The children run to give a rose and stare
At strangers riding where grey olives flare
Mistily in the long hills’ summer light.
Rose-pinnacled, a Franco-Turkish wall
Trailing with ivy, rears its crumbling mass,
Pantassa Church’s apse and mouldered hall
Look down upon the plain of Eurotas.
Byzantine tower’s clear octagonal,
Jewel-like and fretted, circles on the sky;
A pavèd walk leads to the nunnery,
Past moss-grown arch and ruined capital.
And here, an Abbess, old, yet maiden-faced,
Sits in a frigid pomp, in solemn pride:
Stately, aloof, the church’s pallid bride,
Greets us with countenance austere and chaste.
The Abbess leads the way, with rigid calm,
Detached, haughty, imperious; her eyes
Pompously ignorant, religious-wise,
Cool as the blank intoning of a psalm.
There are great piles of rose-leaves in the room,
Convent-brewed wines and bright bags, needle-wrought;
There is an ancient fountain in the court,
And guttering candles in the Church’s gloom.
“The times have changed,” we said; “women no more
Hide them from life. We mingle and we work.
Christ only asks that not a soul shall shirk
Or flinch from bearing burdens that He bore.”
The Abbess smiled. “Silence,” she said; “we learn,
On this hilltop we women watch the East,
The morning sun o’er Sparta is our priest,
The mountain stars like midnight tapers burn.”
We looked at her; her eyes were crystal clear,
Passionless, pure and cold as moonlit snow.
Something she felt that we could never know;
Our vision to her eyes could not appear.
We left her in the shadowed court to brood,
Where Frankish frescoes peer through shadows dim,
And cloistered nuns in tuneless, wailing hymn,
Chant Faith untried in mountain solitude.
GREEK FARMERS
In green Laconia, where the hedges are
Spring-starred with flowers, and the little brooks
Wake all the mountains from their solemn dreams
Of the old days, when gods moved strong and white
On hill and sea, or slept within the clouds;
There are great slopes, broken with tillage, rough
With clumsy ploughing, thick with olive-trees.
And here they stand, the tall, black-bearded men,
Whose eyes, unblinking, look into the sun.
Men, plainly bred from tribal wanderings,
Whose blood is fevered fire, men whose lands
Are bare with waste and bloodshed; men who stand
Gazing at strangers with shy interest;
Who, when you question their fresh peasant-eyes
Straighten up from their field-tasks and reply:
“These are our flocks and pastures--we are Greeks!”
Black-bearded men who sow, What is the Seed?
For Greece has lain beneath the Turkish plough,
And all her hills and mountains smoke again
With treachery, rape, and murder. On the seas
The nations wait to grasp; the kings and crews
Who play the Blood-game snap at little lands
Like dogs at flies. Yea, that fair seed ye sow,
Is it Greek seed? though sown by mongrel hands?
Seed of a greatness far exceeding theirs,
The lands that would despoil Greece? Will it grow
That seed, Deucalion’s hope, Athena’s pride,
Is it once more the sacred seed that fell
Out of Demeter’s hand on holy ground?
Or, is it Cadmus-sown, for crops of Hell?
Truthfully, farmers, can ye stand and say:
“These are our fields and pastures, we are Greeks”?
They make no answer--strong, black-bearded men,
Grimly at work on the Phigalian Hill
Where the grey Bassæ Temple guards the corn.
They make no answer in the mountain towns
Arcadian, where pink-roofed houses splotch
The hillsides and where hidden teamsters climb
Thicketed bridle-paths beside the streams.
They cannot tell us, if they know, what seed
The sculptors, patriots, and statesmen sowed;
Nor even if these furrows that they plow
Will bring a season’s harvest to their doors.
But, as we pass them, under upland oaks,
Under the fig-trees in the rocky gorge,
They walk with strange, fleet steps, so tireless,
So strong, with eyes set on some distant goal,
Till we, too, puzzled, murmur: “_They are Greeks_.”
Oh, fateful World! insatiate modern life--
Driven by urgencies too great to tell,
Destroying, recreating, balancing--
What of this Old World, dreaming modern dreams,
Yet with the old dream dwelling in the land
To teach it Pride? Shall we dare face a Greek--
With all his shining temples at his back,
With the eternal Thought behind his name,--
As he were German, Russian, Turk, Chinese?
If these black-bearded mongrels share the pride
Of Argonauts and claim a classic birth
And till the wild land, dropping in the seed,
Forever saying softly, “We are Greeks,”
Why should they garner any other crop,
Why should they bend and toil for better gain
Than seeing New Greece realize her dream?
SONG
Toil on, fishermen!
Pan sits on the cliff,
Smiles and watches the fare,
Wreaths him with flowers there,
Bites at a lettuce leaf,
Binds him a poppy sheaf,
Drinks from a painted jug,
Watching the full nets tug;
Toil on, fishermen!
Work on, harvesters!
Demeter rests on the hill,
Near to the threshing-floor;
Near to the cottage door,
Girds her with fruited vines,
Blows foam from the wines,
Drinks from a golden bowl,
While corn-filled wagons roll;
Work on, harvesters!
Rest well, goat-herds!
Hermes cares for the sheep,
Flashes across the sun,
Burnishes helmet wings,
The wreathed caduceus brings,
To swift talaria-flight,
Through the sheep-scattered night;
Rest well, goat-herds!
TO THE OLYMPIAN HERMES
Now let the formal, folded curtain fall
Over this majesty of mellowed stone.
Let me go forth with eyes alight with joy
From this god-gazing. Let me not pause nor stay
Till by some clear word I have given faith
To doubting minds, how Greeks ennobled form
And carved high meaning in a body’s truth.
Yet, Hermes, fair god, consciously the flower
Of the Greek dream, sculptured so lofty-kind,
Stainlessly physical, superbly true;--
Who is to tell thee that thou hast one fleck
On that pure manliness, and dare to speak
Something against thy calm that seems to say,
“Earth has no greater gift than perfect limbs,
And god-like manhood’s straight significance”?
Forgive me, Hermes, I had thought to take
Thy princely healthiness to ailing worlds;
To meanness and to littleness and lust,
Bidding them gaze upon thee in thy calm,
Telling them: “This is all. This Hermes stands
For Greek expression of a definite truth
Speaking its message to the world of men
And placing beauty as a final goal.”
But then I pondered: What will be the gain
If men say: “Hermes is very kind and fair,
Wholesome and generous and unafraid
And--soulless! Let be! we’ll no longer hope
For strength more than the body--loftier calm
Than this superb control of manly limbs,
Friendly with sun and rock, and sea, and life.
Now yield we up that old, defeated claim
Of soul, the ugly, hunted, harried thing,
And trust us to a pagan manliness,
Stand Hermes-like, unpuzzled, unamazed!”
I knew, oh Hermes! Greek perfection, lit
Like stately lamp with one clear, shining joy,
That of well-being, I knew life ended not
With just the beauty of a human form;
Marble, translated into mystery
Must needs have line to make it fair and right;
And that is all.... Thy unknown sculptor knew
The pagan mind and set thy godhood high,
In an unsullied semblance of a man
Untouched by sorrow, poverty, and shame.
Immortal _semblance_--then the cleavage comes!
Real men must live (we mortals know the fight),
Hot-blooded, passionate, forlorn, astray;
We know how men determine to be true
To some one Greatness,--struggle to the test
Baffled and crucified;--in bitter shame
Leaving the unsolved meaning of their lives.
And now we know, by those French faces torn
To rags, around the dumbly loyal eyes;
By English soldiers, done to crippled wrecks
And hideous mangling, how men dare to die,
Or live their silent, agonizing days.
And then we know there is a human thing
Transcending any body--called a Soul!
Yea, let the formal, folded curtain fall
O’er all that graciousness of mellowed stone.
The Pagan knew the beauty of the flesh.
We, Modern, view that beauty with resolve
Firm and unswerving that it be outdone,
Firm that all ugly, bruised, and broken things
Shall stand invested with a deathless pride
Before our eyes--that see them beautiful;
Determined that the perfect ones approach
Humbly with sense of some imperfectness,
And kneel in homage to the shattered brave.
GREECE, 1915-16
Yea, taunt me, World Voice--I am dumb and blind,
My body broken, and my heart unclad.
Yet am I silent, while strange forces wind
The chains about me. Helpless, scorned, maligned,
I answer not. The Greece of long ago
Speaks for me in this newest time of woe.
Europe reviles me. Yea, I stand alone
Like woman left before the ruined door,
Like woman who, beneath her outraged moan,
Remembers sacred hours. Like a stone
I am cold, passionless, mid the wild uproar,
Murmuring “Peace” and “Hellas” o’er and o’er.
Apollo’s beauty sprang from out my womb;
Socrates called me, mother. Every hill
And templed glade, and solemn-urnèd tomb,
Bids me refrain; no longer to resume
War and rapine, no longer blood to spill,
Nor hate engender, nor intent to kill.
Europe! Greece speaks, Greece, who so deeply drank
The bitter cup of ravage; who has laid
A new foundation: near her altars, blank
Of by-gone fires, she phalanxes the rank
Of golden grain. And bids the new-born Greek
Old classic words with modern tongue to speak.
Homer withholds me, Æschylus restrains,
“Human Euripides” exhorts me--“Stay!”
I was despoilèd once; strike off my chains,
Unsay the insult! Greece nor plots nor feigns,
Only withholds her, agonized, at bay,
But loyal to her hallowed cliffs and plains!
THE SINGING STONES
“Remember me, the Singing Stone ... for ... Phœbus ... laid on me his
Delphic harp--thenceforth I am lyre-voiced; strike me lightly with a
little pebble; and carry away witness of my boast.”--_Greek Anthology._
Beyond brute Titan dissonance, black, bitter strains
Of Warfare; through the smitten fields of wheat;
Upon the bloody bridges, where the wains
Roll drone chords between marching soldier-feet;
Through mob-voice, robbed of cadence and of beat,
I hear the Stones of Sunion
Singing by the sea:
“Lift we on high our time-defying shafts!
Our white-wing on the promontory stays,
Our age-old glory from the Ancient wafts
Godward out of an old, blind, Pagan mood,
While in the surging blue the Islands brood
In dim, time-purpled haze.”
Out of the din of sociologic strife,
Of hoarse-voiced men, embruted by their work,
Of women, low-intoning lesser life,
From the rich Theme, which modern voices shirk,
Where all the forced, half-harmonizings lurk,--
I hear the stones of Delphi
Singing in the rain:
“Black swell the mountains, guarding well the Cleft,
Clear spills the water, o’er the fountain rim,
The worshipers are gone, the priests bereft.
Men keep no light upon the altar dim;
No Council meets, but ah, the hope is left,
The dream goes on, new voices chant the Hymn.”
To the soft twilight of Æsthetic ease,
Where a smile is no smile, a tear no tear;
Where the fruit has no seed, the wine no lees,
No strong song comes. Yet, faintly year by year,
’Mid those who listen, wistful, and in fear,
I hear the stones of Bassæ
Singing on the heights:
“Grey comes the dawn upon the mountain crest,
Warm lie the vines on the Phigalian Hill;
The deities are gone, their secrets rest
Hidden by time. But still the Sun-God smites
Altar and soil, and richly thus requites
The farmers’ faith, and all the fields fulfill.”
And everywhere my wistful head is bowed,
Pensive, absorbed, to find significance,
I hear stone chorus; the immortal crowd
Of pillars round some vocal radiance--
Chant Spirit-Song of new inheritance--
I hear all Pagan Temples
Singing in the dawn:
“Lift we on high our columns shining white!
Our broad wings on the promontories stay;
For us forever was the world’s first light,--
Ignorant God-seeking. Ye, that follow, may
Soar to a higher vision! ’mid the Pagan night.
We were the singers of a brighter Day.”
THE OLD QUEST
“Feed in joy thine own flock and look on thine own land.”--_Greek
Anthology._
“Friend! hast thou seen the rosy mass
Of cyclamen along the pass
To Arcady?
Doth the green country sweep enlarge
Beneath the white cloud’s floating barge?
Does the sun lift a gleaming targe
On Arcady?
“Hold.... Do the trees keep happy nests
Between the young leaves’ trembling breasts
In Arcady?
Does running water laugh and sing,
Do butterflies waft wing-and-wing?
Spins the white moon her mystic ring
O’er Arcady?
“Speak!--Are there greenwoods cool and dense,
Do flower-grails gleam out from thence
In Arcady?
Do pines the aisles and arches blur,
With frankincense and breaths of myrrh,
Veiling the happy forms that stir
Through Arcady?
“Thou seest that I am blind,”--said he,
“But hast thou been where I would be
In Arcady?
Oh! didst thou see within the gate
The one who promised me to wait?
Stays she for me, though I come late
To Arcady?
“I wonder that she doth not send
A clue to show the roads that trend
To Arcady--
But thou canst tell me. Does it rise
Empinnacled to azure skies?...
Thou sayst?... _None knoweth where it lies,
Fair Arcady!_”
_’Tis sunset and the end of day,
The roads are closed--so all men say--
To Arcady.
The birds and butterflies are fled;
The honey quaffed; the perfume shed;
The feet that used to dance are sped
From Arcady._
“The roads are closed?... Oh, not to me!
Thou seest that I am blind,” said he.
“And Arcady?...
Full well I know thou liest now,
Hast thou the world-mark on thy brow?
Hast thou no one to ’wait thee--thou?
In Arcady?”
He wanders down the darkling way
The mute horizons watch him stray
Toward Arcady.
His feet are bleeding, he is blind,
He dreams of that he will not find,
But in his wide unconquered mind
Lives Arcady!
THE GODS ARE NOT GONE, BUT MAN IS BLIND
Over the hills the gods come walking,
Where the black pines draw their swords,
And the spell-bound leaves cease talking,
For the High-Priest sun comes stalking
And ’tis no time for words.
And oh! the gifts the gods are bringing--
Stretches of happy heath,
Jewels with souls, and flowers singing;
Smiling stars, and new hope springing
With the wingèd hope called Death!
Over the hills the pipes are playing,
And the gods come strong and fair.
Alas! they know not of the straying,
The faithlessness and bitter saying:
“We know no gods, nor care....”
Over the hills--the day-sky kindles
On a blackened world of clods;
Dead and dry are the flaxless spindles,
The cruse is drained,--the fire dwindles ...
No worshipers for the gods!
THE SEA OF TIME
(Sappho sings to Alcæus)
Only our few short hours,
For you and me;
Temples and groves and bowers,
And then--the Sea!
Only our finite word
For you and me,
Who knows what gods have heard
Under the Sea?
Love, though the gold moons wane
For you and me,
We shall not meet again
Down by the Sea.
Ours shall be hidden ways;
For you and me
Stretch the long separate days--
Mist on the Sea!
Artemis--will she say
For you and me
What Law we must obey
Moves in the Sea?
Moves, till the faces worn
By you and me,
Luminous, dream-forsworn
Change in the Sea?
Change, for unending tides
Bear you and me
And the Self in us glides
From Sea to Sea.
Love, shall the sailing souls
Of you and me
Float where new shore unrolls
Rimmed by the Sea?
Comes then the meeting place
For you and me?
Silence ... white bubbles trace
Foam on the Sea!
ON THE THOROUGHFARE
To-day I go to buy some dates
From Glyco’s cart.
“Ten cents,” my smiling fruitman states,
And then we part--
I to the mart,
He for the next fig-buyer waits!
Back to my world I go, its keen
Quick energy
And competitions sharp and mean,
Its flippancy,
And sophistry,
And tampering with things unclean;
But Glyco waits; he has ten cents;
And he has hope,
And back of him, antecedents
Give him such scope!
With his traditions’ affluence
I cannot cope!
AT PÆSTUM
The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,
A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,
The far blue reaches of Salerno’s bay,
Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.
These are the caskets of the sun-sealed years;
’Mid tides that ebb and flow, ’neath stars that set,
Deathless their grave and tranquil beauty ... yet
Buried in silence, in eternal tears.
Beneath these tympana the Dorians trod;
Here, Doric priests upon an alien shore
Made sacrifice, perhaps these myrtles wore,
And garlanded the offering to their god.
Demeter saw the bright libations spilled;
To Hermes leapt the scarlet through the fleece.
Amid these columns moved the gods of Greece;
These lofty spaces with the pæan thrilled.
This, centuries ago. Demeter now
Is known no more. Poseidon, too, hath fled.
’Twould seem that Pan and Hermes both are dead;
No Nike springs upon a Grecian prow.
Yet is this sacred pause, this pillared calm
Still stirred by whispers from Tyrrhenian waves
While near the shadows of these architraves
Lie smiling shores of terraced fruit and palm.
And springing from Demeter’s altar site,
Where the old dream of gods hath died away,
And the Greek torch burned down to ashen grey,
There blooms a star shape, mystical and white.
One mystical white star! Oh! Pagan fire
Whose temples stand, whose gods have been forgot,
One goddess holds in memory this spot,
Else why should Nature thus in bloom aspire?
Why else in this dim fane the sea intone,
And sun send fire to the altars bare,
And moss and lichen trace strange scripture, here
The lizards flash like symbols o’er the stone?
The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,
A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,
The far blue reaches of Salerno’s bay,
Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.
PHIDIAS
A DRAMATIC EPISODE
_Dungeon in an Athenian prison; a small grated window near the ceiling
shows a patch of blue sky. The scene discloses Phidias, prostrate and
manacled. In the dusk of the cell lingers the_ JAILER.
JAILER (_curiously_). What sayst thou, Phidias, who art accused?
The old plaint, snarling that thou art abused?
PHIDIAS (_lifting his head wearily_).
What do I answer? Yea! what thing thou wilt!
What care I for this legendary guilt?
Who makes or unmakes Unity? Accused?
Why, any fool accuses. It amused
The enemies of Pericles to stab
At him through me. Let gossips spread their blab,
The sea is just as broad, the sky as clear
And I as blameless.
JAILER (_persisting_). But that brought thee here,
Took thee from royal favor, once the dear
Adviser, friend of Pericles. It seems
Here is the end of all thy mighty dreams;
’Twas Pericles who made thee, and there lurks
His royal patronage about thy works.
PHIDIAS (_sullenly_). So reason vulgar minds; as well to say
Hephæstus made me, manacled this way,
Hammered to fever, bent to twisted woe.
No, clown! no tyrant brought this overthrow,
Nor my once vivid glory, but the fate
That overtakes the artist; whether late,
Slow, poisoning, by deadly world-born things,
Or early blight of strong imaginings
Too fervent for his frame. Athens is free
From every blame. Not Pericles made me!
JAILER (_wagging his head obstinately_).
’Twas love of Pericles that cast thee here,
Ungeniused thee, put thee to rot in drear
Murk of this den; and if not he who made
Thee what thou wast--aloof and haughty blade
Fellow I watched in Agora, as one
Treading on air, thy white himation
Streaming like wings back of thy eager form,
As thy swift sandal moved among the swarm
Of merchants, gamesters, thieves; while deep gaze drank
Of something that was neither wealth nor rank--
Why then,--who made thee? for that thou hast fame
’Tis granted, when the rabble speak thy name.
PHIDIAS (_moving restlessly, clenches his hands, answering
impatiently_). I made me, fool, made this unfinished self,
Nourished me as a child, in happy health,
Fostered the thirst my mother gave to me
With her electric milk. Ecstatic tree
Charmides planted, I did grow and thrive,
Adding to that, what Greece alone could give!
Studied cult-statues, studied Xoana, saw
Paralysis in Polygnotus’ law,
Wondered that Hegias and Hageladas wrought
Hardly beyond the cold Egyptian thought.
Out of their almond-eyed archaic things,
New butterfly, my free Athena springs!
My Zeus Olympian came to my prayer
To see a god. I saw, then made him there!
(_To jailer._) Poor ragged dolt, clanking thy silly keys,
Did Pericles make me as I made these?
Did Athens tell me what a man must do
Who sees instinctive _life_, and sees it true?
JAILER (_impudently_).
How now! What saw’st thou that _I_ might not see?
A rosy nymph at bath! Aphrodite
Caught in a net of foam? Hermes’ disguise?
Come now, what is this power within thine eyes?
PHIDIAS (_speaking dreamily as if to himself_).
What is the power? Life! The heroic thing
Streaming magnetic from a sea-gull’s wing,
That light in stars, in waves, in children’s eyes,
In green plane-tree, or in deep, sphinx-like skies
Of unknown countries, where the grasses blow
Unseen of man; where flower-laced streamlets flow
Past mystic herbs, Demeter loves to keep
Secretly growing on the mountain steep.
I saw the curves of fruits, saw Grecian sails
Take fire-blue seas; saw the soft, misty veils
Of maidens wrap their limbs, saw horses, shields,
Victories, warriors, priests, and battlefields;
Each man a poem; women each a jar
Filled with soft, psychic flame, an avatar
Shaped to a noble outline, lofty truth
From some great vital Source--
(_The Sculptor breaks off suddenly, scrutinizing the jailer
and continuing._)
Rascal, uncouth
As are thy words and gestures, I can see
Some trace of life-light.--Gods! were I but free--
JAILER (_interrupting with smug complacency_).
Which, proper thanks to Theseus, thou art not,
Thou light-fingered; thou dingy-robed sot!
Carving thy way to treason, selling State
For greasy coin, with Hermes as thy mate
Slanting his profile on it. Dreamer,--thou!
“Bronze-worker.” Yea! By Dionysus! How
Thou workedst guilty things for Athens’ shame,
Thinking to hide behind thy Patron’s name!
Athens, the famous city; thou, a worm,
Coiling in earth, no four-eyed marble herm
Will mark. Our furry worms that make the silk
Munch the mulberry; but thy crafty ilk
Munch the fine gold, for sickly marble shapes
Of statues stoned by every Jack-a-napes;
’Twas thou, worm, coiled ’round thy princely friend,
And gained War-Treasure for thy braggart’s end.
PHIDIAS (_sadly musing_). The fool is glib. His lesson he has got
From Agora and Propylæa, not
The polished utterance of Bema’s Hill.
But that crowd’s word, that bodes or good or ill
From a fierce thirst; sneering pitiless breath,
Freezing a man, or scorching him to death.
JAILER (_scratching his head, expectorates knowingly and argues_).
Why are thy statues costly? with the urns
Of Dipylon Gate, the passer-by discerns
Good lusty statues, made by Such-an-one,
Quite comely, they, and all of porous stone;
Why use Pentelic marble? so much gold?
Thou dreamer-schemer, sculptor overbold?
PHIDIAS (_with a moan turns from his tormentor to face the stone
wall, muttering_). “Dreamer,” he called me. Is it by that name
My curse comes? Verily; I dreamed my shame,
My rich accusings. Dreamed brook-flowing folds
Of draperies, dreamed my young hero-moulds,
Dreamed men who sat their horses, as they rode
Clouds over seas, dreamed Panathenaic ode
In singing-rhythm round the Parthenon;
The frieze and metopes of Theseion;
Dreamed the sweet-bodied girls, whose maiden strength
Poise vase and basket all the Temple length.
Dreamed the slow, garlanded, portentous beasts,
Led by the veiled and sacrificial priests;
Dreamed the young, leaping horseman’s haughty ease
Pediment grouped, or filleted in frieze.
Was it a dream only to-day shall know?
Lives it no longer than this artist’s throe?
If that must be, then butterfly most drear
I sink back to the worm-thing crawling here.