
And meet to be another thing than wife.
Would that it had been thus: when the song ceased
And laughterless Aidoneus lifted up
The face, and turned his grave persistent eyes
Upon the singer, I had forward stepped
And spoken--‘King! he has wrought well, nor failed,
Who ever heard divine large song like this,
Keener than sunbeam, wider than the air,
And shapely as the mould of faultless fruit?
And now his heart upon the gale of song
Soars with wide wing, and he is strong for flight,
Not strong for treading with the careful foot:
Grant me the naked trial of the will
Divested of all colour, scents and song:
The deed concerns the wife; I claim my share.’
O then because Persephone was by
With shadowed eyes when Orpheus sang of flowers,
He would have yielded. And I stepping forth
From the clear radiance of the singer’s heights,
Made calm through vision of his wider truth,
And strengthened by deep beauty to hold fast
The presences of the invisible things,
Had led the way. I know how in that mood
He leans on me as babe on mother’s breast,
Nor could he choose but let his foot descend
Where mine left lightest pressure; so are passed
The brute three-visaged, and the flowerless ways,
Nor have I turned my head; and now behold
The greyness of remote terrestrial light,
And I step swifter. Does he follow still?
O surely since his will embraces mine
Closer than clinging hand can clasp a hand:
No need to turn and dull with visible proof
The certitude that soul relies on soul!
So speed we to the day; and now we touch
Warm grass, and drink the Sun. O Earth, O Sun,
Not you I need, but Orpheus’ breast, and weep
The gladdest tears that ever woman shed,
And may be weak awhile, and need to know
The sustenance and comfort of his arms.
Self-foolery of dreams; come bitter truth.
Yet he has sung at least a perfect song
While the Gods heard him, and I stood beside
O not applauding, but at last content,
Fearless for him, and calm through perfect joy,
Seeing at length his foot upon the heights
Of highest song, by me discerned from far,
Now suddenly attained in confident
And errorless ascension. Did I ask
The lesser joy, lips’ touch and clasping arms,
Or was not this salvation? For I urged
Always, in jealous service to his art,
‘Now thou hast told their secrets to the trees
Of which they muse through lullèd summer nights;
Thou hast gazed downwards in the formless gulf
Of the brute-mind, and canst control the will
Of snake, and brooding panther fiery-eyed,
And lark in middle heaven: leave these behind!
And let some careless singer of the fields
Set to the shallow sound of cymbal-stroke
The Faun a-dance; some less true-tempered soul,
Which cannot shape to harmony august
The splendour and the tumult of the world,
Inflame to frenzy of delirious rage
The Mœnad’s breast; yea, and the hearts of men,
Smoke of whose fire upcurls from little roofs,
Let singers of the wine-cup and the roast,
The whirling spear, the toy-like chariot-race,
And bickering counsel of contending kings
Delight them: leave thou these; sing thou for Gods.’
And thou hast sung for Gods; and I have heard.
I shall not fade beneath this sunless sky,
Mixed in the wandering, ineffectual tribe;
For these have known no moment when the soul
Stood vindicated, laying sudden hands
On immortality of joy, and love
Which sought not, saw not, knew not, could not know
The instruments of sense; I shall not fade.
Yea, and thy face detains me evermore
Within the realm of light. Love, wherefore blame
Thy heart because it sought me? Could the years’
Whole sum of various fashioned happiness
Exceed the measure of that eager face
Importunate and pure, still lit with song,
Turning from song to comfort of my love,
And thirsty for my presence? We are saved!
Yield Heracles, thou brawn and thews of Zeus,
Yield up thy glory on Thessalian ground,
Competitor of Death in single strife!
The lyre methinks outdoes the club and fist,
And beauty’s ingress the outrageous force
Of tyrant though beneficent; supreme
This feat remains, a memory shaped for Gods.
Nor canst thou wholly lose me from thy life;
Still I am with thee; still my hand keeps thine;
Now I restrain from too intemperate grief
Being a portion of the thoughts that claim
Thy service; now I urge with that good pain
Which wastes and feeds the spirit, a desire
Unending; now I lurk within thy will
As vigour; now am gleaming through the world
As beauty; and if greater thoughts must lay
Their solemn light on thee, outshining mine,
And in some far faint-gleaming hour of Hell
I stand unknown and muffled by the boat
Leaning an eager ear to catch some speech
Of thee, and if some comer tell aloud
How Orpheus who had loved Eurydice
Was summoned by the Gods to fill with joy
And clamour of celestial song the courts
Of bright Olympus,--I, with pang of pride
And pain dissolved in rapture, will return
Appeased, with sense of conquest stern and high.”
But while she spoke, upon a chestnut trunk
Fallen from cliffs of Thracian Rhodope
Sat Orpheus, for he deemed himself alone,
And sang. But bands of wild-eyed women roamed
The hills, whom he had passed with calm disdain.
And now the shrilling Berecynthian pipe
Sounded, blown horn, and frantic female cries:
He ceased from song and looked for the event.
BY THE SEA
I. THE ASSUMPTION
Why would the open sky not be denied
Possession of me, when I sat to-day
Rock-couched, and round my feet the soft slave lay,
My singing Sea, dark-bosom’d, dusky-eyed?
She breathed low mystery of song, she sighed,
And stirred herself, and set lithe limbs to play
In blandishing serpent-wreaths, and would betray
An anklet gleaming, or a swaying side.
Why could she not detain me? Why must I
Devote myself to the dread Heaven, adore
The spacious pureness, the large ardour? why
Sprang forth my heart as though all wanderings
Had end? To what last bliss did I upsoar
Beating on indefatigable wings?
II. THE ARTIST’S WAITING
Tender impatience quickening, quickening;
O heart within me that art grown a sea,
How vexed with longing all thy live waves be,
How broken with desire! A ceaseless wing
O’er every green sea-ridge goes fluttering,
And there are cries and long reluctancy,
Swift ardours, and the clash of waters free,
Fain for the coming of some perfect Thing.
Emerge white Wonder, be thou born a Queen!
Let shine the splendours of thy loveliness
From the brow’s radiance to the equal poise
Of calm, victorious feet; let thy serene
Command go forth; replenish with strong joys
The spaces and the sea-deeps measureless.
III. COUNSELLORS
Who are chief counsellors of me? Who know
My heart’s desire and every secret thing?
Three of one fellowship: the encompassing
Strong Sea, who mindful of Earth’s ancient woe
Still surges on with swift, undaunted flow
That no sad shore should lack his comforting;
And next the serene Sky, whether he ring
With flawless blue a wilderness, or show
Tranced in the Twilight’s arms his fair child-star;
Third of the three, eldest and lordliest,
Love, all whose wings are wide above my head,
Whose eyes are clearer heavens, whose lips have said
Low words more rare than the quired sea-songs are,--
O Love, high things and stern thou counsellest.
IV. EVENING
Light ebbs from off the Earth; the fields are strange,
Dusk, trackless, tenantless; now the mute sky
Resigns itself to Night and Memory,
And no wind will yon sunken clouds derange,
No glory enrapture them; from cot or grange
The rare voice ceases; one long-breathèd sigh,
And steeped in summer sleep the world must lie;
All things are acquiescing in the change.
Hush! while the vaulted hollow of the night
Deepens, what voice is this the sea sends forth,
Disconsolate iterance, a passionless moan?
Ah! now the Day is gone, and tyrannous Light,
And the calm presence of fruit-bearing Earth:
Cry, Sea! it is thy hour; thou art alone.
V. JOY
Spring-tides of Pleasure in the blood, keen thrill
Of eager nerves,--but ended as a dream;
Look! the wind quickens, and the long waves gleam
Shoreward, and all this deep noon hour will fill
Each lone sea-cave with mirth immeasurable,
Huge sport of Ocean’s brood; yet eve’s red sky
Fades o’er spent waters, weltering sullenly,
The dank piled weed, the sand-waste grey and still.
Sad Pleasure in the moon’s control! But Joy
Is stable; is discovered law; the birth
Of dreadful light; life’s one imperative way;
The rigour hid in song; flowers’ strict employ
Which turn to meet their sun; the roll of Earth
Swift and perpetual through the night and day.
VI. OCEAN