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diff --git a/old/54789-0.txt b/old/54789-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6157d74..0000000 --- a/old/54789-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7953 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Volume 1, by -Robert Bridges - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Volume 1 - -Author: Robert Bridges - -Release Date: May 26, 2017 [EBook #54789] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETICAL WORKS--ROBERT BRIDGES, VOL 1 *** - - - - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Les Galloway and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - POETICAL WORKS - - of - - ROBERT BRIDGES - - Volume I - - [Illustration] - - London - Smith, Elder & Co - 15 Waterloo Place - 1898 - - - - - OXFORD: HORACE HART - PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY - - - - -_POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BRIDGES_ - - -_VOLUME THE FIRST CONTAINING_ - - _PROMETHEUS THE FIREGIVER_ _p._ 1 - - _EROS AND PSYCHE_ 71 - - _THE GROWTH OF LOVE_ 217 - - _NOTES_ 289 - - - - -LIST OF PREVIOUS EDITIONS - - -_PROMETHEUS._ - - 1. _Private Press of H. Daniel. Oxford, 1883._ - - 2. _Chiswick Press. Geo. Bell & Sons, 1884._ - - -_EROS AND PSYCHE._ - - 1. _Chiswick Press. Geo. Bell & Sons, 1885._ - - 2. _Do. do. Revised, 1894._ - - _This last volume is still on sale._ - - -_GROWTH OF LOVE._ - - 1. _XXIV Sonnets. Ed. Bumpus, 1876._ - - 2. _LXXIX Sonnets. Daniel Press, 1889._ - - _This edition was copied in America._ - - 3. _Do. do. Black letter. 1890._ - - - - - PROMETHEUS - THE - FIREGIVER - - - A MASK IN THE - GREEK MANNER - - - - -_ARGUMENT_ - -PROMETHEUS COMING ON EARTH TO GIVE FIRE TO MEN APPEARS BEFORE THE -PALACE OF INACHUS IN ARGOS ON A FESTIVAL OF ZEUS · HE INTERRUPTS THE -CEREMONY BY ANNOUNCING FIRE AND PERSUADES INACHUS TO DARE THE ANGER -OF ZEUS AND ACCEPT THE GIFT · INACHUS FETCHING ARGEIA HIS WIFE FROM -THE PALACE HAS IN TURN TO QUIET HER FEARS · HE ASKS A PROPHECY OF -PROMETHEUS WHO FORETELLS THE FATE OF IO THEIR DAUGHTER · PROMETHEUS -THEN SETTING FLAME TO THE ALTAR AND WRITING HIS OWN NAME THEREON IN THE -PLACE OF ZEUS DISAPPEARS - -THE CHORUS SING (1) A HYMN TO ZEUS WITH THE STORIES OF THE BIRTH OF -ZEUS AND THE MARRIAGE OF HERA WITH THE DANCES OF THE CURETES AND THE -HESPERIDES (2) THEIR ANTICIPATION OF FIRE WITH AN ODE ON WONDER (3) A -TRAGIC HYMN ON THE LOT OF MAN (4) A FIRE-CHORUS (5) A FINAL CHORUS IN -PRAISE OF PROMETHEUS - -ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE GOOD · PROMETHEUS PROLOGIZES · HE CARRIES A LONG -REED - - - - -DRAMATIS PERSONÆ - - - _PROMETHEUS._ - - _INACHUS._ - - _ARGEIA._ - - _SERVANT._ - - _IO_ (_persona muta_). - - _CHORUS: Youths and maidens of the house of - Inachus._ - - - _The SCENE is in ARGOS before the palace of Inachus. - An altar inscribed to Zeus is at the - centre of the stage._ - - - - -PROMETHEUS THE FIREGIVER - - -_PROMETHEUS._ - - - From high Olympus and the ætherial courts, - Where mighty Zeus our angry king confirms - The Fates’ decrees and bends the wills of the gods, - I come: and on the earth step with glad foot. - This variegated ocean-floor of the air, - The changeful circle of fair land, that lies - Heaven’s dial, sisterly mirror of night and day: - The wide o’er-wandered plain, this nether world - My truant haunt is, when from jealous eyes - I steal, for hither ’tis I steal, and here 10 - Unseen repair my joy: yet not unseen - Methinks, nor seen unguessed of him I seek. - Rather by swath or furrow, or where the path - Is walled with corn I am found, by trellised vine - Or olive set in banks or orchard trim: - I watch all toil and tilth, farm, field and fold, - And taste the mortal joy; since not in heaven - Among our easeful gods hath facile time - A touch so keen, to wake such love of life - As stirs the frail and careful being, who here, 20 - The king of sorrows, melancholy man, - Bows at his labour, but in heart erect - A god stands, nor for any gift of god - Would barter his immortal-hearted prime. - Could I but win this world from Zeus for mine, - With not a god to vex my happy rule, - I would inhabit here and leave high heaven: - So much I love it and its race of men, - Even as he hates them, hates both them, and me - For loving what he hates, and would destroy me, - Outcast in the scorn of all his cringing crew, - For daring but to save what he would slay: - And me must first destroy. Thus he denieth - My heart’s wish, thus my counsel sets at naught, - Which him saved once, when all at stake he stood - Uprisen in rebellion to overthrow - The elderseated Titans, for I that day - Gave him the counsels which his foes despised. - Unhappy they, who had still their blissful seats - Preserved and their Olympian majesty, 40 - Had they been one with me. Alas, my kin! - But he, when he had taken the throne and chained - His foes in wasteful Tartarus, said no more - Where is Prometheus our wise counsellor? - What saith Prometheus? tell us, O Prometheus, - What Fate requires! but waxing confident - And wanton, as a youth first tasting power, - He wrecked the timeless monuments of heaven, - The witness of the wisdom of the gods, - And making all about him new, beyond 50 - Determined to destroy the race of men, - And that create afresh or else have none. - Then his vain mind imagined a device, - And at his bidding all the opposèd winds - Blew, and the scattered clouds and furlèd snows, - From every part of heaven together flying, - He with brute hands in huge disorder heaped: - They with the winds’ weight and his angry breath - Were thawed: in cataracts they fell, and earth - In darkness deep and whelmèd tempest lay, 60 - Drowned’neath the waters. Yet on the mountain-tops - Some few escaped, and some, thus warned by me, - Made shift to live in vessels which outrode - The season and the fury of the flood. - And when his rain was spent and from clear skies - Zeus looking down upon the watery world, - Beheld these few, the remnant of mankind, - Who yet stood up and breathed; he next withdrew - The seeds of fire, that else had still lain hid - In withered branch and the blue flakes of flint 70 - For man to exact and use, but these withdrawn, - Man with the brutes degraded would be man - No more; and so the tyrant was content. - But I, despised again, again upheld - The weak, and pitying them sent sweet Hope, - Bearer of dreams, enchantress fond and kind, - From heaven descending on the unhindered rays - Of every star, to cheer with visions fair - Their unamending pains. And now this day - Behold I come bearing the seal of all 80 - Which Hope had promised: for within this reed - A prisoner I bring them stolen from heaven, - The flash of mastering fire, and it have borne - So swift to earth, that when yon noontide sun - Rose from the sea at morning I was by, - And unperceived of Hêlios plunged the point - I’ the burning axle, and withdrew a tongue - Of breathing flame, which lives to leap on earth - For man the father of all fire to come. - And hither have I brought it even to Argos 90 - Unto king Inachus, him having chosen - Above all mortals to receive my gift: - For he is hopeful, careful, wise, and brave. - He first, when first the floods left bare the land, - Grew warm with enterprise, and gathered men - Together, and disposed their various tasks - For common weal combined; for soon were seen - The long straight channels dwindling on the plain, - Which slow from stagnant pool and wide morass - The pestilent waters to the rivers bore: 100 - Then in the ruined dwellings and old tombs - He dug, unbedding from the wormèd ooze - Vessels and tools of trade and husbandry; - Wherewith, all seasonable works restored, - Oil made he and wine anew, and taught mankind - To live not brutally though without fire, - Tending their flocks and herds and weaving wool, - Living on fruit and milk and shepherds’ fare, - Till time should bring back flame to smithy and hearth, - Or Zeus relent. Now at these gates I stand, 110 - At this mid hour, when Inachus comes forth - To offer sacrifice unto his foe. - For never hath his faithful zeal forborne - To pay the power, though hard, that rules the world - The smokeless sacrifice; which first today - Shall smoke, and rise at heaven in flame to brave - The baffled god. See here a servant bears - For the cold altar ceremonial wood: - My shepherd’s cloak will serve me for disguise. - -_SERVANT._ - - With much toil have I hewn these sapless logs. 120 - - _Pr._ But toil brings health, and health is happiness. - - _Serv._ Here’s one I know not--nay, how came he here - Unseen by me? I pray thee, stranger, tell me - What would’st thou at the house of Inachus? - - _Pr._ Intruders, friend, and travellers have glib tongues, - Silence will question such. - - _Serv._ If ’tis a message, - To-day is not thy day--who sent thee hither? - - _Pr._ The business of my leisure was well guessed: - But he that sent me hither is I that come. - - _Serv._ I smell the matter--thou would’st serve the house? 130 - - _Pr._ ’Twas for that very cause I fled my own. - - _Serv._ From cruelty or fear of punishment? - - _Pr._ Cruel was my master, for he slew his father. - His punishments thou speakest of are crimes. - - _Serv._ Thou dost well flying one that slew his father. - - _Pr._ Thy lord, they say, is kind. - - _Serv._ Well, thou wilt see. - Thou may’st at once begin--come, give a hand. - - _Pr._ A day of freedom is a day of pleasure; - And what thou doest have I never done, - And understanding not might mar thy work. 140 - - _Serv._ Ay true--there is a right way and a wrong - In laying wood. - - _Pr._ Then let me see thee lay it: - The sight of a skill’d hand will teach an art. - - _Serv._ Thou seest this faggot which I now unbind, - How it is packed within. - - _Pr._ I see the cones - And needles of the fir, which by the wind - In melancholy places ceaselessly - Sighing are strewn upon the tufted floor. - - _Serv._ These took I from a sheltered bank, whereon - The sun looks down at noon; for there is need - The things be dry. These first I spread; and then - Small sticks that snap i’ the hand. - - _Pr._ Such are enough - To burden the slow flight of labouring rooks, - When on the leafless tree-tops in young March - Their glossy herds assembling soothe the air 155 - With cries of solemn joy and cawings loud. - And such the long-necked herons will bear to mend - Their airy platform, when the loving spring - Bids them take thought for their expected young. - - _Serv._ See even so I cross them and cross them so: - Larger and by degrees a steady stack 161 - Have built, whereon the heaviest logs may lie: - And all of sun-dried wood: and now ’tis done. - - _Pr._ And now ’tis done, what means it now ’tis done? - - _Serv._ Well, thus ’tis rightly done: but why ’tis so - I cannot tell, nor any man here knows; - Save that our master when he sacrificeth, - As thou wilt hear anon, speaketh of fire; - And fire he saith is good for gods and men; - And the gods have it and men have it not: 170 - And then he prays the gods to send us fire; - And we, against they send it, must have wood - Laid ready thus as I have shewn thee here. - - _Pr._ To-day he sacrificeth? - - _Serv._ Ay, this noon. - Hark! hear’st thou not? they come. The solemn flutes - Warn us away; we must not here be seen - In these our soilèd habits, yet may stand - Where we may hear and see and not be seen. - - [_Exeunt R._ - -_Enter_ CHORUS, _and from the palace_ INACHUS _bearing cakes: he comes -to stand behind the altar_. - -_CHORUS._ - - God of Heaven! - We praise thee, Zeus most high, 180 - To whom by eternal Fate was given - The range and rule of the sky; - When thy lot, first of three - Leapt out, as sages tell, - And won Olympus for thee, - Therein for ever to dwell: - But the next with the barren sea - To grave Poseidôn fell, - And left fierce Hades his doom, to be - The lord and terror of hell. 190 - - (2) Thou sittest for aye - Encircled in azure bright, - Regarding the path of the sun by day, - And the changeful moon by night: - Attending with tireless ears - To the song of adoring love, - With which the separate spheres - Are voicèd that turn above: - And all that is hidden under - The clouds thy footing has furl’d 200 - Fears the hand that holdeth the thunder, - The eye that looks on the world. - -_Semichorus of youths._ - - Of all the isles of the sea - Is Crete most famed in story: - Above all mountains famous to me - Is Ida and crowned with glory. - There guarded of Heaven and Earth - Came Rhea at fall of night - To hide a wondrous birth - From the Sire’s unfathering sight. 210 - The halls of Cronos rang - With omens of coming ill, - And the mad Curêtes danced and sang - Adown the slopes of the hill. - - Then all the peaks of Gnossus kindled red - Beckoning afar unto the sinking sun, - He thro’ the vaporous west plunged to his bed, - Sunk, and the day was done. - But they, though he was fled, - Such light still held, as oft 220 - Hanging in air aloft, - At eve from shadowed ship - The Egyptian sailor sees: - Or like the twofold tip - That o’er the topmost trees - Flares on Parnassus, and the Theban dames - Quake at the ghostly flames. - - Then friendly night arose - To succour Earth, and spread - Her mantle o’er the snows 230 - And quenched their rosy red; - But in the east upsprings - Another light on them, - Selêné with white wings - And hueless diadem. - Little could she befriend - Her father’s house and state, - Nor her weak beams defend - Hypérion from his fate. - Only where’er she shines, 240 - In terror looking forth, - She sees the wailing pines - Stoop to the bitter North: - Or searching twice or thrice - Along the rocky walls, - She marks the columned ice - Of frozen waterfalls: - But still the darkened cave - Grew darker as she shone, - Wherein was Rhea gone 250 - Her child to bear and save. - - _[They dance._ - - Then danced the Dactyls and Curêtes wild, - And drowned with yells the cries of mother and child; - Big-armed Damnámeneus gan prance and shout: - And burly Acmon struck the echoes out: - And Kermis leaped and howled: and Titias pranced: - And broad Cyllenus tore the air and danced: - While deep within the shadowed cave at rest - Lay Rhea, with her babe upon her breast. - -_INACHUS._ - - If any here there be whose impure hands 260 - Among pure hands, or guilty heart among - Our guiltless hearts be stained with blood or wrong, - Let him depart! - If there be any here in whom high Zeus - Seeing impiety might turn away, - Now from our sacrifice and from his sin - Let him depart! - -_Semichorus of maidens._ - - I have chosen to praise - Hêra the wife, and bring - A hymn for the feast on marriage days - To the wife of the gods’ king. 271 - How on her festival - The gods had loving strife, - Which should give of them all - The fairest gift to the wife. - But Earth said, Fair to see - Is mine and yields to none, - I have grown for her joy a sacred tree, - With apples of gold thereon. - - Then Hêra, when she heard what Earth had given, - Smiled for her joy, and longed and came to see: - On dovewings flying from the height of heaven, - Down to the golden tree: - As tired birds at even - Come flying straight to house 285 - On their accustomed boughs. - ’Twas where, on tortured hands - Bearing the mighty pole, - Devoted Atlas stands: - And round his bowed head roll - Day-light and night, and stars unmingled dance, - Nor can he raise his glance. - - She saw the rocky coast - Whereon the azured waves - Are laced in foam, or lost - In water-lighted caves; - The olive island where, - Amid the purple seas - Night unto Darkness bare - The four Hesperides: 300 - And came into the shade - Of Atlas, where she found - The garden Earth had made - And fenced with groves around. - And in the midst it grew - Alone, the priceless stem, - As careful, clear and true - As graving on a gem. - Nature had kissèd Art - And borne a child to stir 310 - With jealousy the heart - Of heaven’s Artificer. - From crown to swelling root - It mocked the goddess’ praise, - The green enamelled sprays - The emblazoned golden fruit. - - [_They dance._ - - And ’neath the tree, with hair and zone unbound, - The fair Hesperides aye danced around, - And Ægle danced and sang ‘O welcome, Queen!’ - And Erytheia sang ‘The tree is green!’ 320 - And Hestia danced and sang ‘The fruit is gold!’ - And Arethusa sang ‘Fair Queen, behold!’ - And all joined hands and danced about the tree, - And sang ‘O Queen, we dance and sing for thee!’ - - _In._ If there be any here who has complaint - Against our rule or claim or supplication, - Now in the name of Zeus let it appear, - Now let him speak! - -_Prometheus reenters._ - - _Pr._ All hail, most worthy king, such claim have I. - - _In._ May grace be with thee, stranger; speak thy mind. 330 - - _Pr._ To Argos, king of Argos, at thy house - I bring long journeying to an end this hour, - Bearing no idle message for thine ears. - For know that far thy fame has reached, and men - That ne’er have seen thee tell that thou art set - Upon the throne of virtue, that good-will - And love thy servants are, that in thy land - Joy, honour, trust and modesty abide - And drink the air of peace, that kings must see - Thy city, would they know their peoples’ good 340 - And stablish them therein by wholesome laws. - But one thing mars the tale, for o’er thy lands - Travelling I have not seen from morn till eve, - Either from house or farm or labourer’s cot, - In any village, nor this town of Argos - A blue-wreathed smoke arise: the hearths are cold, - This altar cold: I see the wood and cakes - Unbaken--O king, where is the fire? - - _In._ If hither, stranger, thou wert come to find - That which thou findest wanting, join with us - Now in our sacrifice, take food within, 351 - And having learnt our simple way of life - Return unto thy country whence thou camest. - But hast thou skill or knowledge of this thing, - How best it may be sought, or by what means - Hope to be reached, O speak! I wait to hear. - - _Pr._ There is, O king, fire on the earth this day. - - _In._ On earth there is fire thou sayest! - - _Pr._ There is fire. - - _In._ On earth this day! - - _Pr._ There is fire on earth this day. - - _In._ This is a sacred place, a solemn hour, - Thy speech is earnest: yet even if thou speak truth, - O welcome messenger of happy tidings, - And though I hear aright, yet to believe - Is hard: thou canst not know what words thou speakest - Into what ears: they never heard before 365 - This sound but in old tales of happier times, - In sighs of prayer and faint unhearted hope: - Maybe they heard not rightly, speak again! - - _Pr._ There is, O king, fire on the earth this day. - - _In._ Yes, yes, again. Now let sweet Music blab - Her secret and give o’er; here is a trumpet 371 - That mocks her method. Yet ’tis but the word. - Maybe thy fire is not the fire I seek; - Maybe though thou didst see it, now ’tis quenched, - Or guarded out of reach: speak yet again - And swear by heaven’s truth is there fire or no; - And if there be, what means may make it mine. - - _Pr._ There is, O king, fire on the earth this day: - But not as thou dost seek it to be found. - - _In._ How seeking wrongly shall I seek aright? - - _Pr._ Thou prayest here to Zeus, and him thou callest 381 - Almighty, knowing he could grant thy prayer: - That if ’twere but his will, the journeying sun - Might drop a spark into thine outstretched hand: - That at his breath the splashing mountain brooks - That fall from Orneæ, and cold Lernè’s pool - Would change their element, and their chill streams - Bend in their burning banks a molten flood: - That at his word so many messengers - Would bring thee fire from heaven, that not a hearth - In all thy land but straight would have a god 391 - To kneel and fan the flame: and yet to him, - It is to him thou prayest. - - _In._ Therefore to him. - - _Pr._ Is this thy wisdom, king, to sow thy seed - Year after year in this unsprouting soil? - Hast thou not proved and found the will of Zeus - A barren rock for man with prayer to plough? - - _In._ His anger be averted! we judge not god - Evil, because our wishes please him not. - Oft our shortsighted prayers to heaven ascending - Ask there our ruin, and are then denied 401 - In kindness above granting: were’t not so, - Scarce could we pray for fear to pluck our doom - Out of the merciful withholding hands. - - _Pr._ Why then provokest thou such great goodwill - In long denial and kind silence shown? - - _In._ Fie, fie! Thou lackest piety: the god’s denial - Being nought but kindness, there is hope that he - Will make that good which is not:--or if indeed - Good be withheld in punishment, ’tis well - Still to seek on and pray that god relent. 411 - - _Pr._ O Sire of Argos, Zeus will not relent. - - _In._ Yet fire thou sayst is on the earth this day. - - _Pr._ Not of his knowledge nor his gift, O king. - - _In._ By kindness of what god then has man fire? - - _Pr._ I say but on the earth unknown to Zeus. - - _In._ How boastest thou to know, not of his knowledge? - - _Pr._ I boast not: he that knoweth not may boast. - - _In._ Thy daring words bewilder sense with sound. - - _Pr._ I thought to find thee ripe for daring deeds. - - _In._ And what the deed for which I prove unripe? - - _Pr_. To take of heaven’s fire. - - _In._ And were I ripe, - What should I dare, beseech you? - - _Pr._ The wrath of Zeus. - - _In._ Madman, pretending in one hand to hold - The wrath of god and in the other fire. 425 - - _Pr._ Thou meanest rather holding both in one. - - _In._ Both impious art thou and incredible. - - _Pr._ Yet impious only till thou dost believe. - - _In._ And what believe? Ah, if I could believe! - It was but now thou saidst that there was fire, - And I was near believing; I believed: - Now to believe were to be mad as thou. - - _Chorus._ He may be mad and yet say true--maybe - The heat of prophecy like a strong wine - Shameth his reason with exultant speech. 435 - - _Pr._ Thou say’st I am mad, and of my sober words - Hast called those impious which thou fearest true, - Those which thou knowest good, incredible. - Consider ere thou judge: be first assured - All is not good for man that seems god’s will. - See, on thy farming skill, thy country toil 441 - Which bends to aid the willing fruits of earth, - And would promote the seasonable year, - The face of nature is not always kind: - And if thou search the sum of visible being - To find thy blessing featured, ’tis not there: - Her best gifts cannot brim the golden cup - Of expectation which thine eager arms - Lift to her mouthèd horn--what then is this - Whose wide capacity outbids the scale 450 - Of prodigal beauty, so that the seeing eye - And hearing ear, retiring unamazed - Within their quiet chambers, sit to feast - With dear imagination, nor look forth - As once they did upon the varying air? - Whence is the fathering of this desire - Which mocks at fated circumstance? nay though - Obstruction lie as cumbrous as the mountains, - Nor thy particular hap hath armed desire - Against the brunt of evil,--yet not for this 460 - Faints man’s desire: it is the unquenchable - Original cause, the immortal breath of being: - Nor is there any spirit on Earth astir, - Nor ’neath the airy vault, nor yet beyond - In any dweller in far-reaching space, - Nobler or dearer than the spirit of man: - That spirit which lives in each and will not die, - That wooeth beauty, and for all good things - Urgeth a voice, or in still passion sigheth, - And where he loveth draweth the heart with him. - Hast thou not heard him speaking oft and oft, - Prompting thy secret musing and now shooting - His feathered fancies, or in cloudy sleep 473 - Piling his painted dreams? O hark to him! - For else if folly shut his joyous strength - To mope in her dark prison without praise, - The hidden tears with which he wails his wrong - Will sour the fount of life. O hark to him! - Him mayst thou trust beyond the things thou seest. - For many things there be upon this earth - Unblest and fallen from beauty, to mislead - Man’s mind, and in a shadow justify - The evil thoughts and deeds that work his ill; - Fear, hatred, lust and strife, which, if man question - The heavenborn spirit within him, are not there. - Yet are they bold of face, and Zeus himself, 486 - Seeing that Mischief held her head on high, - Lest she should go beyond his power to quell - And draw the inevitable Fate that waits - On utmost ill, himself preventing Fate - Hasted to drown the world, and now would crush - Thy little remnant: but among the gods 492 - Is one whose love and courage stir for thee; - Who being of manlike spirit, by many shifts - Has stayed the hand of the enemy, who crieth - Thy world is not destroyed, thy good shall live: - Thou hast more power for good than Zeus for ill, - More courage, justice, more abundant art, - More love, more joy, more reason: though around thee - Rank-rooting evil bloom with poisonous crown, - Though wan and dolorous and crooked things 501 - Have made their home with thee, thy good shall live. - Know thy desire: and know that if thou seek it, - And seek, and seek, and fear not, thou shalt find. - - _Sem._ (_youths_). Is this a god that speaketh thus? - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). He speaketh as a man - In love or great affliction yields his soul. - - _In._ Thou, whencesoe’er thou comest, whoe’er thou art, - Who breakest on our solemn sacrifice - With solemn words, I pray thee not depart - Till thou hast told me more. This fire I seek 510 - Not for myself, whose thin and silvery hair - Tells that my toilsome age nears to its end, - But for my children and the aftertime, - For great the need thereof, wretched our state; - Nay, set by what has been, our happiness - Is very want, so that what now is not - Is but the measure of what yet may be. - And first are barest needs, which well I know - Fire would supply, but I have hope beyond, - That Nature in recovering her right 520 - Would kinder prove to man who seeks to learn - Her secrets and unfold the cause of life. - So tell me, if thou knowest, what is fire? - Doth earth contain it? or, since from the sun - Fire reaches us, since in the glimmering stars - And pallid moon, in lightning, and the glance - Of tracking meteors that at nightfall show - How in the air a thousand sightless things - Travel, and ever on their windswift course - Flame when they list and into darkness go,--530 - Since in all these a fiery nature dwells, - Is fire an airy essence, a thing of heaven, - That, could we poise it, were an alien power - To make our wisdom less, our wonder more? - - _Pr._ Thy wish to know is good, and happy is he - Who thus from chance and change has launched his mind - To dwell for ever with undisturbèd truth. - This high ambition doth not prompt his hand - To crime, his right and pleasure are not wronged - By folly of his fellows, nor his eye 540 - Dimmed by the griefs that move the tears of men. - Son of the earth, and citizen may be - Of Argos or of Athens and her laws, - But still the eternal nature, where he looks, - O’errules him with the laws which laws obey, - And in her heavenly city enrols his heart. - - _In._ Thus ever have I held of happiness, - The child of heavenly truth, and thus have found it - In prayer and meditation and still thought, - And thus my peace of mind based on a floor 550 - That doth not quaver like the joys of sense: - Those I possess enough in seeing my slaves - And citizens enjoy, having myself - Tasted for once and put their sweets away. - But of that heavenly city, of which thou sayest - Her laws o’errule us, have I little learnt, - For when my wandering spirit hath dared alone - The unearthly terror of her voiceless halls, - She hath fallen from delight, and without guide - Turned back, and from her errand fled for fear. 560 - - _Pr._ Think not that thou canst all things know, nor deem - Such knowledge happiness: the all-knowing Fates - No pleasure have, who sit eternally - Spinning the unnumbered threads that Time hath woven, - And weaves, upgathering in his furthest house - To store from sight; but what ’tis joy to learn - Or use to know, that may’st thou ask of right. - - _In._ Then tell me, for thou knowest, what is fire? - - _Pr._ Know then, O king, that this fair earth of men, - The Olympus of the gods, and all the heavens - Are lesser kingdoms of the boundless space 571 - Wherein Fate rules; they have their several times, - Their seasons and the limit of their thrones, - And from the nature of eternal things - Springing, themselves are changed; even as the trees - Or birds or beasts of earth, which now arise - To being, now in turn decay and die. - The heaven and earth thou seest, for long were held - By Fire, a raging power, to whom the Fates - Decreed a slow diminishing old age, 580 - But to his daughter, who is that gentle goddess, - Queen of the clear and azure firmament, - In heaven called Hygra, but by mortals Air, - To her, the child of his slow doting years, - Was given a beauteous youth, not long to outlast - His life, but be the pride of his decay, - And win to gentler sway his lost domains. - And when the day of time arrived, when Air - Took o’er from her decrepit sire the third - Of the Sun’s kingdoms, the one-moonèd earth, - Straight came she down to her inheritance. 591 - Gaze on the sun with thine unshaded eye - And shrink from what she saw. Forests of fire - Whose waving trunks, sucking their fuel, reared - In branched flame roaring, and their torrid shades - Aye underlit with fire. The mountains lifted - And fell and followed like a running sea, - And from their swelling flanks spumed froth of fire; - Or, like awakening monsters, mighty mounds - Rose on the plain awhile. - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). He discovers a foe. 600 - - _Sem._ (_youths_). An enemy he paints. - - _Pr._ These all she quenched, - Or charmed their fury into the dens and bowels - Of earth to smoulder, there the vital heat - To hold for her creation, which then--to her aid - Summoning high Reason from his home in heaven,— - She wrought anew upon the temperate lands. - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). ’Twas well Air won this kingdom of her sire. - - _Sem._ (_youths_). Now say how made she green this home of fire. - - _Pr._ The waters first she brought, that in their streams - And pools and seas innumerable things 610 - Brought forth, from whence she drew the fertile seeds - Of trees and plants, and last of footed life, - That wandered forth, and roaming to and fro, - The rejoicing earth peopled with living sound. - Reason advised, and Reason praised her toil; - Which when she had done she gave him thanks, and said, - ‘Fair comrade, since thou praisest what is done, - Grant me this favour ere thou part from me: - Make thou one fair thing for me, which shall suit - With what is made, and be the best of all.’ 620 - ’Twas evening, and that night Reason made man. - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). Children of Air are we, and live by fire. - - _Sem._ (_youths_). The sons of Reason dwelling on the earth. - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). Folk of a pleasant kingdom held between - Fire’s reign of terror and the latter day - When dying, soon in turn his child must die. - - _Sem._ (_youths_). Having a wise creator, above time - Or youth or change, from whom our kind inherit - The grace and pleasure of the eternal gods. - - _In._ But how came gods to rule this earth of Air? - - _Pr._ They also were her children who first ruled, - Cronos, Iapetus, Hypérion, 632 - Theia and Rhea, and other mighty names - That are but names--whom Zeus drave out from heaven, - And with his tribe sits on their injured thrones. - - _In._ There is no greater god in heaven than he. - - _Pr._ Nor none more cruel nor more tyrannous. - - _In._ But what can man against the power of god? - - _Pr._ Doth not man strive with him? thyself dost pray. - - _In._ That he may pardon our contrarious deeds. - - _Pr._ Alas! alas! what more contrarious deed, - What greater miracle of wrong than this, 642 - That man should know his good and take it not? - To what god wilt thou pray to pardon this? - In vain was reason given, if man therewith - Shame truth, and name it wisdom to cry down - The unschooled promptings of his best desire. - The beasts that have no speech nor argument - Confute him, and the wild hog in the wood - That feels his longing, hurries straight thereto, 650 - And will not turn his head. - - _In._ How mean’st thou this? - - _Pr._ Thou hast desired the good, and now canst feel - How hard it is to kill the heart’s desire. - - _In._ Shall Inachus rise against Zeus, as he - Rose against Cronos and made war in heaven? - - _Pr._ I say not so, yet, if thou didst rebel, - The tongue that counselled Zeus should counsel thee. - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). This is strange counsel. - - _Sem._ (_youths_). He is not - A counsellor for gods or men. - - _In._ O that I knew where I might counsel find, - That one were sent, nay, were’t the least of all - The myriad messengers of heaven, to me! 662 - One that should say ’This morn I stood with Zeus, - He hath heard thy prayer and sent me: ask a boon, - What thing thou wilt, it shall be given thee.’ - - _Pr._ What wouldst thou say to such a messenger? - - _In._ No need to ask then what I now might ask, - How ’tis the gods, if they have care for mortals, - Slubber our worst necessities--and the boon, - No need to tell him that. - - _Pr._ Now, king, thou seest - Zeus sends no messenger, but I am here. - - _In._ Thy speech is hard, and even thy kindest words - Unkind. If fire thou hast, in thee ’tis kind - To proffer it: but thou art more unkind - Yoking heaven’s wrath therewith. Nay, and how knowest thou 675 - Zeus will be angry if I take of it? - Thou art a prophet: ay, but of the prophets - Some have been taken in error, and honest time - Has honoured many with forgetfulness. - I’ll make this proof of thee; Show me thy fire-- - Nay, give’t me now--if thou be true at all, - Be true so far: for the rest there’s none will lose, - Nor blame thee being false--where is thy fire? - - _Pr._ O rather, had it thus been mine to give, - I would have given it thus: not adding aught - Of danger or diminishment or loss; 686 - So strong is my goodwill; nor less than this - My knowledge, but in knowledge all my power. - Yet since wise guidance with a little means - Can more than force unminded, I have skill - To conjure evil and outcompass strength. - Now give I thee my best, a little gift - To work a world of wonder; ’tis thine own - Of long desire, and with it I will give - The cunning of invention and all arts 695 - In which thy hand instructed may command, - Interpret, comfort, or ennoble nature; - With all provision that in wisdom is, - And what prevention in foreknowledge lies. - - _In._ Great is the gain. - - _Pr._ O king, the gain is thine, - The penalty I more than share. - - _In._ Enough, - I take thy gift; nor hast thou stood more firm - To every point of thy strange chequered tale, - Revealing, threatening, offering more and more, - And never all, than I to this resolve. 705 - - _Pr._ I knew thy heart would fail not at the hour. - - _In._ Nay, failed I now, what were my years of toil - More than the endurance of a harnessed brute, - Flogged to his daily work, that cannot view - The high design to which his labour steps? - And I of all men were dishonoured most - Shrinking in fear, who never shrank from toil, - And found abjuring, thrusting stiffly back, - The very gift for which I stretched my hands. - What though I suffer? are these wintry years - Of growing desolation to be held 716 - As cherishable as the suns of spring? - Nay, only joyful can they be in seeing - Long hopes accomplished, long desires fulfilled. - And since thou hast touched ambition on the side - Of nobleness, and stirred my proudest hope, - And wilt fulfil this, shall I count the cost? - Rather decay will triumph, and cold death - Be lapped in glory, seeing strength arise 724 - From weakness, from the tomb go forth a flame. - - _Pr._ ’Tis well; thou art exalted now, the grace - Becomes thy valiant spirit. - - _In._ Lo! on this day - Which hope despaired to see, hope manifests - A vision bright as were the dreams of youth; - When life was easy as a sleeper’s faith - Who swims in the air and dances on the sea; - When all the good that scarce by toil is won, - Or not at all is won, is as a flower - Growing in plenty to be plucked at will: - Is it a dream again or is it truth, 735 - This vision fair of Greece inhabited? - A fairer sight than all fair Iris sees, - Footing her airy arch of colours spun - From Ida to Olympus, when she stays - To look on Greece and thinks the sight is fair; - Far fairer now, clothed with the works of men. - - _Pr._ Ay, fairer far: for nature’s varied pleasaunce - Without man’s life is but a desert wild, - Which most, where most she mocks him, needs his aid. - She knows her silence sweeter when it girds 745 - His murmurous cities, her wide wasteful curves - Larger beside his economic line; - Or what can add a mystery to the dark, - As doth his measured music when it moves - With rhythmic sweetness through the void of night? - Nay, all her loveliest places are but grounds - Of vantage, where with geometric hand, - True square and careful compass he may come - To plan and plant and spread abroad his towers, - His gardens, temples, palaces and tombs. 755 - And yet not all thou seest, with trancèd eye - Looking upon the beauty that shall be, - The temple-crownèd heights, the wallèd towns, - Farms and cool summer seats, nor the broad ways - That bridge the rivers and subdue the mountains, - Nor all that travels on them, pomp or war - Or needful merchandise, nor all the sails - Piloting over the wind-dappled blue - Of the summer-soothed Ægean, to thy mind - Can picture what shall be: these are the face - And form of beauty, but her heart and life - Shall they be who shall see it, born to shield - A happier birthright with intrepid arms, - To tread down tyranny and fashion forth - A virgin wisdom to subdue the world, 770 - To build for passion an eternal song, - To shape her dreams in marble, and so sweet - Their speech, that envious Time hearkening shall stay - In fear to snatch, and hide his rugged hand. - Now is the birthday of thy conquering youth, - O man, and lo! thy priest and prophet stand - Beside the altar and have blessed the day. - - _In._ Ay, blessed be this day. Where is thy fire? - Or is aught else to do, ere I may take? - - _Pr._ This was my message, speak and there is fire. - - _In._ There shall be fire. Await me here awhile. - I go to acquaint my house, and bring them forth. - -[_Exit._ - - _Chorus._ - - Hearken, O Argos, hearken! 783 - There will be fire. - And thou, O Earth, give ear! - There will be fire. - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). Who shall be sent to fetch this fire - for the king? - - _Sem._ (_youths_). Shall we put forth in boats to reap, - And shall the waves for harvest yield - The rootless flames that nimbly leap 790 - Upon their ever-shifting field? - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). Or we in olive-groves go shake - And beat the fruiting sprays, till all - The silv’ry glitter which they make - Beneath into our baskets fall? - - _Sem._ (_youths_). To bind in sheaves and bear away - The white unshafted darts of day? - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). And from the shadow one by one - Pick up the playful oes of sun? - - _Sem._ (_youths_). Or wouldst thou mine a passage deep - Until the darksome fire is found, 801 - Which prisoned long in seething sleep - Vexes the caverns underground? - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). Or bid us join our palms perchance, - To cup the slant and chinkèd beam, - Which mounting morn hath sent to dance - Across our chamber while we dream? - - _Sem._ (_youths_). Say whence and how shall we fetch - this fire for the king? - Our hope is impatient of vain debating. - - _Sem._ (_maidens_). My heart is stirred at the name of 810 - the wondrous thing, - And trembles awaiting. - -_ODE._ - - A coy inquisitive spirit, the spirit of wonder, - Possesses the child in his cradle, when mortal things - Are new, yet a varied surface and nothing under. - It busies the mind on trifles and toys and brings - Her grasp from nearer to further, from smaller to greater, - And slowly teaches flight to her fledgeling wings. - - Where’er she flutters and falls surprises await her: - She soars, and beauty’s miracles open in sight, - The flowers and trees and beasts of the earth; and later 820 - The skies of day, the moon and the stars of night; - ’Neath which she scarcely venturing goes demurely, - With mystery clad, in the awe of depth and height. - - O happy for still unconscious, for ah! how surely, - How soon and surely will disenchantment come, - When first to herself she boasts to walk securely, - And drives the master spirit away from his home; - - Seeing the marvellous things that make the morning - Are marvels of every-day, familiar, and some - Have lost with use, like earthly robes, their adorning, - As earthly joys the charm of a first delight, 831 - And some are fallen from awe to neglect and scorning; - Until-- - O tarry not long, dear needed sprite! - Till thou, though uninvited, with fancy returnest - To hallow beauty and make the dull heart bright: - To inhabit again thy gladdened kingdom in earnest; - Wherein-- - from the smile of beauty afar forecasting - The pleasure of god, thou livest at peace and yearnest - With wonder everlasting. - - - - -SECOND PART - -_Reenter from the palace_ INACHUS, _with_ ARGEIA _and_ IO. - - -_INACHUS._ - - That but a small and easy thing now seems, - Which from my house when I came forth at noon - A dream was and beyond the reach of man. - ’Tis now a fancy of the will, a word, - Liberty’s lightest prize. Yet still as one - Who loiters on the threshold of delight, - Delaying pleasure for the love of pleasure, - I dally--Come, Argeia, and share my triumph! - And set our daughter by thee; though her eyes - Are young, there are no eyes this day so young - As shall forget this day--while one thing more - I ask of thee; this evil, will it light 851 - On me or on my house or on mankind? - - _Pr._ Scarce on mankind, O Inachus, for Zeus - A second time failing will not again - Measure his spite against their better fate. - And now the terror, which awhile o’er Earth - Its black wings spread, shall up to Heaven ascend - And gnaw the tyrant’s heart: for there is whispered - A word gone forth to scare the mighty gods; - How one must soon be born, and born of men, 860 - Who shall drive out their impious host from heaven, - And from their skyey dwellings rule mankind - In truth and love. So scarce on man will fall - This evil, nay, nor on thyself, O king; - Thy name shall live an honoured name in Greece. - - _In._ Then on my house ’twill be. Know’st thou no more? - - _Pr._ Know I no more? Ay, if my purpose fail - ’Tis not for lack of knowing: if I suffer, - ’Tis not that poisonous fear hath slurred her task, - Or let brave resolution walk unarmed. 870 - My ears are callous to the threats of Zeus, - The direful penalties his oath hath laid - On every good that I in heart and hand - Am sworn to accomplish, and for all his threats, - Lest their accomplishment should outrun mine, - Am bound the more. Nay, nor his evil minions, - Nor force, nor strength, shall bend me to his will. - -_ARGEIA._ - - Alas, alas, what heavy words are these, - That in the place of joy forbid your tongue, - That cloud and change his face, while desperate sorrow 880 - Sighs in his heart? I came to share a triumph: - All is dismay and terror. What is this? - - _In._ True, wife, I spake of triumph, and I told thee - The winter-withering hope of my whole life - Has flower’d to-day in amaranth: what the hope - Thou knowest, who hast shared; but the condition - I told thee not and thou hast heard: this prophet, - Who comes to bring us fire, hath said that Zeus - Wills not the gift he brings, and will be wroth - With us that take it. - - _Ar._ O doleful change, I came - In pious purpose, nay, I heard within 891 - The hymn to glorious Zeus: I rose and said, - The mighty god now bends, he thrusts aside - His heavenly supplicants to hear the prayer - Of Inachus his servant; let him hear. - O let him turn away now lest he hear. - Nay, frown not on me; though a woman’s voice - That counsels is but heard impatiently, - Yet by thy love, and by the sons I bare thee, - By this our daughter, our last ripening fruit, 900 - By our long happiness and hope of more, - Hear me and let me speak. - - _In._ Well, wife, speak on. - - _Ar._ Thy voice forbids more than thy words invite: - Yet say whence comes this stranger. Know’st thou not? - Yet whencesoe’er, if he but wish us well, - He will not bound his kindness in a day. - Do nought in haste. Send now to Sicyon - And fetch thy son Phorôneus, for his stake - In this is more than thine, and he is wise. - ’Twere well Phorôneus and Ægialeus 910 - Were both here: maybe they would both refuse - The strange conditions which this stranger brings. - Were we not happy too before he came? - Doth he not offer us unhappiness? - Bid him depart, and at some other time, - When you have well considered, then return. - - _In._ ’Tis his conditions that we now shall hear. - - _Ar._ O hide them yet! Are there not tales enough - Of what the wrathful gods have wrought on men? - Nay, ’twas this very fire thou now would’st take, - Which vain Salmoneus, son of Æolus, 921 - Made boast to have, and from his rattling car - Threw up at heaven to mock the lightning. Him - The thunderer stayed not to deride, but sent - One blinding fork, that in the vacant sky - Shook like a serpent’s tongue, which is but seen - In memory, and he was not, or for burial - Rode with the ashes of his royal city - Upon the whirlwind of the riven air. - And after him his brother Athamas, - King of Orchomenos, in frenzy fell - For Hera’s wrath, and raving killed his son; - And would have killed fair Ino, but that she fled - Into the sea, preferring there to woo 934 - The choking waters, rather than that the arm - Which had so oft embraced should do her wrong. - For which old crimes the gods yet unappeased - Demand a sacrifice, and the king’s son - Dreads the priest’s knife, and all the city mourns. - Or shall I say what shameful fury it was - With which Poseidon smote Pasiphaë, - But for neglect of a recorded vow: - Or how Actæon fared of Artemis - When he surprised her, most himself surprised: - And even while he looked his boasted bow - Fell from his hands, and through his veins there ran - A strange oblivious trouble, darkening sense - Till he knew nothing but a hideous fear - Which bade him fly, and faster, as behind - He heard his hounds give tongue, that through the wood 950 - Were following, closing, caught him and tore him down. - And many more thus perished in their prime; - Lycaon and his fifty sons, whom Zeus - In their own house spied on, and unawares - Watching at hand, from his disguise arose, - And overset the table where they sat - Around their impious feast and slew them all: - Alcyonè and Ceyx, queen and king, - Who for their arrogance were changed to birds: - And Cadmus now a serpent, once a king: 960 - And saddest Niobe, whom not the love - Of Leto aught availed, when once her boast - Went out, though all her crime was too much pride - Of heaven’s most precious gift, her children fair. - Six daughters had she, and six stalwart sons; - But Leto bade her two destroy the twelve. - And somewhere now, among lone mountain rocks - On Sipylus, where couch the nymphs at night - Who dance all day by Achelous’ stream, - The once proud mother lies, herself a rock, 970 - And in cold breast broods o’er the goddess’ wrong. - - _In._ Now hush thy fear. See how thou tremblest still. - Or if thou fear, fear passion; for the freshes - Of tenderness and motherly love will drown - The eye of judgment: yet, since even excess - Of the soft quality fits woman well, - I praise thee; nor would ask thee less to aid - With counsel, than in love to share my choice. - Tho’ weak thy hands to poise, thine eye may mark - This balance, how the good of all outweighs 980 - The good of one or two, though these be us. - Let not reluctance shame the sacrifice - Which in another thou wert first to praise. - - _Ar._ Alas for me, for thee and for our children, - Who, being our being, having all our having, - If they fare ill, our pride lies in the dust. - - _In._ O deem not a man’s children are but those - Out of his loins engendered--our spirit’s love - Hath such prolific consequence, that Virtue - Cometh of ancestry more pure than blood, 990 - And counts her seed as sand upon the shore. - Happy is he whose body’s sons proclaim - Their father’s honour, but more blest to whom - The world is dutiful, whose children spring - Out of all nations, and whose pride the proud - Rise to regenerate when they call him sire. - - _Ar._ Thus, husband, ever have I bought and buy - Nobleness cheaply being linked with thee. - Forgive my weakness; see, I now am bold; - Tell me the worst, I’ll hear and wish ’twere more. - - _In._ Retire--thy tears perchance may stir again. - - _Ar._ Nay, I am full of wonder and would hear. - - _Pr._ Bid me not tell if ye have fear to hear; - But have no fear. Knowledge of future things 1004 - Can nothing change man’s spirit: and though he seem - To aim his passion darkly, like a shaft - Shot toward some fearful sound in thickest night, - He hath an owl’s eye, and must blink at day. - The springs of memory, that feed alike - His thought and action, draw from furthest time - Their constant source, and hardly brook constraint - Of actual circumstance, far less attend - On glassed futurity; nay, death itself, - His fate unquestioned, his foretasted pain, - The certainty foreknown of things unknown, - Cannot discourage his habitual being 1016 - In its appointed motions, to make waver - His eager hand, nor loosen the desire - Of the most feeble melancholy heart - Even from the unhopefullest of all her dreams. - - _In._ Since then I long to know, now something say - Of what will come to mine when I am gone. - - _Pr._ And let the maid too hear, for ’tis of her - I speak, to tell her whither she should turn - The day ye drive her forth from hearth and home. - - _In._ What sayst thou? drive her out? and we? from home? 1026 - Banish the comfort of our eyes? Nay rather - Believe that these obedient hands will tear - The heart out of my breast, ere it do this. - - Pr. When her wild cries arouse the house at night, - And, running to her bed, ye see her set 1031 - Upright in trancèd sleep, her starting hair - With deathly sweat bedewed, in horror shaking, - Her eyeballs fixed upon the unbodied dark, - Through which a draping mist of luminous gloom - Drifts from her couch away,--when, if asleep, - She walks as if awake, and if awake - Dreams, and as one who nothing hears or sees, - Lives in a sick and frantic mood, whose cause - She understands not or is loth to tell-- - - _Ar._ Ah, ah, my child, my child!--Dost thou feel aught? 1041 - Speak to me--nay, ’tis nothing--hearken not. - - _Pr._ Ye then distraught with sorrow, neither knowing - Whether to save were best or lose, will seek - Apollo’s oracle. - - _In._ And what the answer? - Will it discover nought to avert this sorrow? - - _Pr._ Or else thy whole race perish root and branch. - - _In._ Alas! alas! - - _Pr._ Yet shall she live though lost; from human form - Changed, that thou wilt not know thy daughter more. - - _In._ Woe, woe! my thought was praying for her death. 1051 - - _Pr._ In Hera’s temple shall her prison be - At high Mycenæ, till from heaven be sent - Hermes, with song to soothe and sword to slay - The beast whose hundred eyes devour the door. - - _In._ Enough, enough is told, unless indeed, - The beast once slain, thou canst restore our child. - - _Pr._ Nay, with her freedom will her wanderings - Begin. Come hither, child--nay, let her come: - What words remain to speak will not offend her, - And shall in memory quicken, when she looks - To learn where she should go;--for go she must, - Stung by the venomous fly, whose angry flight - She still will hear about her, till she come 1064 - To lay her sevenfold-carried burden down - Upon the Æthiop shore where he shall reign. - - _In._ But say--say first, what form-- - - _Pr._ In snow-white hide - Of those that feel the goad and wear the yoke. - - _In._ Round-hoofed, or such as tread with cloven foot? - - _Pr._ Wide-horned, large-eyed, broad-fronted, and the feet 1070 - Cloven which carry her to her far goal. - - _In._ Will that of all these evils be the term? - - _Pr._ Ay, but the journey first which she must learn. - Hear now, my child; the day when thou art free, - Leaving the lion-gate, descend and strike - The Trêtan road to Nemea, skirting wide - The unhunted forest o’er the watered plain - To walled Cleônæ, whence the traversed stream - To Corinth guides: there enter not, but pass - To narrow Isthmus, where Poseidon won 1080 - A country from Apollo, and through the town - Of Crommyon, till along the robber’s road - Pacing, thy left eye meet the westering sun - O’er Geraneia, and thou reach the hill - Of Megara, where Car thy brother’s babe - In time shall rule; next past Eleusis climb - Stony Panactum and the pine-clad slopes - Of Phyle; shun the left-hand way, and keep - The rocks; the second day thy feet shall tread - The plains of Græa, whence the roadway serves - Aulis and Mycalessus to the point 1091 - Of vext Euripus: fear not then the stream, - Nor scenting think to taste, but plunging in - Breast its salt current to the further shore. - For on this island mayst thou lose awhile - Thy maddening pest, and rest and pasture find, - And from the heafs of bold Macistus see - The country left and sought: but when thou feel - Thy torment urge, move down, recross the flood, - And west by Harma’s fencèd gap arrive - At seven-gated Thebes: thy friendly goddess - Ongan Athenè has her seat without. 1102 - - _Chor._ Now if she may not stay thy toilsome destined steps, - I pray that she may slay for thee the maddening fly. - - _Pr._ Keep not her sanctuary long, but seek - Bœotian Ascra, where the Muses’ fount, - Famed Aganippè, wells: Ocalea - Pass, and Tilphusa’s northern steeps descend - By Alalcomenæ, the goddess’ town. - Guard now the lake’s low shore, till thou have crossed - Hyrcana and Cephissus, the last streams 1111 - Which feed its reedy pools, when thou shalt come - Between two mountains that enclose the way - By peakèd Abæ to Hyampolis. - The right-hand path that thither parts the vale - Opes to Cyrtonè and the Locrian lands; - Toward Elateia thou, where o’er the marsh - A path with stones is laid; and thence beyond - To Thronium, Tarphè, and Thermopylæ, - Where rocky Lamia views the Maliac gulf. - - _Chor._ If further she should go, will she not see - That other Argos, the Dodonian land? 1122 - - _Pr._ Crossing the Phthian hills thou next shalt reach - Pharsalus, and Olympus’ peakèd snows - Shall guide thee o’er the green Pelasgic plains - For many a day, but to Argissa come - Let old Peneius thy slow pilot be - Through Tempè, till they turn upon his left - Crowning the wooded slopes with splendours bare. - Thence issuing forth on the Pierian shore - Northward of Ossa thou shalt touch the lands - Of Macedon. - - _Chor._ Alas, we wish thee speed, 1132 - But bid thee here farewell; for out of Greece - Thou goest ’mongst the folk whose chattering speech - Is like the voice of birds, nor home again - Wilt thou return. - - _Pr._ Thy way along the coast - Lies till it southward turn, when thou shalt seek - Where wide on Strymon’s plain the hindered flood - Spreads like a lake; thy course to his oppose - And face him to the mountain whence he comes: - Which doubled, Thrace receives thee: barbarous names 1141 - Of mountain, town and river, and a people - Strange to thine eyes and ears, the Agathyrsi, - Of pictured skins, who owe no marriage law, - And o’er whose gay-spun garments sprent with gold - Their hanging hair is blue. Their torrent swim - That measures Europe in two parts, and go - Eastward along the sea, to mount the lands - Beyond man’s dwelling, and the rising steeps - That face the sun untrodden and unnamed.--1150 - Know to earth’s verge remote thou then art come, - The Scythian tract and wilderness forlorn, - Through whose rude rocks and frosty silences - No path shall guide thee then, nor my words now. - There as thou toilest o’er the treacherous snows, - A sound then thou shalt hear to stop thy breath, - And prick thy trembling ears; a far-off cry, - Whose throat seems the white mountain and its passion - The woe of earth. Flee not, nor turn not back: - Let thine ears drink and guide thine eyes to see - That sight whose terrors shall assuage thy terror, - Whose pain shall kill thy pain. Stretched on the rock, - Naked to scorching sun, to pinching frost, 1163 - To wind and storm and beaks of wingèd fiends - From year to year he lies. Refrain to ask - His name and crime--nay, haply when thou see him - Thou wilt remember--’tis thy tyrant’s foe, - Man’s friend, who pays his chosen penalty. - Draw near, my child, for he will know thy need, - And point from land to land thy further path. - -_Chorus_ - - O miserable man, hear now the worst. - O weak and tearful race, - Born to unhappiness, see now thy cause 1173 - Doomed and accurst! - - It surely were enough, the bad and good - Together mingled, against chance and ill - To strive, and prospering by turns, - Now these, now those, now folly and now skill, - Alike by means well understood - Or ’gainst all likelihood; - Loveliness slaving to the unlovely will - That overrides the right and laughs at law. - - But always all in awe 1183 - And imminent dread: - Because there is no mischief thought or said, - Imaginable or unguessed, - But it may come to be; nor home of rest, - Nor hour secure: but anywhere, - At any moment; in the air, - Or on the earth or sea, - Or in the fair - And tender body itself it lurks, creeps in, - Or seizes suddenly, 1193 - Torturing, burning, withering, devouring, - Shaking, destroying; till tormented life - Sides with the slayer, not to be, - And from the cruel strife - Falls to fate overpowering. - - Or if some patient heart, - In toilsome steps of duty tread apart, 1200 - Thinking to win her peace within herself, - And thus awhile succeed: - She must see others bleed, - At others’ misery moan, - And learn the common suffering is her own, - From which it is no freedom to be freed: - Nay, Nature, her best nurse, - Is tender but to breed a finer sense, - Which she may easier wound, with smart the worse - And torture more intense. 1210 - - And no strength for thee but the thought of duty, - Nor any solace but the love of beauty. - O Right’s toil unrewarded! - O Love’s prize unaccorded! - - I say this might suffice, - O tearful and unstable - And miserable man, - Were’t but from day to day - Thy miserable lot, - This might suffice, I say, 1220 - To term thee miserable. - But thou of all thine ills too must take thought, - Must grow familiar till no curse astound thee, - With tears recall the past, - With tears the times forecast; - With tears, with tears thou hast - The scapeless net spread in thy sight around thee. - - How then support thy fate, - O miserable man, if this befall, - That he who loves thee and would aid thee, daring - To raise an arm for thy deliverance, 1231 - Must for his courage suffer worse than all? - - _In._ Bravest deliverer, for thy prophecy - Has torn the veil which hid thee from my eyes, - If thyself art that spirit, of whom some things - Were darkly spoken,--nor can I doubt thou art, - Being that the heaven its fire withholds not from thee - Nor time his secrets,--tell me now thy name, - That I may praise thee rightly; and my late - Unwitting words pardon thou, and these who still - In blinded wonder kneel not to thy love. 1241 - - _Pr._ Speak not of love. See, I am moved with hate, - And fiercest anger, which will sometimes spur - The heart to extremity, till it forget - That there is any joy save furious war. - Nay, were there now another deed to do, - Which more could hurt our enemy than this, - Which here I stand to venture, here would I leave thee - Conspiring at his altar, and fly off - To plunge the branding terror in his soul. - But now the rising passion of my will 1251 - Already jars his reaching sense, already - From heaven he bids his minion Hermes forth - To bring his only rebel to his feet. - Therefore no more delay, the time is short. - - _In._ I take, I take. ’Tis but for thee to give. - - _Pr._ O heavenly fire, life’s life, the eye of day, - Whose nimble waves upon the starry night - Of boundless ether love to play, - Carrying commands to every gliding sprite - To feed all things with colour, from the ray - Of thy bright-glancing, white 1162 - And silver-spinning light: - Unweaving its thin tissue for the bow - Of Iris, separating countless hues - Of various splendour for the grateful flowers - To crown the hasting hours, - Changing their special garlands as they choose. - - O spirit of rage and might, - Who canst unchain the links of winter stark, - And bid earth’s stubborn metals flow like oil, - Her porphyrous heart-veins boil; 1272 - Whose arrows pierce the cloudy shields of dark; - Let now this flame, which did to life awaken - Beyond the cold dew-gathering veils of morn, - And thence by me was taken, - And in this reed was borne, - A smothered theft and gift to man below, - Here with my breath revive, - Restore thy lapsèd realm, and be the sire - Of many an earthly fire. 1281 - - O flame, flame bright and live, - Appear upon the altar as I blow. - - _Chor._ ’Twas in the marish reed. - See to his mouth he sets its hollow flute - And breathes therein with heed, - As one who from a pipe with breathings mute - Will music’s voice evoke.— - See, the curl of a cloud. - - _In._ The smoke, the smoke! 1290 - - _Semichorus._ Thin clouds mounting higher. - - _In._ ’Tis smoke, the smoke of fire. - - _Semichorus._ Thick they come and thicker, - Quick arise and quicker, - Higher still and higher. - Their wreaths the wood enfold. - --I see a spot of gold. - They spring from a spot of gold, - Red gold, deep among - The leaves: a golden tongue. 1300 - O behold, behold, - Dancing tongues of gold, - That leaping aloft flicker, - Higher still and higher. - - _In._ ’Tis fire, the flame of fire! - - _Semichorus._ The blue smoke overhead - Is turned to angry red. - The fire, the fire, it stirs. - Hark, a crackling sound, - As when all around 1310 - Ripened pods of furze - Split in the parching sun - Their dry caps one by one, - And shed their seeds on the ground. - --Ah! what clouds arise. - Away! O come away. - The wind-wafted smoke, - Blowing all astray, - - [_Prometheus, after writing his name on the altar, goes out - unobserved._] - - Blinds and pricks my eyes. - Ah! I choke, I choke. - --All the midst is rent: - See the twigs are all - By the flaming spent - White and gold, and fall. - How they writhe, resist, - Blacken, flake, and twist, - Snap in gold and fall. - --See the stars that mount, - Momentary bright - Flitting specks of light 1330 - More than eye can count. - Insects of the air, - As in summer night - Show a fire in flying - Flickering here and there, - Waving past and dying. - --Look, a common cone - Of the mountain pine - Solid gold is grown; - Till its scales outshine, 1340 - Standing each alone - In the spiral rows - Of their fair design, - All the brightest shows - Of the sun’s decline. - --Hark, there came a hiss, - Like a startled snake - Sliding through the brake. - Oh, and what is this? - Smaller flames that flee 1350 - Sidelong from the tree, - Hark, they hiss, they hiss. - --How the gay flames flicker, - Spurting, dancing, leaping - Quicker yet and quicker, - Higher yet and higher, - --Flaming, flaring, fuming, - Cracking, crackling, creeping, - Hissing and consuming: - Mighty is the fire. 1360 - - _In._ Stay, stay, cease your rejoicings. Where is he, - The prophet,--nay, what say I,--the god, the giver? - - _Chor._ He is not here--he is gone. - - _In._ Search, search around. - Search all, search well. - - _Chor._ He is gone,--he is not here. - - _In._ The palace gate lies open: go, Argeia, - Maybe he went within: go seek him there. - -[_Exit Ar._ - - Look down the sea road, down the country road: - Follow him if ye see him. - - _Chor._ He is not there. - - _In._ Strain, strain your eyes: look well: search everywhere. - Look townwards--is he there? - - _Part of Chorus returning._ He is not there.— - - _Other part returning._ He is not there. - - _Ar. re-entering._ He is not there. 1371 - - _Chor._ O see! - - _Chor._ See where? - - _Chor._ See on the altar--see! - - _Chor._ What see ye on the altar? - - _Chor._ Here in front - Words newly writ. - - _Chor._ What words? - - _Chor._ A name-- - - _In._ Ay true-- - There is the name. How like a child was I, - That I must wait till these dumb letters gave - The shape and soul to knowledge: when the god - Stood here so self-revealed to ears and eyes - That, ’tis a god I said, yet wavering still, - Doubting what god,--and now, who else but he? - I knew him, yet not well; I knew him not: - Prometheus--ay, Prometheus. Know ye, my children, 1382 - This name we see was writ by him we seek. - ’Tis his own name, his own heart-stirring name, - Feared and revered among the immortal gods; - Divine Prometheus: see how here the large - Cadmeian characters run, scoring out - The hated title of his ancient foe,— - To Zeus ’twas made,--and now ’tis to Prometheus-- - Writ with the charrèd reed--theft upon theft. - He hath stolen from Zeus his altar, and with his fire - Hath lit our sacrifice unto himself. 1392 - Ió Prometheus, friend and firegiver, - For good or ill thy thefts and gifts are ours. - We worshipped thee unknowing. - - _Chor._ But now where is he? - - _In._ No need to search--we shall not see him more. - We look in vain. The high gods when they choose - Put on and off the solid visible shape - Which more deceives our hasty sense, than when - Seeing them not we judge they stand aloof. - And he, he now is gone; his work is done: - ’Tis ours to see it be not done in vain. 1402 - - _Chor._ What is to do? speak, bid, command, we fly. - - _In._ Go some and fetch more wood to feed the fire; - And some into the city to proclaim - That fire is ours: and send out messengers - To Corinth, Sicyon, Megara and Athens - And to Mycenæ, telling we have fire: - And bid that in the temples they prepare - Their altars, and send hither careful men - To learn of me what things the time requires. - -[_Exit part of Chorus._ - - The rest remain to end our feast; and now - Seeing this altar is no more to Zeus, 1413 - But shall for ever be with smouldering heat - Fed for the god who first set fire thereon, - Change ye your hymns, which in the praise of Zeus - Ye came to sing, and change the prayer for fire - Which ye were wont to raise, to high thanksgiving, - Praising aloud the giver and his gift. - - _Part of Chorus._ Now our happy feast hath ending, - While the sun in heaven descending - Sees us gathered round a light - Born to cheer his vacant night. 1423 - Praising him to-day who came - Bearing far his heavenly flame: - Came to crown our king’s desire - With his gift of golden fire. - - _Semichorus._ My heart, my heart is freed. - Now can I sing. I loose a shaft from my bow, - A song from my heart to heaven, and watch it speed. - It revels in the air, and straight to its goal doth go. - I have no fear: I praise distinguishing duly: - I praise the love that I love and I worship truly. - Goodness I praise, not might, - Nor more will I speak of wrong, 1435 - But of lovingkindness and right; - And the god of my love shall rejoice at the sound of my song. - I praise him whom I have seen: - As a man he is beautiful, blending prime and youth, - Of gentle and lovely mien, - With the step and the eyes of truth, - As a god,--O were I a god, but thus to be man! - As a god, I set him above - The rest of the gods; for his gifts are pledges of love, - The words of his mouth rare and precious, - His eyes’ glance and the smile of his lips are love. - He is the one 1447 - Alone of all the gods, - Of righteous Themis the lofty-spirited son, - Who hates the wrongs they have done. - He is the one I adore. - For if there be love in heaven with evil to cope,— - And he promised us more and more,— - For what may we not hope? - - -_ODE_ - - My soul is drunk with joy, her new desire - In far forbidden places wanders away. - Her hopes with free bright-coloured wings of fire - Upon the gloom of thought - Are sailing out. - Awhile they rise, awhile to rest they softly fall, - Like butterflies, that flit 1461 - Across the mountains, or upon a wall - Winking their idle fans at pleasure sit. - - O my vague desires! - Ye lambent flames of the soul, her offspring fires: - That are my soul herself in pangs sublime - Rising and flying to heaven before her time: - What doth tempt you forth - To melt in the south or shiver in the frosty north? - What seek ye or find ye in your random flying, - For ever soaring aloft, soaring and dying? - Joy, the joy of flight; 1472 - They hide in the sun, they flare and dance in the night. - Gone up, gone out of sight--and ever again - Follow fresh tongues of fire, fresh pangs of pain. - Ah! could I control - These vague desires, these leaping flames of the soul: - Could I but quench the fire, ah! could I stay - My soul that flieth, alas, and dieth away! - - [_Enter other part of Chorus._ - - _Part of Chor._ Here is wood to feed the fire-- - Never let its flames expire. - Sing ye still while we advance - Round the fire in measured dance, - While the sun in heaven descending - Sees our happy feast have ending. 1485 - Weave ye still your joyous song, - While we bear the wood along. - - _Semichorus._ But O return, - Return, thou flower of the gods! - Remember the limbs that toil and the hearts that yearn, - Remember, and soon return! - To prosper with peace and skill - Our hands in the works of pleasure, beauty and use. - Return, and be for us still - Our shield from the anger of Zeus. 1495 - And he, if he raise his arm in anger to smite thee, - And think for the good thou hast done with pain to requite thee, - Vengeance I heard thee tell, - And the curse I take for my own, - That his place is prepared in hell, - And a greater than he shall hurl him down from his throne. - Down, down from his throne! - For the god who shall rule mankind from the deathless skies - By mercy and truth shall be known, - In love and peace shall arise. 1505 - For him,--if again I hear him thunder above, - O then, if I crouch or start, - I will press thy lovingkindness more to my heart, - Remember the words of thy mouth rare and precious, - Thy heart of hearts and gifts of divine love. - - - - - EROS & PSYCHE - - A NARRATIVE POEM IN - TWELVE MEASURES - - - THE STORY DONE INTO - ENGLISH FROM THE - LATIN OF APULEIUS - - - - - _L’anima semplicetta che sa nulla._ - - DANTE - - - _O latest-born, O loveliest vision far - Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy._ - - KEATS - - - - - EROS & PSYCHE - - - FIRST QUARTER - - SPRING - - - PSYCHE’S EARTHLY PARENTAGE · WORSHIPPED - BY MEN · & PERSECUTED BY - APHRODITE · SHE IS LOVED & CARRIED - OFF BY EROS - - - - - EROS & PSYCHE - - MARCH - - -1 - - In midmost length of hundred-citied Crete, - The land that cradl’d Zeus, of old renown, - Where grave Demeter nurseried her wheat, - And Minos fashion’d law, ere he went down - To judge the quaking hordes of Hell’s domain, - There dwelt a King on the Omphalian plain - Eastward of Ida, in a little town. - - -2 - - Three daughters had this King, of whom my tale - Time hath preserved, that loveth to despise - The wealth which men misdeem of much avail, - Their glories for themselves that they devise; - For clerkly is he, old hard-featured Time, - And poets’ fabl’d song, and lovers’ rhyme - He storeth on his shelves to please his eyes. - - -3 - - These three princesses all were fairest fair; - And of the elder twain ’tis truth to say - That if they stood not high above compare, - Yet in their prime they bore the palm away; - Outwards of loveliness; but Nature’s mood, - Gracious to make, had grudgingly endued - And marr’d by gifting ill the beauteous clay. - - -4 - - And being in honour they were well content - To feed on lovers’ looks and courtly smiles, - To hang their necks with jewel’d ornament, - And gold, that vanity in vain beguiles, - And live in gaze, and take their praise for due, - To be the fairest maidens then to view - Within the shores of Greece and all her isles. - - -5 - - But of that youngest one, the third princess, - There is no likeness; since she was as far - From pictured beauty as is ugliness, - Though on the side where heavenly wonders are, - Ideals out of being and above, - Which music worshipeth, but if love love, - ’Tis, as the poet saith, to love a star. - - -6 - - Her vision rather drave from passion’s heart - What earthly soil it had afore possest; - Since to man’s purer unsubstantial part - The brightness of her presence was addrest: - And such as mock’d at God, when once they saw - Her heavenly glance, were humbl’d, and in awe - Of things unseen, return’d to praise the Best. - - -7 - - And so before her, wheresoe’er she went, - Hushing the crowd a thrilling whisper ran, - And silent heads were reverently bent; - Till from the people the belief began - That Love’s own mother had come down on earth, - Sweet Cytherea, or of mortal birth - A greater Goddess was vouchsaf’t to man. - - -8 - - Then Aphrodite’s statue in its place - Stood without worshippers; if Cretans pray’d - For beauty or for children, love or grace, - The prayer and vow were offer’d to the maid; - Unto the maid their hymns of praise were sung, - Their victims bled for her, for her they hung - Garland and golden gift, and none forbade. - - -9 - - And thence opinion spread beyond the shores, - From isle to isle the wonder flew, it came - Across the Ægæan on a thousand oars, - Athens and Smyrna caught the virgin’s fame; - And East or West, where’er the tale had been, - The adoration of the foam-born queen - Fell to neglect, and men forgot her name. - - -10 - - No longer to high Paphos now ’twas sail’d; - The fragrant altar by the Graces served - At Cnidus was forsaken; pilgrims fail’d - The rocky island to her name reserved, - Proud Ephyra, and Meropis renown’d; - ’Twas all for Crete her votaries were bound, - And to the Cretan maid her worship swerved. - - -11 - - Which when in heaven great Aphrodite saw, - Who is the breather of the year’s bright morn, - Fount of desire and beauty without flaw, - Herself the life that doth the world adorn; - Seeing that without her generative might - Nothing can spring upon the shores of light, - Nor any bud of joy or love be born; - - -12 - - She, when she saw the insult, did not hide - Her indignation, that a mortal frail - With her eterne divinity had vied, - Her fair Hellenic empire to assail, - For which she had fled the doom of Ninus old, - And left her wanton images unsoul’d - In Babylon and Zidon soon to fail. - - -13 - - ‘Not long,’ she cried, ‘shall that poor girl of Crete - God it in my despite; for I will bring - Such mischief on the sickly counterfeit - As soon shall cure her tribe of worshipping: - Her beauty will I mock with loathèd lust, - Bow down her dainty spirit to the dust, - And leave her long alive to feel the sting.’ - - -14 - - With that she calls to her her comely boy, - The limber scion of the God of War, - The fruit adulterous, which for man’s annoy - To that fierce partner Cytherea bore, - Eros, the ever young, who only grew - In mischief, and was Cupid named anew - In westering aftertime of latin lore. - - -15 - - What the first dawn of manhood is, the hour - When beauty, from its fleshy bud unpent, - Flaunts like the corol of a summer flower, - As if all life were for that ornament, - Such Eros seemed in years, a trifler gay, - The prodigal of an immortal day - For ever spending, and yet never spent. - - -16 - - His skin is brilliant with the nimble flood - Of ichor, that comes dancing from his heart, - Lively as fire, and redder than the blood, - And maketh in his eyes small flashes dart, - And curleth his hair golden, and distilleth - Honey on his tongue, and all his body filleth - With wanton lightsomeness in every part. - - -17 - - Naked he goeth, but with sprightly wings - Red, iridescent, are his shoulders fledged. - A bow his weapon, which he deftly strings, - And little arrows barb’d and keenly edged; - And these he shooteth true; but else the youth - For all his seeming recketh naught of truth, - But most deceiveth where he most is pledged. - - -18 - - ’Tis he that maketh in men’s heart a strife - Between remorseful reason and desire, - Till with life lost they lose the love of life, - And by their own hands wretchedly expire; - Or slain in bloody rivalries they miss - Even the short embracement of their bliss, - His smile of fury and his kiss of fire. - - -19 - - He makes the strong man weak, the weak man wild; - Ruins great business and purpose high; - Brings down the wise to folly reconciled, - And martial captains on their knees to sigh: - He changeth dynasties, and on the head - Of duteous heroes, who for honour bled, - Smircheth the laurel that can never die. - - -20 - - Him then she call’d, and gravely kissing told - The great dishonour to her godhead done; - And how, if he from that in heaven would hold, - On earth he must maintain it as her son; - The rather that his weapons were most fit, - As was his skill ordain’d to champion it; - And flattering thus his ready zeal she won. - - -21 - - Whereon she quickly led him down on earth, - And show’d him PSYCHE, thus the maid was named; - Whom when she show’d, but could not hide her worth, - She grew with envy tenfold more enflamed. - ‘But if,’ she cried, ‘thou smite her as I bid, - Soon shall our glory of this affront be rid, - And she and all her likes for ever shamed. - - -22 - - ‘Make her to love the loathliest, basest wretch, - Deform’d in body, and of moonstruck mind, - A hideous brute and vicious, born to fetch - Anger from dogs and cursing from the blind. - And let her passion for the monster be - As shameless and detestable as he - Is most extreme and vile of humankind.’ - - -23 - - Which said, when he agreed, she spake no more, - But left him to his task, and took her way - Beside the ripples of the shell-strewn shore, - The southward stretching margin of a bay, - Whose sandy curves she pass’d, and taking stand - Upon its taper horn of furthest land, - Lookt left and right to rise and set of day. - - -24 - - Fair was the sight; for now, though full an hour - The sun had sunk, she saw the evening light - In shifting colour to the zenith tower, - And grow more gorgeous ever and more bright. - Bathed in the warm and comfortable glow, - The fair delighted queen forgot her woe, - And watch’d the unwonted pageant of the night. - - -25 - - Broad and low down, where late the sun had been, - A wealth of orange-gold was thickly shed, - Fading above into a field of green, - Like apples ere they ripen into red; - Then to the height a variable hue - Of rose and pink and crimson freak’d with blue, - And olive-border’d clouds o’er lilac led. - - -26 - - High in the opposèd west the wondering moon - All silvery green in flying green was fleec’t; - And round the blazing South the splendour soon - Caught all the heaven, and ran to North and East; - And Aphrodite knew the thing was wrought - By cunning of Poseidon, and she thought - She would go see with whom he kept his feast. - - -27 - - Swift to her wish came swimming on the waves - His lovely ocean nymphs, her guides to be, - The Nereids all, who live among the caves - And valleys of the deep, Cymodocè, - Agavè, blue-eyed Hallia and Nesæa, - Speio, and Thoë, Glaucè and Actæa, - Iaira, Melitè and Amphinomè, - - -28 - - Apseudès and Nemertès, Callianassa, - Cymothoë, Thaleia, Limnorrhea, - Clymenè, Ianeira and Ianassa, - Doris and Panopè and Galatea, - Dynamenè, Dexamenè and Maira, - Ferusa, Doto, Proto, Callianeira, - Amphithoë, Oreithuia and Amathea. - - -29 - - And after them sad Melicertes drave - His chariot, that with swift unfellied wheel, - By his two dolphins drawn along the wave, - Flew as they plunged, yet did not dip nor reel, - But like a plough that shears the heavy land - Stood on the flood, and back on either hand - O’erturn’d the briny furrow with its keel. - - -30 - - Behind came Tritons, that their conches blew, - Greenbearded, tail’d like fish, all sleek and stark; - And hippocampi tamed, a bristly crew, - The browzers of old Proteus’ weedy park, - Whose chiefer Mermen brought a shell for boat, - And balancing its hollow fan afloat, - Push’d it to shore and bade the queen embark: - - -31 - - And then the goddess stept upon the shell - Which took her weight; and others threw a train - Of soft silk o’er her, that unfurl’d to swell - In sails, at breath of flying Zephyrs twain; - And all her way with foam in laughter strewn, - With stir of music and of conches blown, - Was Aphrodite launch’d upon the main. - - - - - APRIL - - -1 - - But fairest Psyche still in favour rose, - Nor knew the jealous power against her sworn: - And more her beauty now surpass’t her foe’s, - Since ’twas transfigured by the spirit forlorn, - That writeth, to the perfecting of grace, - Immortal question in a mortal face, - The vague desire whereunto man is born. - - -2 - - Already in good time her sisters both, - Whose honest charms were never famed as hers, - With princes of the isle had plighted troth, - And gone to rule their foreign courtiers; - But she, exalted evermore beyond - Their loveliness, made yet no lover fond, - And gain’d but number to her worshippers. - - -3 - - To joy in others’ joy had been her lot, - And now that that was gone she wept to see - How her transcendent beauty overshot - The common aim of all felicity. - For love she sigh’d; and had some peasant rude - For true love’s sake in simple passion woo’d, - Then Psyche had not scorn’d his wife to be. - - -4 - - For what is Beauty, if it doth not fire - The loving answer of an eager soul? - Since ’tis the native food of man’s desire, - And doth to good our varying world control; - Which, when it was not, was for Beauty’s sake - Desired and made by Love, who still doth make - A beauteous path thereon to Beauty’s goal. - - -5 - - Should all men by some hateful venom die, - The pity were that o’er the unpeopl’d sphere - The sun would still bedeck the evening sky - And the unimaginable hues appear, - With none to mark the rose and gold and green; - That Spring should walk the earth, and nothing seen - Of her fresh delicacy year by year. - - -6 - - And if some beauteous things,--whose heavenly worth - And function overpass our mortal sense,— - Lie waste and unregarded on the earth - By reason of our gross intelligence, - These are not vain, because in nature’s scheme - It lives that we shall grow from dream to dream - In time to gather an enchantment thence. - - -7 - - Even as we see the fairest works of men - Awhile neglected, and the makers die; - But Truth comes weeping to their graves, and then - Their fames victoriously mounting high - Do battle with the regnant names of eld, - To win their seats; as when the Gods rebel’d - Against their sires and drave them from the sky. - - -8 - - But to be praised for beauty and denied - The meed of beauty, this was yet unknown: - The best and bravest men have ever vied - To win the fairest women for their own. - Thus Psyche spake, or reason’d in her mind, - Disconsolate; and with self-pity pined, - In the deserted halls wandering alone. - - -9 - - And grievèd grew the King to see her woe: - And blaming first the gods for her disease, - He purposed to their oracle to go - To question how he might their wrath appease, - Or, if that might not be, the worst to hear,— - Which is the last poor hope of them that fear.— - So he took his ship upon the northern seas, - - -10 - - And journeying to the shrine of Delphi went, - The temple of Apollo Pythian, - Where when the god he question’d if ’twas meant - That Psyche should be wed, and to what man, - The tripod shook, and o’er the vaporous well - The chanting Pythoness gave oracle, - And thus in priestly verse the sentence ran: - - -11 - - _High on the topmost rock with funeral feast - Convey and leave the maid, nor look to find - A mortal husband, but a savage beast, - The viperous scourge of gods and humankind; - Who shames and vexes all, and as he flies - With sword and fire, Zeus trembles in the skies, - And groans arise from souls to hell consign’d._ - - -12 - - With which reply the King return’d full sad: - For though he nothing more might understand, - Yet in the bitter bidding that he had - No man made question of the plain command, - That he must sacrifice the tender flower - Of his own blood to a demonian power, - Upon the rocky mount with his own hand. - - -13 - - Some said that she to Talos was devote, - The metal giant, who with mile-long stride - Cover’d the isle, walking around by rote - Thrice every day at his appointed tide; - Who shepherded the sea-goats on the coast, - And, as he past, caught up and live would roast, - Pressing them to his burning ribs and side: - - -14 - - Whose head was made of fine gold-beaten work, - Of silver pure his arms and gleaming chest, - Thence of green-bloomèd bronze far as the fork, - Of iron weather-rusted all the rest. - One single vein he had, which running down - From head to foot was open in his crown, - And closèd by a nail; such was this pest. - - -15 - - A little while they spent in sad delay, - Then order’d, as the oracle had said, - The cold feast and funereal display - Wherewith the fated bridal should be sped: - And their black pageantry and vain despairing - When Psyche saw, and for herself preparing - The hopeless ceremonial of the dead, - - -16 - - Then spake she to the King and said ‘O Sire, - Why wilt thou veil those venerable eyes - With piteous tears, which must of me require - More tears again than for myself arise? - Then, on the day my beauty first o’erstept - Its mortal place it had been well to have wept; - But now the fault beyond our ruing lies. - - -17 - - ‘As to be worship’d was my whole undoing, - So my submission must the forfeit pay: - And welcome were the morning of my wooing, - Tho’ after it should dawn no other day. - Up to the mountain! for I hear the voice - Of my belovèd on the winds, _Rejoice, - Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away!_’ - - -18 - - With such distemper’d speech, that little cheer’d - Her mourning house, she went to choose with care - The raiment for her day of wedlock weird, - Her body as for burial to prepare; - But laved with bridal water, from the stream - Where Hera bathed; for still her fate supreme - Was doubtful, whether Love or Death it were: - - -19 - - Love that is made of joy, and Death of fear: - Nay, but not these held Psyche in suspense; - Hers was the hope that following by the bier - Boweth its head beneath the dark immense: - Her fear the dread of life that turns to hide - Its tragic tears, what hour the happy bride - Ventures for love her maiden innocence. - - -20 - - They set on high upon the bridal wain - Her bed for bier, and yet no corpse thereon; - But like as when unto a warrior slain - And not brought home the ceremonies done - Are empty, for afar his body brave - Lies lost, deep buried by the wandering wave, - Or ’neath the foes his fury fell upon,— - - -21 - - So was her hearse: and with it went afore, - Singing the solemn dirge that moves to tears, - The singers; and behind, clad as for war, - The King uncrown’d among his mournful peers, - All ’neath their armour robed in linen white; - And in their left were shields, and in their right - Torches they bore aloft instead of spears. - - -22 - - And next the virgin tribe in white forth sail’d, - With wreaths of dittany; and ’midst them there - Went Psyche, all in lily-whiteness veil’d, - The white Quince-blossom chapleting her hair: - And last the common folk, a weeping crowd, - Far as the city-gates with wailings loud - Follow’d the sad procession in despair. - - -23 - - Thus forth and up the mount they went, until - The funeral chariot must be left behind, - Since road was none for steepness of the hill; - And slowly by the narrow path they wind: - All afternoon their white and scatter’d file - Toil’d on distinct, ascending many a mile - Over the long brown slopes and crags unkind. - - -24 - - But ere unto the snowy peak they came - Of that stormshapen pyramid so high, - ’Twas evening, and with footsteps slow and lame - They gather’d up their lagging company: - And then her sire, even as Apollo bade, - Set on the topmost rock the hapless maid, - With trembling hands and melancholy cry. - - -25 - - And now the sun was sunk; only the peak - Flash’d like a jewel in the deepening blue: - And from the shade beneath none dared to speak, - But all look’d up, where glorified anew - Psyche sat islanded in living day. - Breathless they watcht her, till the last red ray - Fled from her lifted arm that waved adieu. - - -26 - - There left they her, turning with sad farewells - To haste their homeward course, as best they might: - But night was crowding up the barren fells, - And hid full soon their rocky path from sight; - And each unto his stumbling foot to hold - His torch was fain, for o’er the moon was roll’d - A mighty cloud from heaven, to blot her light. - - -27 - - And thro’ the darkness for long while was seen - That armour’d train with waving fires to thread - Downwards, by pass, defile, and black ravine, - Each leading on the way that he was led. - Slowly they gain’d the plain, and one by one - Into the shadows of the woods were gone, - Or in the clinging mists were quench’d and fled. - - -28 - - But unto Psyche, pondering o’er her doom - In tearful silence on her stony chair, - A Zephyr straying out of heaven’s wide room - Rush’d down, and gathering round her unaware - Fill’d with his breath her vesture and her veil; - And like a ship, that crowding all her sail - Leans to accompany the tranquil air, - - -29 - - She yielded, and was borne with swimming brain - And airy joy, along the mountain side, - Till, hid from earth by ridging summits twain, - They came upon a valley deep and wide; - Where the strong Zephyr with his burden sank, - And laid her down upon a grassy bank, - ’Mong thyme and violets and daisies pied. - - -30 - - And straight upon the touch of that sweet bed - Both woe and wonder melted fast away: - And sleep with gentle stress her sense o’erspread, - Gathering as darkness doth on drooping day: - And nestling to the ground, she slowly drew - Her wearied limbs together, and, ere she knew, - Wrapt in forgetfulness and slumber lay. - - - - - MAY - - -1 - - After long sleep when Psyche first awoke - Among the grasses ’neath the open skies, - And heard the mounting larks, whose carol spoke - Delighted invitation to arise, - She lay as one who after many a league - Hath slept off memory with his long fatigue, - And waking knows not in what place he lies: - - -2 - - Anon her quickening thought took up its task, - And all came back as it had happ’d o’ernight; - The sad procession of the wedding mask, - The melancholy toiling up the height, - The solitary rock where she was left; - And thence in dark and airy waftage reft, - How on the flowers she had been disburden’d light. - - -3 - - Thereafter she would rise and see what place - That voyage had its haven in, and found - She stood upon a little hill, whose base - Shelved off into the valley all around; - And all round that the steep cliffs rose away, - Save on one side where to the break of day - The widening dale withdrew in falling ground. - - -4 - - There, out from over sea, and scarce so high - As she, the sun above his watery blaze - Upbroke the grey dome of the morning sky, - And struck the island with his level rays; - Sifting his gold thro’ lazy mists, that still - Climb’d on the shadowy roots of every hill, - And in the tree-tops breathed their silvery haze. - - -5 - - At hand on either side there was a wood; - And on the upward lawn, that sloped between, - Not many paces back a temple stood, - By even steps ascending from the green; - With shaft and pediment of marble made, - It fill’d the passage of the rising glade, - And there withstay’d the sun in dazzling sheen. - - -6 - - Too fair for human art, so Psyche thought, - It might the fancy of some god rejoice; - Like to those halls which lame Hephæstos wrought, - Original, for each god to his choice, - In high Olympus; where his matchless lyre - Apollo wakes, and the responsive choir - Of Muses sing alternate with sweet voice. - - -7 - - Wondering she drew anigh, and in a while - Went up the steps as she would entrance win, - And faced her shadow ’neath the peristyle - Upon the golden gate, whose flanges twin-- - As there she stood, irresolute at heart - To try--swung to her of themselves apart; - Whereat she past between and stood within. - - -8 - - A foursquare court it was with marble floor’d, - Embay’d about with pillar’d porticoes, - That echo’d in a somnolent accord - The music of a fountain, which arose - Sparkling in air, and splashing in its tank; - Whose wanton babble, as it swell’d or sank, - Gave idle voice to silence and repose. - - -9 - - Thro’ doors beneath the further colonnade, - Like a deep cup’s reflected glooms of gold, - The inner rooms glow’d with inviting shade: - And, standing in the court, she might behold - Cedar, and silk, and silver; and that all - The pargeting of ceiling and of wall - Was fresco’d o’er with figures manifold. - - -10 - - Then making bold to go within, she heard - Murmur of gentle welcome in her ear; - And seeing none that coud have spoken word, - She waited: when again Lady, draw near; - Enter! was cried; and now more voices came - From all the air around calling her name, - And bidding her rejoice and have no fear. - - -11 - - And one, if she would rest, would show her bed, - Pillow’d for sleep, with fragrant linen fine; - One, were she hungry, had a table spread - Like as the high gods have it when they dine: - Or, would she bathe, were those would heat the bath; - The joyous cries contending in her path, - Psyche, they said, What wilt thou? all is thine. - - -12 - - Then Psyche would have thank’d their service true, - But that she fear’d her echoing words might scare - Those sightless tongues; and well by dream she knew - The voices of the messengers of prayer, - Which fly upon the gods’ commandment, when - They answer the supreme desires of men, - Or for a while in pity hush their care. - - -13 - - ’Twas fancy’s consummation, and because - She would do joy no curious despite, - She made no wonder how the wonder was; - Only concern’d to take her full delight. - So to the bath,--what luxury could be - Better enhanced by eyeless ministry?— - She follows with the voices that invite. - - -14 - - There being deliciously refresht, from soil - Of earth made pure by water, fire, and air, - They clad her in soft robes of Asian toil, - Scented, that in her queenly wardrobe were; - And led her forth to dine, and all around - Sang as they served, the while a choral sound - Of strings unseen and reeds the burden bare. - - -15 - - P athetic strains and passionate they wove, - U rgent in ecstasies of heavenly sense; - R esponsive rivalries, that, while they strove, - C ombined in full harmonious suspense, - E ntrancing wild desire, then fell at last - L ull’d in soft closes, and with gay contrast - L aunch’d forth their fresh unwearied excellence. - - -16 - - Now Psyche, when her twofold feast was o’er, - Would feed her eye; and choosing for her guide - A low-voiced singer, bade her come explore - The wondrous house; until on every side - As surfeited with beauty, and seeing nought - But what was rich and fair beyond her thought, - And all her own, thus to the voice she cried: - - -17 - - ‘Am I indeed a goddess, or is this - But to be dead; and through the gates of death - Passing unwittingly doth man not miss - Body nor memory nor living breath; - Nor by demerits of his deeds is cast, - But, paid with the desire he holdeth fast, - Is holp with all his heart imagineth?’ - - -18 - - But her for all reply the wandering tongue - Call’d to the chamber where her bed was laid, - With flower’d broideries of linen hung: - And round the walls in painting were portray’d - Love’s victories over the gods renown’d. - Ares and Aphrodite here lay bound - In the fine net that dark Hephæstus made: - - -19 - - Here Zeus, in likeness of a tawny bull, - Stoop’d on the Cretan shore his mighty knee, - While off his back Europa beautiful - Stept pale against the blue Carpathian sea; - And here Apollo, as he caught amazed - Daphne, for lo! her hands shot forth upraised - In leaves, her feet were rooted like a tree: - - -20 - - Here Dionysos, springing from his car - At sight of Ariadne; here uplept - Adonis to the chase, breaking the bar - Of Aphrodite’s arm for love who wept: - He spear in hand, with leashèd dogs at strain; - A marvellous work. But Psyche soon grown fain - Of rest, betook her to her bed and slept. - - -21 - - Nor long had slept, when at a sudden stir - She woke; and one, that thro’ the dark made way, - Drew near, and stood beside; and over her - The curtain rustl’d. Trembling now she lay, - Fainting with terror: till upon her face - A kiss, and with two gentle arms’ embrace, - A voice that call’d her name in loving play. - - -22 - - Though for the darkness she coud nothing see, - She wish’d not then for what the night denied: - This was the lover she had lack’d, and she, - Loving his loving, was his willing bride. - O’erjoy’d she slept again, o’erjoy’d awoke - At break of morn upon her love to look; - When lo! his empty place lay by her side. - - -23 - - So all that day she spent in company - Of the soft voices; and Of right, they said, - Art thou our Lady now. Be happily - Thy bridal morrow by thy servants sped. - But she but long’d for night, if that might bring - Her lover back; and he on secret wing - Came with the dark, and in the darkness fled. - - -24 - - And this was all her life; for every night - He came, and though his name she never learn’d, - Nor was his image yielded to her sight - At morn or eve, she neither look’d nor yearn’d - Beyond her happiness: and custom brought - An ease to pleasure; nor would Psyche’s thought - Have ever to her earthly home return’d, - - -25 - - But that one night he said ‘Psyche, my soul, - Sad danger threatens us: thy sisters twain - Come to the mountain top, whence I thee stole, - And thou wilt hear their voices thence complain. - Answer them not: for it must end our love - If they should hear or spy thee from above.’ - And Psyche said ‘Their cry shall be in vain.’ - - -26 - - But being again alone, she thought ’twas hard - On her own blood; and blamed her joy as thief - Of theirs, her comfort which their comfort barr’d; - When she their care might be their care’s relief. - All day she brooded on her father’s woe, - And when at night her lover kisst her, lo! - Her tender face was wet with tears of grief. - - -27 - - Then question’d why she wept, she all confest; - And begg’d of him she might but once go nigh - To set her sire’s and sisters’ fears at rest; - Till he for pity coud not but comply: - ‘Only if they should ask thee of thy love - Discover nothing to their ears above.’ - And Psyche said ‘In vain shall be their cry.’ - - -28 - - And yet with day no sooner was alone, - Than she for loneliness her promise rued: - That having so much pleasure for her own, - ’Twas all unshared and spent in solitude. - And when at night her love flew to his place, - More than afore she shamed his fond embrace, - And piteously with tears her plaint renew’d. - - -29 - - The more he now denied, the more she wept; - Nor would in anywise be comforted, - Unless her sisters, on the Zephyr swept, - Should in those halls be one day bathed and fed, - And see themselves the palace where she reign’d. - And he by force of tears at last constrain’d, - Granted her wish unwillingly, and said: - - -30 - - ‘Much to our peril hast thou won thy will; - Thy sisters’ love, seeing thee honour’d so, - Will sour to envy, and with jealous skill - Will pry to learn the thing that none may know. - Answer not, nor inquire; for know that I - The day thou seest my face far hence shall fly, - And thou anew to bitterest fate must go.’ - - -31 - - But Psyche said, ‘Thy love is more than life; - To have thee leaveth nothing to be won: - For should the noonday prove me to be wife - Even of the beauteous Eros, who is son - Of Cypris, I coud never love thee more.’ - Whereat he fondly kisst her o’er and o’er, - And peace was ’twixt them till the night was done. - - - - - EROS & PSYCHE - - - SECOND QUARTER - SUMMER - - - PSYCHE’S SISTERS · SNARING HER TO DESTRUCTION - · ARE THEMSELVES DESTROYED - - - - - JUNE - - -1 - - And truly need there was to the old King - For consolation: since the mournful day - Of Psyche’s fate he took no comforting, - But only for a speedy death would pray; - And on his head his hair grew silver-white. - --Such on life’s topmost bough is sorrow’s blight, - When the stout heart is cankering to decay. - - -2 - - Which when his daughters learnt, they both were quick - Comfort and solace to their sire to lend. - But as not seldom they who nurse the sick - Will take the malady from them they tend, - So happ’d it now; for they who fail’d to cheer - Grew sad themselves, and in that palace drear - Increased the evil that they came to mend. - - -3 - - And them the unhappy father sent to seek - Where Psyche had been left, if they might find - What monster held her on the savage peak; - Or if she there had died of hunger pined, - And, by wild eagles stript, her scatter’d bones - Might still be gather’d from the barren stones; - Or if her fate had left no trace behind. - - -4 - - So just upon this time her sisters both - Climb’d on the cliff that hung o’er Psyche’s vale; - And finding there no sign, to leave were loth - Ere well assured she lurk’d not within hail. - So calling loud her name, ‘Psyche!’ they cried, - ‘Psyche, O Psyche!’ and when none replied - They sank upon the rocks to weep and wail. - - -5 - - But Psyche heard their voices where she sat, - And summoning the Zephyr bade him fleet - Those mourners down unto the grassy plat - ’Midst of her garden, where she had her seat. - Then from the dizzy steep the wondering pair - Came swiftly sinking on his buoyant air, - And stood upon the terrace at her feet. - - -6 - - Upsprang she then, and kiss’d them and embraced, - And said ‘Lo, here am I, I whom ye mourn. - I am not dead, nor tortured, nor disgraced, - But blest above all days since I was born: - Wherefore be glad. Enter my home and see - How little cause has been to grieve for me, - And my desertion on the rocks forlorn.’ - - -7 - - So entering by the golden gate, or e’er - The marvel of their hither flight had waned, - Fresh wonder took them now, for everywhere - Their eyes that lit on beauty were enchain’d; - And Psyche’s airy service, as she bade, - Perform’d its magic office, and display’d - The riches of the palace where she reign’d. - - -8 - - And through the perfumed chambers they were led, - And bathed therein; and after, set to sup, - Were upon dreamlike delicacies fed, - And wine more precious than its golden cup. - Till seeing nothing lack’d and naught was theirs, - Their happiness fell from them unawares, - And bitter envy in their hearts sprang up. - - -9 - - At last one said ‘Psyche, since not alone - Thou livest here in joy, as well we wot, - Who is the man who should these wonders own, - Or god, I say, and still appeareth not? - What is his name? What rank and guise hath he, - Whom winds and spirits serve, who honoureth thee - Above all others in thy blissful lot?’ - - -10 - - But Psyche when that wistful speech she heard - Was ware of all her spouse had warn’d her of: - And uttering a disingenuous word, - Said ‘A youth yet unbearded is my love; - He goeth hunting on the plains to-day, - And with his dogs hath wander’d far away; - And not till eve can he return above.’ - - -11 - - Then fearing to be nearer plied, she rose - And brought her richest jewels one by one, - Bidding them choose and take whate’er they chose; - And beckoning the Zephyr spake anon - That he should waft her sisters to the peak; - The which he did, and, ere they more coud speak, - They rose on high, and in the wind were gone. - - -12 - - Nor till again they came upon the road, - Which from the mountain shoulder o’er the plain - Led to the city of their sire’s abode, - Found they their tongues, though full of high disdain - Their hearts were, but kept silence, till the strength - Of pride and envious hatred burst at length - In voice, and thus the elder gan complain: - - -13 - - ‘Cruel and unjust fortune! that of three - Sisters, whose being from one fountain well’d, - Exalts the last so high from her degree, - And leaves the first to be so far excel’d. - My husband is a poor and niggard churl - To him, whoe’er he be, that loves the girl. - Oh! in what godlike state her house is held!’ - - -14 - - ‘Ay,’ said the other, ‘to a gouty loon - Am I not wedded? Lo! thy hurt is mine: - But never call me woman more, if soon - I cannot lure her from her height divine. - Nay, she shall need her cunning wit to save - The wealth of which so grudgingly she gave; - Wherefore thy hand and heart with me combine. - - -15 - - ‘She but received us out of pride, to show - Her state, well deeming that her happiness - Was little worth while there was none to know; - So is our lot uninjured if none guess. - Reveal we nothing therefore, but the while - Together scheme this wanton to beguile, - And bring her boasting godhead to distress.’ - - -16 - - So fresh disordering their dress and hair, - With loud lament they to their sire return, - Telling they found not Psyche anywhere, - And of her sure mischance could nothing learn: - And with that lie the wounded man they slew, - Hiding the saving truth which well they knew; - Nor did his piteous grief their heart concern. - - -17 - - Meanwhile her unknown lover did not cease - To warn poor Psyche how her sisters plan’d - To undermine her love and joy and peace; - And urged how well she might their wiles withstand, - By keeping them from her delight aloof: - For better is security than proof, - And malice held afar than near at hand. - - -18 - - ‘And, dearest wife,’ he said, ‘since ’tis not long - Ere one will come to share thy secrecy, - And be thy babe and mine; let nothing wrong - The happy months of thy maternity. - If thou keep trust, then shalt thou see thy child - A god; but if to pry thou be beguiled, - The lot of both is death and misery.’ - - -19 - - Then Psyche’s simple heart was fill’d with joy, - And counting to herself the months and days, - Look’d for the time, when she should bear a boy - To be her growing stay and godlike praise. - And ‘O be sure,’ she said, ‘be sure, my pride - Having so rich a promise cannot slide, - Even if my love coud fail which thee obeys.’ - - -20 - - And so most happily her life went by, - In thoughts of love dear to her new estate; - Until at length the evil day drew nigh, - When now her sisters, joined in jealous hate, - Set forth again, and plotted by the way - How they might best allure her to betray - Her secret; with what lie their angle bait. - - -21 - - That night her husband spake to her, and said - ‘Psyche, thy sisters come: and when they climb - The peak they will not tarry to be sped - Down by the Zephyr, as that other time, - But winging to the wind will cast themselves - Out in the air, and on the rocky shelves - Be dasht, and pay the penalty of crime. - - -22 - - ‘So let it be, and so shall we be saved.’ - Which meditated vengeance of his fear - When Psyche heard, now for their life she craved, - Whose mere distress erewhile had toucht her near. - Around her lover’s neck her arms she threw, - And pleaded for them by her faith so true, - Although they went on doom in judgment clear. - - -23 - - In terror of bloodguiltiness she now - Forgot all other danger; she adjured; - Or using playfulness deep sobs would plow - Her soft entreaties, not to be endured: - Till he at last was fain once more to grant - The service of the Zephyr, to enchant - That wicked couple from their fate assured. - - -24 - - So ere ’twas noon were noises at the door - Of knocking loud and voices high in glee; - Such as within that vale never before - Had been, and now seem’d most unmeet to be. - And Psyche blush’d, though being alone, and rose - To meet her sisters and herself unclose - The gate that made them of her palace free. - - -25 - - Fondly she kiss’d them, and with kindly cheer - Sought to amuse; and they with outward smile - O’ermask’d their hate, and called her sweet and dear, - Finding affection easy to beguile: - And all was smooth, until at last one said - ‘Tell us, I pray, to whom ’tis thou art wed; - ’Mong gods or men, what is his rank and style? - - -26 - - ‘Thou canst not think to hide the truth from us, - Who knew thy peevish sorrows when a maid, - And see thee now so glad and rapturous, - As changed from what thou wert as light from shade; - Thy jewels, too, the palace of a king, - Nor least the serviceable spiriting, - By everything thy secret is betray’d: - - -27 - - ‘And yet thou talkest of thy wondrous man - No more than if his face thou didst not know.’ - At which incontinently she began, - Forgetful of her word a month ago, - Answering ‘A merchant rich, of middle age, - My husband is; and o’er his features sage - His temples are already touch’d with snow. - - -28 - - ‘But ’gainst his wish since hither ye were brought - ’Twere best depart.’ Then her accustom’d spell - Sped them upon the summit quick as thought; - And being alone her doing pleased her well: - So was she vext to find her love at night - More sad than ever, of her sisters’ spite - Speaking as one that coud the end foretell. - - -29 - - ‘And ere long,’ said he, ‘they will spy again: - Let them be dash’d upon the rocks and die; - ’Tis they must come to death or thou to pain, - To separation, Psyche, thou and I; - Nay, and our babe to ill. I therefore crave - Thou wilt not even once more these vipers save, - Nor to thy love his only boon deny.’ - - -30 - - But Psyche would not think her sisters’ crime - So gross and strange, nor coud her danger see; - Since ’twere so easy, if at any time - They show’d the venom of their hearts, that she - Should fan them off upon the willing gust. - So she refused, and claiming truer trust, - Would in no wise unto their death agree. - - - - - JULY - - -1 - - ‘What think you, sister:’ thus one envious fiend - To other spake upon their homeward route, - ‘What of the story that our wit hath glean’d - Of this mysterious lover, who can shoot - In thirty days from beardless youth to prime, - With wisdom in his face before his time, - And snowy locks upon his head to boot?’ - - -2 - - ‘Ay,’ said the other, ‘true, she lied not well; - And thence I gather knows no more than we: - For surely ’tis a spirit insensible - To whom she is wedded, one she cannot see. - ’Tis that I fear; for if ’tis so, her child - Will be a god, and she a goddess styled, - Which, though I die to let it, shall not be. - - -3 - - ‘Lament we thus no longer. Come, consult - What may be done.’ And home they came at night, - Yet not to rest, but of their plots occult - Sat whispering on their beds; and ere ’twas light - Resolving on the deed coud not defer; - But roused the sleeping house with sudden stir, - And sallied forth alone to work their spite. - - -4 - - And with the noon were climb’d upon the peak, - And swam down on the Zephyr as before; - But now with piercing cry and doleful shriek - They force their entrance through the golden door, - Feigning the urgency of bitter truth; - Such as deforms a friendly face with ruth, - When kindness may not hide ill tidings more. - - -5 - - Then Psyche when she heard their wailful din, - And saw their countenances wan and worn - With travel, vigil, and disfiguring sin, - Their hair dishevel’d and their habits torn, - For trembling scarce could ask what ill had hapt; - And they alert with joy to see her trapt, - Launch’d forth amain, and on their drift were borne. - - -6 - - ‘O Psyche, happiest certainly and blest - Up to this hour,’ they said, ‘thou surely wert, - Being of thy fearful peril unpossest; - Which now we would not tell but to avert. - But we in solemn truth thy spouse have found - To be the dragon of this mountain ground, - Who holds thee here to work thy shame and hurt. - - -7 - - ‘As yesternight we rode upon the wind - He issued to pursue us from the wood; - We saw his back, that through the tree-tops finn’d, - His fiery eyes glared from their wrinkl’d hood. - Lo, now betimes the oracle, which said - How to the savage beast thou shouldst be wed, - Is plainly for thy safety understood. - - -8 - - ‘Long time hath he been known to all that dwell - Upon the plain; but now his secret lair - Have we discover’d, which none else coud tell: - Though many women fallen in his snare - Hath he enchanted; who, tradition saith, - Taste love awhile, ere to their cruel death - They pass in turn upon the summits bare. - - -9 - - ‘Fly with us while thou mayst: no more delay; - Renounce the spells of this accursed vale. - We come to save thee, but we dare not stay; - Among these sightless spirits our senses quail. - Fly with us, fly!’ Then Psyche, for her soul - Was soft and simple, lost her self-control, - And, thinking only of the horrid tale, - - -10 - - ‘Dear sisters,’ said she, and her sobbing speech - Was broken by her terror, ‘it is true - That much hath hapt to stablish what ye teach; - For ne’er hath it been granted me to view - My husband; and, for aught I know, he may - Be even that cruel dragon, which ye say - Peer’d at you from the forest to pursue. - - -11 - - ‘’Tis sure that scarcely can I win his grace - To see you here; and still he mischief vows - If ever I should ask to see his face, - Which, coming in the dark, he ne’er allows. - Therefore, if ye can help, of pity show, - Since doubt I must, how I may come to know - What kind of spirit it is that is my spouse.’ - - -12 - - Then to her cue the younger was afore: - ‘Hide thou a razor,’ cried she, ‘near thy bed; - And have a lamp prepared, but whelm thereo’er - Some cover, that no light be from it shed. - And when securely in first sleep he lies, - Look on him well, and ere he can arise, - Gashing his throat, cut off his hideous head.’ - - -13 - - Which both persuading, off they flew content, - Divining that whate’er she was forbid - Was by her lover for her safety meant, - Which only coud be sure while he was hid. - But Psyche, to that miserable deed - Being now already in her mind agreed, - Wander’d alone, and knew not what she did. - - -14 - - Now she would trust her lover, now in turn - Made question of his bidding as unjust; - But thirsting curiosity to learn - His secret overcame her simple trust, - O’ercame her spoken troth, o’ercame her fear; - And she prepared, as now the hour drew near, - The mean contrivances, nor felt disgust. - - -15 - - She set the lamp beneath a chair, and cloked - Thickly its rebel lustre from the eye: - And laid the knife, to mortal keenness stroked, - Within her reach, where she was wont to lie: - And took her place full early; but her heart - Beat fast, and stay’d her breath with sudden start, - Feeling her lover’s arm laid fond thereby. - - -16 - - But when at last he slept, then she arose, - All faint and tremulous: and though it be - That wrong betrayeth innocence with shews - Of novelty, its guilt from shame to free, - Yet ’twas for shame her hand so strangely shook - That held the steel, and from the cloke that took - The lamp, and raised it o’er the bed to see. - - -17 - - She had some fear she might not well discern - By that small flame a monster in the gloom; - When lo! the air about her seem’d to burn, - And bright celestial radiance fill’d the room. - Too plainly O she saw, O fair to see! - Eros, ’twas Eros’ self, her lover, he, - The God of love, reveal’d in deathless bloom. - - -18 - - Her fainting strength forsook her; on her knees - Down by the bed she sank; the shameless knife - Fell flashing, and her heart took thought to seize - Its desperate haft, and end her wicked life. - Yet coud she not her loving eyes withdraw - From her fair sleeping lover, whom she saw - Only to know she was no more his wife. - - -19 - - O treasure of all treasures, late her own! - O loss above all losses, lost for aye! - Since there was no repentance coud atone - For her dishonour, nor her fate withstay. - But yet ’twas joy to have her love in sight; - And, to the rapture yielding while she might, - She gazed upon his body where he lay. - - -20 - - Above all mortal beauty, as was hers, - She saw a rival; but if passion’s heart - Be rightly read by subtle questioners, - It owns a wanton and a gentler part. - And Psyche wonder’d, noting every sign - By which the immortal God, her spouse divine, - Betray’d the image of our earthly art; - - -21 - - His thickly curling hair, his ruddy cheeks, - And pouting lips, his soft and dimpl’d chin, - The full and cushion’d eye, that idly speaks - Of self-content and vanity within, - The forward, froward ear, and smooth to touch - His body sleek, but rounded overmuch - For dignity of mind and pride akin. - - -22 - - She noted that the small irradiant wings, - That from his shoulders lay along at rest, - Were yet disturb’d with airy quiverings, - As if some wakeful spirit his blood possest; - She feared he was awaking, but they kept - Their sweet commotion still, and still he slept, - And still she gazed with never-tiring zest. - - -23 - - And now the colour of her pride and joy - Outflush’d the hue of Eros; she, so cold, - To have fired the passion of the heartless boy, - Whom none in heaven or earth were found to hold! - Psyche, the earthborn, to be prized above - The heavenly Graces by the God of love, - And worshipt by his wantonness untold! - - -24 - - Nay, for that very thing she loved him more, - More than herself her sweet self’s complement: - Until the sight of him again upbore - Her courage, and renew’d her vigour spent. - And looking now around, she first espied - Where at the bed’s foot, cast in haste aside, - Lay his full quiver, and his bow unbent. - - -25 - - One of those darts, of which she had heard so oft, - She took to try if ’twas so very keen; - And held its point against her finger soft - So gently, that to touch it scarce was seen; - Yet was she sharply prickt, and felt the fire - Run through her veins; and now a strange desire - Troubl’d her heart, which ne’er before had been: - - -26 - - Straight sprang she to her lover on the bed, - And kisst his cheek, and was not satisfied: - When, O the lamp, held ill-balanced o’erhead, - One drop of burning oil spill’d from its side - On Eros’ naked shoulder as he slept, - Who waken’d by the sudden smart uplept - Upon the floor, and all the mischief eyed. - - -27 - - With nervous speed he seized his bow, and past - Out of the guilty chamber at a bound; - But Psyche, following his flight as fast, - Caught him, and crying threw her arms around: - Till coming to the court he rose in air; - And she, close clinging in her last despair, - Was dragg’d, and then lost hold and fell to ground. - - -28 - - Wailing she fell; but he, upon the roof - Staying his feet, awhile his flight delay’d: - And turning to her as he stood aloof - Beside a cypress, whose profoundest shade - Drank the reflections of the dreamy night - In its stiff pinnacle, the nimble light - Of million stars upon his body play’d: - - -29 - - ‘O simple-hearted Psyche,’ thus he spake, - And she upraised her piteous eyes and hands, - ‘O simple-hearted Psyche, for thy sake - I dared to break my mother’s stern commands; - And gave thee godlike marriage in the place - Of vilest shame; and, not to hurt thy grace, - Spared thee my arrows, which no heart withstands. - - -30 - - ‘But thou, for doubt I was some evil beast, - Hast mock’d the warnings of my love, to spy - Upon my secret, which concern’d thee least, - Seeing that thy joy was never touch’d thereby. - By faithless prying thou hast work’d thy fall, - And, even as I foretold thee, losest all - For looking on thy happiness too nigh: - - -31 - - ‘Which loss may be thine ample punishment. - But to those fiends, by whom thou wert misled, - Go tell each one in turn that I have sent - This message, that I love her in thy stead; - And bid them by their love haste hither soon.’ - Whereat he fled; and Psyche in a swoon - Fell back upon the marble floor as dead. - - - - - AUGUST - - -1 - - When from the lowest ebbing of her blood - The fluttering pulses thrill’d and swell’d again, - Her stricken heart recovering force to flood - With life the sunken conduits of her brain, - Then Psyche, where she had fallen, numb and cold - Arose, but scarce her quaking sense control’d, - Seeing the couch where she that night had lain. - - -2 - - The level sunbeams search’d the grassy ground - For diamond dewdrops. Ah! was this the place? - Where was the court, her home? she look’d around - And question’d with her memory for a space. - There was the cypress, there the well-known wood, - That wall’d the spot: ’twas here her palace stood, - As surely as ’twas vanish’d without trace. - - -3 - - Was all a dream? To think that all was dreamt - Were now the happier thought; but arguing o’er - That dream it was, she fell from her attempt, - Feeling the wifely burden that she bore. - Nay, true, ’twas true. She had had all and lost; - The joy, the reckless wrong, the heavy cost - Were hers, the dead end now, and woe in store. - - -4 - - What to be done? Fainting and shelterless - Upon the mountain it were death to bide: - And harbour knew she none, where her distress - Might comfort find, or love’s dishonour hide; - Nor felt she any dread like that of home: - Yet forth she must, albeit to rove and roam - An outcast o’er the country far and wide. - - -5 - - Anon she marvel’d noting from the vale - A path lead downward to the plain below, - Crossing the very site, whereon the pale - Of all her joy had stood few hours ago; - A run of mountain beasts, that keep their track - Through generations, and for ages back - Had trod the self-same footing to and fro. - - -6 - - That would she try: so forth she took her way, - Turning her face from the dishonour’d dell, - Adown the broadening eastward lawns, which lay - In gentle slant, till suddenly they fell - In sheer cliff; whence the path that went around, - Clomb by the bluffs, or e’er it downward wound - Beneath that precipice impassable. - - -7 - - There once she turn’d, and gazing up the slope - She bid the scene of all her joy adieu; - ‘Ay, and farewell,’ she cried, ‘farewell to hope, - Since there is none will rescue me anew, - Who have kill’d God’s perfection with a doubt.’ - Which said, she took the path that led about, - And hid the upland pleasance from her view. - - -8 - - But soon it left her, entering ’neath the shade - Of cedar old and russeted tall pine, - Whose mighty tops, seen from the thorny glade, - Belted the hills about; and now no sign - Had she to guide her, save the slow descent. - But swiftly o’er the springy floor she went, - And drew the odorous air like draughts of wine. - - -9 - - Then next she past a forest thick and dark - With heavy ilexes and platanes high, - And came to long lush grass; and now coud mark - By many a token that the plain was nigh. - When lo! a river: to whose brink at last - Being come, upon the bank her limbs she cast, - And through her sad tears watch’d the stream go by. - - -10 - - And now the thought came o’er her that in death - There was a cure for sorrow, that before - Her eyes ran Lethe, she might take one breath - Of water and be freed for evermore. - Leaning to look into her tomb, thereon - She saw the horror of her image wan, - And up she rose at height to leap from shore. - - -11 - - When suddenly a mighty voice, that fell - With fury on her ears, their sense to scare, - That bounding from the tree trunks like the yell - Of hundred brazen trumpets, cried ‘Forbear! - Forbear, fond maid, that froward step to take, - For life can cure the ills that love may make; - But for the harm of death is no repair.’ - - -12 - - Then looking up she saw an uncouth form - Perch’d on the further bank, whose parted lips - Volley’d their friendly warning in a storm: - A man he might have been, but for the tips - Of horns appearing from his shaggy head, - For o’er his matted beard his face was red, - And all his shape was manlike to the hips. - - -13 - - In forehead low, keen eye, and nostril flat - He bore the human grace in mean degree, - But, set beneath his body squat and fat, - Legs like a goat’s, and from the hairy knee - The shank fell spare; and, though crosswise he put - His limbs in easeful posture, for the foot - The beast’s divided hoof was plain to see. - - -14 - - Him then she knew the mighty choric God, - The great hill-haunting and tree-loving Pan; - Whom Zeus had laught to see when first he trod - Olympus, neither god nor beast nor man: - Who every rocky peak and snowy crest - Of the Aspran mountains for his own possest, - And all their alps with bacchic rout o’erran: - - -15 - - Whom, when his pipe he plays on loud and sweet, - And o’er the fitted reeds his moist lip flees, - Around in measured step with nimble feet - Water-nymphs dance and Hamadryades: - And all the woodland’s airy folk, who shun - Man’s presence, to his frolic pastime run - From their perennial wells and sacred trees. - - -16 - - Now on his knee his pipe laid by, he spoke - With flippant tongue, wounding unwittingly - The heart he sought to cheer with jest and joke. - ‘And what hast thou to do with misery,’ - He said, ‘who hast such beauty as might gain - The love of Eros? Cast away thy pain, - And give thy soul to mirth and jollity. - - -17 - - ‘Thy mortal life is but a brittle vase, - But as thee list with wine or tears to fill; - For all the drops therein are Ohs and Ahs - Of joy or grief according to thy will; - And wouldst thou learn of me my merry way, - I’d teach thee change thy lover every day, - And prize the cup that thou wert fain to spill. - - -18 - - ‘Nay, if thou plunge thou shalt not drown nor sink, - For I will to thee o’er the stream afloat, - And bear thee safe; and O I know a drink - For care, that makes sweet music in the throat. - Come live with me, my love; I’ll cure thy chance: - For I can laugh and quaff, and pipe and dance, - Swim like a fish, and caper like a goat.’ - - -19 - - Speaking, his brute divinity explored - The secret of her silence; and old Pan - Grew kind and told her of a shallow ford - Where lower down the stream o’er pebbles ran, - And one might pass at ease with ankles dry: - Whither she went, and crossing o’er thereby, - Her lonely wanderings through the isle began. - - -20 - - But none could tell, no, nor herself had told - Where food she found, or shelter through the land - By day or night; until by fate control’d - She came by steep ways to the southern strand, - Where, sacred to the Twins and Britomart, - Pent in its rocky theatre apart, - A little town stood on the level sand. - - -21 - - ‘Twas where her younger sister’s husband reign’d: - And Psyche to the palace gate drew near, - Helplessly still by Eros’ best constrain’d, - And knocking begg’d to see her sister dear; - But when in state stepp’d down that haughty queen, - And saw the wan face spent with tears and teen, - She smiled, and said ‘Psyche, what dost thou here?’ - - -22 - - Then Psyche told how, having well employ’d - Their means, and done their bidding not amiss, - Looking on him her hand would have destroy’d, - ’Twas Eros; whom in love leaning to kiss, - Even as she kisst, a drop of burning oil - Fall’n from the lamp had served her scheme to foil, - Discovering her in vision of her bliss; - - -23 - - Wherewith the god stung, like a startled bird - Arose in air, and she fell back in swoon; - ‘But ere he parted,’ said she, ‘he confer’d - On thee the irrecoverable boon - By prying lost to me: _Go tell_, he said, - _Thy sister that I love her in thy stead, - And bid her by her love haste hither soon_.’ - - -24 - - Which when that heart of malice heard, it took - The jealous fancy of her silly lust: - And pitilessly with triumphant look - She drank the flattery, and gave full trust; - And leaving Psyche ere she more could tell, - Ran off to bid her spouse for aye farewell, - And in his ear this ready lie she thrust: - - -25 - - ‘My dearest sister Psyche, she whose fate - We mourn’d, hath reappear’d alive and hale, - But brings sad news; my father dies: full late - These tidings come, but love may yet avail; - Let me be gone.’ And stealing blind consent, - Forth on that well-remember’d road she went, - And climb’d upon the peak above the dale. - - -26 - - There on the topmost rock, where Psyche first - Had by her weeping sire been left to die, - She stood a moment, in her hope accurst - Being happy; and the cliffs took up her cry - With chuckling mockery from her tongue above, - _Zephyr, sweet Zephyr, waft me to my love_! - When off she lept upon his wings to fly. - - -27 - - But as a dead stone, from a height let fall, - Silent and straight is gather’d by the force - Of earth’s vast mass upon its weight so small, - In speed increasing as it nears its source - Of motion--by which law all things so’er - Are clutch’d and dragg’d and held--so fell she there, - Like a dead stone, down in her headlong course. - - -28 - - The disregardful silence heard her strike - Upon the solid crags; her dismal shriek - Rang on the rocks and died out laughter-like - Along the vale in hurried trebles weak; - And soon upon her, from their skiey haunt - Fell to their feast the great birds bald and gaunt, - And gorged on her fair flesh with bloody beak. - - -29 - - But Psyche, when her sister was gone forth, - Went out again her wandering way to take: - And following a stream that led her north, - After some days she pass’d the Corian Lake, - Whereby Athena’s temple stands, and he - Who traverses the isle from sea to sea - May by the plain his shortest journey make: - - -30 - - Till on the northern coast arrived she came - Upon a city built about a port, - The which she knew, soon as she heard the name, - Was where her elder sister had her court; - To whom, as Eros had commanded her, - She now in turn became the messenger - Of vengeful punishment, that fell not short: - - -31 - - For she too hearing gan her heart exalt, - Nor pity felt for Psyche’s tears and moans, - But, fellow’d with that other in her fault, - Follow’d her to her fate upon the stones; - And from the peak leaping like her below - The self-same way unto the self-same woe, - Lay dasht to death upon her sister’s bones. - - - - - EROS & PSYCHE - - - THIRD QUARTER - - AUTUMN - - - PSYCHE’S WANDERINGS - - - - - SEPTEMBER - - -1 - - On the Hellenic board of Crete’s fair isle, - Westward of Drepanon, along a reach - Which massy Cyamum for many a mile - Jutting to sea delivers from the breach - Of North and East,--returning to embay - The favour’d shore--an ancient city lay, - Aptera, which is _Wingless_ in our speech. - - -2 - - And hence the name; that here in rocky cove, - Thence called Museion, was the trial waged - What day the Sirens with the Muses strove, - By jealous Hera in that war engaged: - Wherein the daughters of Mnemosynè - O’ercame the chauntresses who vex’d the sea, - Nor vengeance spared them by their pride enraged. - - -3 - - For those strange creatures, who with women’s words - And wiles made ravenous prey of passers-by, - Were throated with the liquid pipe of birds: - Of love they sang; and none, who sail’d anigh - Through the grey hazes of the cyanine sea, - Had wit the whirlpool of that song to flee, - Nor fear’d the talon hook’d and feather’d thigh. - - -4 - - But them the singers of the gods o’ercame, - And pluck’d them of their plumage, where in fright - They vainly flutter’d off to hide their shame, - Upon two rocks that lie within the bight, - Under the headland, barren and alone; - Which, being with the scatter’d feathers strewn, - Were, by the folk named Leukæ, which is _White_. - - -5 - - Thereon about this time the snowy gull, - Minion of Aphrodite, being come, - Plumed himself, standing on the sea-wrack dull, - That drifted from the foot of Cyamum; - And ’twas his thought, that had the goddess learnt - The tale of Psyche loved and Eros burnt, - She ne’er so long had kept aloof and dumb. - - -6 - - Wherefore that duteous gossip of Love’s queen - Devised that he the messenger would be; - And rising from the rock, he skim’d between - The chasing waves--such grace have none but he;— - Into the middle deep then down he dived, - And rowing with his glistening wings arrived - At Aphrodite’s bower beneath the sea. - - -7 - - The eddies from his silver pinions swirl’d - The crimson, green, and yellow floss, that grew - About the caves, and at his passing curl’d - Its graceful silk, and gently waved anew: - Till, oaring here and there, the queen he found - Stray’d from her haunt unto a sandy ground, - Dappl’d with eye-rings in the sunlight blue. - - -8 - - She, as he came upon her from above, - With Hora play’d; Hora, her herald fair, - That lays the soft necessity of Love - On maidens’ eyelids, and with tender care - Marketh the hour, as in all works is fit: - And happy they in love who time outwit, - Fondly constrainèd in her season rare. - - -9 - - But he with garrulous and laughing tongue - Broke up his news; how Eros, fallen sick, - Lay tossing on his bed, to frenzy stung - By such a burn as did but barely prick: - A little bleb, no bigger than a pease, - Upon his shoulder ’twas, that kill’d his ease, - Fever’d his heart, and made his breathing thick. - - -10 - - ‘For which disaster hath he not been seen - This many a day at all in any place: - And thou, dear mistress,’ piped he, ‘hast not been - Thyself amongst us now a dreary space: - The pining mortals suffer from a dearth - Of love; and for this sadness of the earth - Thy family is darken’d with disgrace. - - -11 - - ‘Now on the secret paths of dale and wood, - Where lovers walk’d are lovers none to find: - And friends, besworn to equal brotherhood, - Forget their faith, and part with words unkind: - In the first moon thy honey bond is loath’d: - And I could tell even of the new-betroth’d - That fly o’ersea, and leave their loves behind. - - -12 - - ‘Summer is over, but the merry pipe, - That wont to cheer the harvesting, is mute: - And in the vineyards, where the grape is ripe, - No voice is heard of them that take the fruit. - No workman singeth at eve nor maiden danceth: - All joy is dead, and as the year advanceth - The signs of woe increase on man and brute. - - -13 - - ‘’Tis plain that if thy pleasure longer pause, - Thy mighty rule on earth hath seen its day: - The race must come to perish, and no cause - But that thou sittest with thy nymphs at play, - While on a Cretan hill thy truant boy - Hath with his pretty mistress turn’d to toy, - And less for pain than love pineth away.’ - - -14 - - ‘Ha! Mistress!’ cried she; ‘Hath my beardless son - Been hunting for himself his lovely game? - Some young Orestiad hath his fancy won? - Some Naiad? say; or is a Grace his flame? - Or maybe Muse, and then ’tis Erato, - The trifling wanton. Tell me, if thou know, - Woman or goddess is she? and her name.’ - - -15 - - Then said the snowy gull, ‘O heavenly queen, - What is my knowledge, who am but a bird? - Yet is she only mortal, as I ween, - And namèd Psyche, if I rightly heard.’— - But Aphrodite’s look daunted his cheer, - Ascare he fled away, screaming in fear, - To see what wrath his simple tale had stirr’d. - - -16 - - He flasht his pens, and sweeping widely round - Tower’d to air; so swift in all his way, - That whence he dived he there again was found - As soon as if he had but dipt for prey: - And now, or e’er he join’d his wailful flock, - Once more he stood upon the Sirens’ rock, - And preen’d his ruffl’d quills for fresh display. - - -17 - - But as ill tidings will their truth assure - Without more witness than their fatal sense, - So, since was nothing bitterer to endure, - The injured goddess guess’d the full offence: - And doubted only whether first to smite - Or Psyche for her new presumptuous flight, - Or Eros for his disobedience. - - -18 - - But full of anger to her son she went, - And found him in his golden chamber laid; - And with him sweet Euphrosynè, attent - Upon his murmur’d wants, aye as he bade - Shifted the pillows with each fretful whim; - But scornfully his mother look’d at him, - And reckless of his pain gan thus upbraid: - - -19 - - ‘O worthy deeds, I say, and true to blood, - The crown and pledge of promise! thou that wast - In estimation my perpetual bud, - Now fruiting thus untimely to my cost; - Backsliding from commandment, ay, and worse, - With bliss to favour one I bade thee curse, - And save the life I left with thee for lost! - - -20 - - ‘Thou too to burn with love, and love of her - Whom I did hate; and to thy bed to take - My rival, that my trusted officer - Might of mine enemy my daughter make! - Dost thou then think my love for thee so fond, - And miserably doting, that the bond - By such dishonour strainèd will not break? - - -21 - - ‘Or that I cannot bear another son - As good as thou; or, if I choose not bear, - Not beg as good a lusty boy of one - Of all my nymphs,--and some have boys to spare,— - Whom I might train, to whom thine arms made o’er - Should do me kinder service than before, - To smite my foes and keep my honour fair? - - -22 - - ‘For thou hast ever mockt me, and beguiled - In amours strange my God, thy valiant sire: - And having smirch’d our fame while yet a child - Wilt further foul it now with earthly fire. - But I--do as thou may--have vow’d to kill - Thy fancied girl, whether thou love her still, - Or of her silly charms already tire. - - -23 - - ‘Tell me but where she hides.’ And Eros now, - Proud in his woe, boasted his happy theft: - Confessing he had loved her well, and how - By her own doing she was lost and left; - And homeless in such sorrow as outwent - The utmost pain of other punishment, - Was wandering of his love and favour reft. - - -24 - - By which was Cypris gladden’d, not appeased, - But hid her joy and spake no more her threat: - And left with face like one that much displeased - Hath yet betray’d that he can wrong forget. - When lo! as swiftly she came stepping down - From her fair house into the heavenly town - The Kronian sisters on the way she met; - - -25 - - Hera, the Wife of Zeus, her placid front - Dark with the shadow of his troubl’d reign, - And tall Demeter, who with men once wont, - Holding the high Olympians in disdain - For Persephassa’s rape; which now forgiven, - She had return’d unto the courts of Heaven, - And ’mong the immortals liv’d at peace again: - - -26 - - Whose smile told Aphrodite that they knew - The meaning of her visit; and a flush - Of anger answer’d them, while hot she grew. - But Hera laugh’d outright: ‘Why thou dost blush! - Now see we modest manners on my life! - And all thy little son has got a wife - Can make the crimson to thy forehead rush. - - -27 - - ‘Didst think he, whom thou madest passion’s prince, - No privy dart then for himself would poise? - Nay, by the cuckoo on my sceptre, since - ’Twas love that made thee mother of his joys, - Art thou the foremost to his favour bound; - As thou shouldst be the last to think to sound - The heart, and least of all thy wanton boy’s.’ - - -28 - - But her Demeter, on whose stalwart arm - She lean’d, took up: ‘If thou wilt hark to me, - This Psyche,’ said she, ‘hath the heavenly charm, - And will become immortal. And maybe - To marry with a woman is as well - As wed a god and live below in Hell: - As ’twas my lot in child of mine to see.’ - - -29 - - Which things they both said, fearing in their hearts - That savage Eros, if they mockt his case, - Would kill their peace with his revengeful darts, - And bring them haply to a worse disgrace: - But Aphrodite, saying ‘Good! my dames; - Behind this smoke I see the spite that flames,’ - Left them, and on her journey went apace. - - -30 - - For having purposed she would hold no truce - With Psyche or her son, ’twas in her mind - To go forthwith unto the throne of Zeus, - And beg that Hermes might be sent to find - The wanderer; and secure that in such quest - He would not fail, she ponder’d but how best - She might inflict her vengeance long-design’d: - - - - - OCTOBER - - -1 - - Heavy meanwhile at heart, with bruisèd feet - Was Psyche wandering many nights and days - Upon the paths of hundred-citied Crete, - And chose to step the most deserted ways; - Being least unhappy when she went unseen; - Since else her secret sorrow had no screen - From the plain question of men’s idle gaze. - - -2 - - Yet wheresoe’er she went one hope she had; - Like mortal mourners, who ’gainst reason strong - Hope to be unexpectedly made glad - With sight of their dead friends, so much they long; - So she for him, whom loss a thousandfold - Endear’d and made desired; nor could she hold - He would not turn and quite forgive her wrong. - - -3 - - Wherefore her eager eyes in every place - Lookt for her lover; and ’twixt hope and fear - She follow’d oft afar some form of grace, - In pain alike to lose or venture near. - And still this thought cheer’d her fatigue, that he, - Or on some hill, or by some brook or tree, - But waited for her coming to appear. - - -4 - - And then for comfort many an old love-crost - And doleful ditty would she gently sing, - Writ by sad poets of a lover lost, - Now sounding sweeter for her sorrowing: - _Echo, sweet Echo, watching up on high, - Say hast thou seen to-day my love go by, - Or where thou sittest by thy mossy spring?_ - - -5 - - _Or say ye nymphs, that from the crystal rills, - When ye have bathed your limbs from morn till eve, - Flying at midnight to the bare-topt hills, - Beneath the stars your mazy dances weave, - Say, my deserter whom ye well may know - By his small wings, his quiver, and his bow, - Say, have ye seen my love, whose loss I grieve?_ - - -6 - - Till climb’d one evening on a rocky steep - Above the plain of Cisamos, that lay, - Robb’d of its golden harvest, in the deep - Mountainous shadows of the dying day, - She saw a temple, whose tall columns fair - Recall’d her home; and ‘O if thou be there, - My love,’ she cried, ‘fly not again away.’ - - -7 - - Swiftly she ran, and entering by the door - She stood alone within an empty fane - Of great Demeter: and, behold, the floor - Was litter’d with thank-offerings of grain, - With wheat and barley-sheaves together heapt - In holy harvest-home of them that reapt - The goddess’ plenteous gifts upon the plain; - - -8 - - And on the tithe the tackle of the tithe - Thrown by in such confusion, as are laid - Upon the swath sickle, and hook, and scythe, - When midday drives the reapers to the shade. - And Psyche, since had come no priestess there - To trim the temple, in her pious care - Forgat herself, and lent her duteous aid. - - -9 - - She drew the offerings from the midst aside, - And piled the sheaves at every pillar’s base; - And sweeping therebetween a passage wide, - Made clear of corn and chaff the temple space: - As countrymen who bring their wheat to mart, - Set out their show along the walls apart - By their allotted stations, each in place; - - -10 - - Thus she, and felt no weariness,--such strength - Hath duty to support our feeble frame,— - Till all was set in order, and at length - Up to the threshold of the shrine she came: - When lo! before her face with friendly smile, - Tall as a pillar of the peristyle, - The goddess stood reveal’d, and call’d her name. - - -11 - - ‘Unhappy Psyche,’ said she, ‘know’st thou not - How Aphrodite to thy hurt is sworn? - And thou, thy peril and her wrath forgot, - Spendest thy thought my temple to adorn. - Take better heed!’--And Psyche, at the voice - Even of so little comfort, gan rejoice, - And at her feet pour’d out this prayer forlorn. - - -12 - - ‘O Gracious giver of the golden grain, - Hide me, I pray thee, from her wrath unkind; - For who can pity as canst thou my pain, - Who wert thyself a wanderer, vex’d in mind - For loss of thy dear Corè once, whenas, - Ravisht to hell by fierce Agesilas, - Thou soughtest her on earth and coudst not find. - - -13 - - ‘How coud thy feet bear thee to western night, - And where swart Libyans watch the sacred tree, - And thrice to ford o’er Achelous bright, - And all the streams of beauteous Sicily? - And thrice to Enna cam’st thou, thrice, they tell, - Satest athirst by Callichorus’ well, - Nor tookest of the spring to comfort thee. - - -14 - - ‘By that remember’d anguish of thine heart, - Lady, have pity even on me, and show - Where I may find my love; and take my part - For peace, I pray, against my cruel foe: - Or if thou canst not from her anger shield, - Here let me lie among the sheaves conceal’d - Such time till forth I may in safety go.’ - - -15 - - Demeter answer’d, ‘Nay, though thou constrain - My favour with thy plea, my help must still - Be hidden, else I work for thee in vain - To thwart my mighty sister in her will. - Thou must fly hence: Yet though I not oppose, - Less will I aid her; and if now I close - My temple doors to thee, take it not ill.’ - - -16 - - Then Psyche’s hope founder’d; as when a ship, - The morrow of the gale can hardly ride - The swollen seas, fetching a deeper dip - At every wave, and through her gaping side - And o’er her shattered bulwark ever drinks, - Till plunging in the watery wild she sinks, - To scoop her grave beneath the crushing tide: - - -17 - - So with each word her broken spirit drank - Its doom; and overwhelm’d with deep despair - She turn’d away, and coming forth she sank - Silently weeping on the temple stair, - In midmost night, forspent with long turmoil: - But sleep, the gracious pursuivant of toil, - Came swiftly down, and nursed away her care. - - -18 - - And when the sun awaked her with his beams - She found new hope, that still her sorrow’s cure - Lay with the gods, who in her morning dreams - Had sent her comfort in a vision sure; - Wherein the Cretan-born, almightiest god, - Cloud-gathering Zeus himself had seem’d to nod, - And bid her with good heart her woes endure. - - -19 - - So coming that same day unto a shrine - Of Hera, she took courage and went in: - And like to one that to the cell divine - For favour ventures or a suit to win, - She drew anigh the altar, from her face - Wiping the tears, ere to the heavenly grace, - As thus she pray’d, she would her prayer begin. - - -20 - - ‘Most honour’d Lady, who from ancient doom - Wert made heaven’s wife, and art on earth besought - With gracious happiness of all to whom - Thy holy wedlock hath my burden brought, - Save me from Aphrodite’s fell pursuit, - And guard unto the birth Love’s hapless fruit, - Which she for cruel spite would bring to nought. - - -21 - - ‘As once from her thou wert not shamed to take - Her beauty’s zone, thy beauty to enhance; - For which again Zeus loved thee, to forsake - His warlike ire in faithful dalliance; - Show me what means may win my Love to me, - Or how that I may come, if so may be, - Within the favour of his countenance. - - -22 - - ‘If there be any place for tears or prayer, - If there be need for succour in distress, - Now is the very hour of all despair, - Here is the heart of grief and bitterness. - Motherly pity, bend thy face and grant - One beam of ruth to thy poor suppliant, - Nor turn me from thine altar comfortless.’ - - -23 - - Even as she pray’d a cloud spread through the cell, - And ’mid the wreathings of the vapour dim - The goddess grew in glory visible, - Like some barbaric queen in festal trim; - Such the attire and ornaments she wore, - When o’er the forgèd threshold of the floor - Of Zeus’s house she stept to visit him. - - -24 - - From either ear, ring’d to its piercèd lobe - A triple jewel hung, with gold enchas’t; - And o’er her breasts her wide ambrosial robe - With many a shining golden clasp was brac’t; - The flowering on its smooth embroider’d lawn - Gather’d to colour where the zone was drawn - In fringe of golden tassels at her waist. - - -15 - - Her curling hair with plaited braid and brail, - Pendant or loop’d about her head divine, - Lay hidden half beneath a golden veil, - Bright as the rippling ocean in sunshine: - And on the ground, flashing whene’er she stept, - Beneath her feet the dazzling lightnings lept - From the gold network of her sandals fine. - - -26 - - Thus Hera stood in royal guise bedeckt - Before poor Psyche on the stair that knelt, - Whose new-nursed hope at that display was checkt, - And all her happier thoughts gan fade and melt. - She saw no kindness in such haughty mien, - And venturing not to look upon the queen, - Bow’d down in woe to hear her sentence dealt. - - -27 - - And thus the goddess spake, ‘In vain thou suest, - Most miserable Psyche; though my heart - Be full of hate for her whose hate thou ruest, - And pride and pity move me to thy part: - Yet not till Zeus make known his will, coud I, - Least of the blameless gods that dwell on high, - Assist thee, wert thou worthier than thou art. - - -28 - - ‘But know if Eros love thee, that thy hopes - Should rest on him; and I would bid thee go - Where in his mother’s house apart he mopes - Grieving for loss of thee in secret woe: - For should he take thee back, there is no power - In earth or heaven will hurt thee from that hour, - Nay, not if Zeus himself should prove thy foe.’ - - -29 - - Thus saying she was gone, and Psyche now - Surprised by comfort rose and went her way, - Resolved in heart, and only wondering how - ’Twas possible to come where Eros lay; - Since that her feet, however she might roam. - Could never travel to the heavenly home - Of Love, beyond the bounds of mortal day: - - -30 - - Yet must she come to him. And now ’twas proved - How that to Lovers, as is told in song, - Seeking the way no place is far removed; - Nor is there any obstacle so strong, - Nor bar so fix’d that it can hinder them: - And how to reach heaven’s gate by stratagem - Vex’d not the venturous heart of Psyche long. - - -31 - - To face her enemy might well avail: - Wherefore to Cypris’ shrine her steps she bent, - Hoping the goddess in her hate might hale - Her body to the skies for punishment, - Whate’er to be; yet now her fiercest wrath - Seem’d happiest fortune, seeing ’twas the path - Whereby alone unto her love she went. - - - - - NOVEMBER - - -1 - - But Aphrodite to the house of Zeus - Being bound, bade beckon out her milkwhite steeds, - Four doves, that ready to her royal use - In golden cages stood and peck’d the seeds: - Best of the nimble air’s high-sailing folk - That wore with pride the marking of her yoke, - And cooed in envy of her gentle needs. - - -2 - - These drew in turn her chariot, when in state - Along the heaven with all her train she fared; - And oft in journeying to the skiey gate - Of Zeus’s palace high their flight had dared, - Which darkest vapour and thick glooms enshroud - Above all else in the perpetual cloud, - Wherethro’ to mount again they stood prepared, - - -3 - - Sleeking their feathers, by her shining car; - The same Hephæstos wrought for her, when he, - Bruised in his hideous fall from heaven afar, - Was nursed by Thetis, and Eurynomè, - The daughter of the ever-refluent main; - With whom he dwelt till he grew sound again, - Down in a hollow cave beside the sea: - - -4 - - And them for kindness done was prompt to serve, - Forging them brooches rich in make and mode, - Earrings, and supple chains of jointed curve, - And other trinkets, while he there abode: - And none of gods or men knew of his home, - But they two only; and the salt sea-foam - To and fro past his cavern ever flow’d. - - -5 - - ’Twas then he wrought this work within the cave, - Emboss’d with rich design, a moonèd car; - And when return’d to heaven to Venus gave, - In form imagined like her crescent star; - Which circling nearest earth, maketh at night - To wakeful mortal men shadow and light - Alone of all the stars in heaven that are. - - -6 - - Two slender wheels it had, with fretted tires - Of biting adamant, to take firm hold - Of cloud or ether; and their whirling fires - Threw off the air in halo where they roll’d: - And either nave that round the axle turn’d - A ruby was, whose steady crimson burn’d - Betwixt the twin speed-mingling fans of gold. - - -7 - - Thereon the naked goddess mounting, shook - The reins; whereat the doves their wings outspread. - And rising high their flight to heaven they took: - And all the birds, that in those courts were bred, - Of her broad eaves the nested families, - Sparrows and swallows, join’d their companies - Awhile and twitter’d to her overhead. - - -8 - - But onward she with fading tracks of flame - Sped swiftly, till she reacht her journey’s end: - And when within the house of Zeus she came, - She pray’d the Sire of Heaven that he would lend - Hermes, the Argus-slayer, for her hest; - And he being granted her at her request, - She went forthwith to seek him and to send. - - -9 - - Who happ’d within the palace then to wait - Upon the almighty pleasure; and her tale - Was quickly told, and he made answer straight - That he would find the truant without fail; - Asking the goddess by what signs her slave - Might best be known, and what the price she gave - For capture, or admitted for the bail. - - -10 - - All which he took his silver stile to write - In letters large upon a waxèd board; - Her age and name, her colour, face and height, - Her home, and parentage, and the reward: - And then read o’er as ’twas to be proclaim’d. - And she took oath to give the price she named, - Without demur, when Psyche was restored. - - -11 - - Then on his head he closely set his cap - With earèd wings erect, and o’er his knee - He cross’d each foot in turn to prove the strap - That bound his wingèd sandals, and shook free - His chlamys, and gat up, and in his hand - Taking his fair white-ribbon’d herald’s wand, - Lept forth on air, accoutred cap-a-pè. - - -12 - - And piloting along the mid-day sky, - Held southward, till the narrow map of Crete - Lay like a fleck in azure ’neath his eye; - When down he came, and as an eagle fleet - Drops in some combe, then checks his headlong stoop - With wide-flung wing, wheeling in level swoop - To strike the bleating quarry with his feet, - - -13 - - Thus he alighted; and in every town - In all the isle before the close of day - Had cried the message, which he carried down, - Of Psyche, Aphrodite’s runaway; - That whosoever found the same and caught, - And by such time unto her temple brought, - To him the goddess would this guerdon pay: - - -14 - - SIX HONIED KISSES FROM HER ROSY MOUTH - WOULD CYTHEREA GIVE, AND ONE BESIDE - TO QUENCH AT HEART FOR AYE LOVE’S MORTAL DROUTH: - BUT UNTO HIM THAT HID HER, WOE BETIDE! - Which now was on all tongues, and Psyche’s name - Herself o’erheard, or ever nigh she came - To Aphrodite’s temple where she hied. - - -15 - - When since she found her way to heaven was safe, - She only wisht to make it soon and sure; - Nor fear’d to meet the goddess in her chafe, - So she her self-surrender might secure, - And not be given of other for the price; - Nor was there need of any artifice - Her once resplendent beauty to obscure. - - -16 - - For now so changed she was by heavy woe, - That for the little likeness that she bore - To her description she was fear’d to go - Within the fane; and when she stood before - The priestess, scarce coud she with oath persuade - That she was Psyche, the renownèd maid, - Whom men had left the temple to adore. - - -17 - - But when to Hermes she was shown and given, - He took no doubt, but eager to be quit, - And proud of speed, return’d with her to heaven, - And left her with the proclamation writ, - Hung at her neck, the board with letters large, - At Aphrodite’s gate with those in charge; - And up whence first he came made haste to flit. - - -18 - - But hapless Psyche fell, for so it chanced, - To moody SYNETHEA’S care, the one - Of Aphrodite’s train whom she advanced - To try the work abandon’d by her son. - Who by perpetual presence made ill end - Of good or bad; though she coud both amend, - And merit praise for work by her begun. - - -19 - - But she to better thought her heart had shut, - And proved she had a spite beyond compare: - Nor coud the keenest taunts her anger glut, - Which she when sour’d was never wont to spare: - And now she mock’d at Psyche’s shame and grief, - As only she might do, and to her chief - Along the courtyard dragg’d her by the hair. - - -20 - - Nor now was Aphrodite kinder grown: - Having her hated rival in her power, - She laught for joy, and in triumphant tone - Bade her a merry welcome to her bower: - ‘’Tis fit indeed daughters-in-law should wait - Upon their mothers; but thou comest late, - Psyche; I lookt for thee before this hour. - - -21 - - ‘And yet,’ thus gave she rein to jeer and gibe, - ‘Forgive me if I held thee negligent, - Or if accustom’d vanity ascribe - An honour to myself that was not meant. - Thy lover is it, who so dearly prized - The pretty soul, then left her and despised? - To him more like thy heavenward steps were bent: - - -22 - - ‘Nor without reason: Zeus, I tell thee, swoon’d - To hear the story of the drop of oil, - The revelation and the ghastly wound: - My merriment is but my fear’s recoil. - But if my son was unkind, thou shalt see - How kind a goddess can his mother be - To bring thy tainted honour clear of soil.’ - - -23 - - And so, to match her promise with her mirth, - Two of her ministers she call’d in ken, - That work the melancholy of the earth; - MERIMNA that with care perplexes, when - The hearts of mortals have the gods forgot, - And LYPÈ, that her sorrow spares them not, - When mortals have forgot their fellow men. - - -24 - - These, like twin sharks that in a fair ship’s wake - Swim constant, showing ’bove the water blue - Their shearing fins, and hasty ravin make - Of overthrow or offal, so these two - On Aphrodite’s passing follow hard; - And now she offer’d to their glut’s regard - Sweet Psyche, with command their wont to do. - - -25 - - But in what secret chamber their foul task - These soul-tormentors plied, or what their skill, - Pity of tender nature may not ask, - Nor poet stain his rhyme with such an ill. - But they at last themselves turn’d from their rack, - Weary of cruelty, and led her back, - Saying that further torture were to kill. - - -26 - - Then when the goddess saw her, more she mockt, - ‘Art thou the woman of the earth,’ she said, - ‘That hast in sorceries mine Eros lockt, - And stood thyself for worship in my stead? - Looking that I should pity thee, or care - For what illicit offspring thou mayst bear; - Or let thee to that god my son be wed? - - -27 - - ‘I know thy trick; and thou art one of them - Who steal love’s favour in the gentle way, - Wearing submission for a diadem, - Patience and suffering for thy rich array: - Thou wilt be modest, kind, implicit, so - To rest thy wily spirit out of show - That it may leap the livelier into play: - - -28 - - ‘Devout at doing nothing, if so be - The grace become thee well; but active yet - Above all others be there none to see - Thy business, and thine eager face asweat. - Lo! I will prove thy talent: thou mayst live, - And all that thou desirest will I give, - If thou perform the task which I shall set.’ - - -29 - - She took her then aside, and bade her heed - A heap of grains piled high upon the floor, - Millet and mustard, hemp and poppy seed, - And fern-bloom’s undistinguishable spore, - All kinds of pulse, of grasses, and of spice, - Clover and linseed, rape, and corn, and rice, - Dodder, and sesame, and many more. - - -30 - - ‘Sort me these seeds’ she said; ‘it now is night, - I will return at morning; if I find - That thou hast separated all aright, - Each grain from other grain after its kind, - And set them in unmingl’d heaps apart, - Then shall thy wish be granted to thine heart.’ - Whereat she turn’d, and closed the door behind. - - - - - EROS & PSYCHE - - - FOURTH QUARTER - WINTER - - - PSYCHE’S TRIALS AND RECEPTION - INTO HEAVEN - - - - - DECEMBER - -1 - - A single lamp there stood beside the heap, - And shed thereon its mocking golden light; - Such as might tempt the weary eye to sleep - Rather than prick the nerve of taskèd sight. - Yet Psyche, not to fail for lack of zeal, - With good will sat her down to her ordeal, - Sorting the larger seeds as best she might. - - -2 - - When lo! upon the wall, a shadow past - Of doubtful shape, across the chamber dim - Moving with speed: and seeing nought that cast - The shade, she bent her down the flame to trim; - And there the beast itself, a little ant, - Climb’d up in compass of the lustre scant, - Upon the bowl of oil ran round the rim. - - -3 - - Smiling to see the creature of her fear - So dwarf’d by truth, she watcht him where he crept, - For mere distraction telling in his ear - What straits she then was in, and telling wept. - Whereat he stood and trim’d his horns; but ere - Her tale was done resumed his manner scare, - Ran down, and on his way in darkness kept. - - -4 - - But she intent drew forth with dextrous hand - The larger seeds, or push’d the smaller back, - Or light from heavy with her breathing fan’d. - When suddenly she saw the floor grow black, - And troops of ants, flowing in noiseless train, - Moved to the hill of seeds, as o’er a plain - Armies approach a city for attack; - - -5 - - And gathering on the grain, began to strive - With grappling horns: and each from out the heap - His burden drew, and all their motion live - Struggled and slid upon the surface steep. - And Psyche wonder’d, watching them, to find - The creatures separated kind from kind: - Till dizzied with the sight she fell asleep. - - -6 - - And when she woke ’twas with the morning sound - Of Aphrodite’s anger at the door, - Whom high amaze stay’d backward, as she found - Her foe asleep with all her trouble o’er: - And round the room beheld, in order due, - The piles arranged distinct and sorted true, - Grain with grain, seed with seed, and spore with spore. - - -7 - - She fiercely cried ‘Thou shalt not thus escape; - For to this marvel dar’st thou not pretend. - There is but one that coud this order shape, - Demeter,--but I knew her not thy friend. - Therefore another trial will I set, - In which she cannot aid thee nor abet, - But thou thyself must bring it fair to end.’ - - -8 - - Thereon she sped her to the bounds of Thrace, - And set her by a river deep and wide, - And said ‘To east beyond this stream, a race - Of golden-fleecèd sheep at pasture bide. - Go seek them out; and this thy task, to pull - But one lock for me of their precious wool, - And give it in my hands at eventide: - - -9 - - ‘This do and thou shalt have thy heart’s desire.’ - Which said, she fled and left her by the stream: - And Psyche then, with courage still entire - Had plunged therein; but now of great esteem - Her life she rated, while it lent a spell - Wherein she yet might hope to quit her well, - And in one winning all her woes redeem. - - -10 - - There as she stood in doubt, a fluting voice - Rose from the flood, ‘Psyche, be not afraid - To hear a reed give tongue, for ’twas of choice - That I from mortal flesh a plant was made. - My name is Syrinx; once from mighty Pan - Into the drowning river as I ran, - A fearful prayer my steps for ever stay’d. - - -11 - - ‘But by that change in many climes I live; - And Pan, my lover, who to me alone - Is true and does me honour, I forgive-- - Nor if I speak in sorrow is’t my own: - Rather for thee my voice I now uplift - To warn thee plunge not in the river swift, - Nor seek the golden sheep to men unknown. - - -12 - - ‘If thou should cross the stream, which may not be - Thou coudst not climb upon the hanging rocks, - Nor ever, as the goddess bade thee, see - The pasture of the yellow-fleecèd flocks: - Or if thou coud, their herded horns would gore - And slay thee on the crags, or thrust thee o’er - Ere thou coudst rob them of their golden locks. - - -13 - - ‘The goddess means thy death. But I can show - How thy obedience yet may thwart her will. - At noon the golden flocks descend below, - Leaving the scented herbage of the hill, - And where the shelving banks to shallows fall, - Drink at the rippling water one and all, - Nor back return till they have drawn their fill. - - -14 - - ‘I will command a thornbush, that it stoop - Over some ram that steppeth by in peace, - And him in all its prickles firmly coop, - Making thee seizure of his golden fleece; - So without peril of his angry horns - Shalt thou be quit: for he upon the thorns - Must leave his ransom ere he win release.’ - - -15 - - Then Psyche thankt her for her kind befriending, - And hid among the rushes looking east; - And when noon came she saw the flock descending - Out of the hills; and lo! one golden beast - Caught in a thornbush; and the mighty brute - Struggl’d and tore it from its twisted root - Into the stream, or e’er he was releas’t. - - -16 - - And when they water’d were and gone, the breeze - Floated the freighted thorn where Psyche lay: - Whence she unhook’d the golden wool at ease, - And back to heaven for passage swift gan pray. - And Hermes, who was sent to be her guide - Ifso she lived, came down at eventide, - And bore her thither ere the close of day. - - -17 - - But when the goddess saw the locks of gold - Held to her hands, her heart with wrath o’erran: - ‘Most desperate thou, and by abetting bold, - That dost outwit me, prove thee as I can. - Yet this work is not thine: there is but one - Of all the gods who coud the thing have done. - Hast thou a friend too in the lusty Pan? - - -18 - - ‘I’ll give thee trial where he cannot aid.’ - Which said, she led her to a torrid land, - Level and black, but not with flood or shade, - For nothing coud the mighty heat withstand, - Which aye from morn till eve the naked sun - Pour’d on that plain, where never foot had run, - Nor any herb sprung on its molten sand. - - -19 - - Far off a gloomy mountain rose alone: - And Aphrodite, thither pointing, said - ‘There lies thy task. Out of the topmost stone - Of yonder hill upwells a fountain head. - Take thou this goblet; brimming must thou bring - Its cup with water from that sacred spring, - If ever to my son thou wouldst be wed.’ - - -20 - - Saying, she gave into her hands a bowl - Cut of one crystal, open, broad and fair; - And bade her at all hazard keep it whole, - For heaven held nought beside so fine or rare. - Then was she gone; and Psyche on the plain - Now doubted if she ever should regain - The love of Eros, strove she howsoe’er. - - -21 - - Yet as a helmsman, at the word to tack, - Swiftly without a thought puts down his helm, - So Psyche turn’d to tread that desert black, - Since was no fear that coud her heart o’erwhelm; - Nor knew she that she went the fount to seek - Of cold Cocytus, springing to the peak, - Secretly from his source in Pluto’s realm. - - -22 - - All night and day she journey’d, and at last - Come to the rock gazed up in vain around: - Nothing she saw but precipices vast - O’er ruined scarps, with rugged ridges crown’d: - And creeping to a cleft to rest in shade, - Or e’er the desperate venture she assay’d, - She fell asleep upon the stony ground. - - -23 - - A dream came to her, thus: she stood alone - Within her palace in the high ravine; - Where nought but she was changed, but she to stone. - Worshippers throng’d the court, and still were seen - Folk flying from the peak, who, ever more - Flying and flying, lighted on the floor, - _Hail!_ cried they, _wife of Eros, adorèd queen!_ - - -24 - - A hurtling of the battl’d air disturb’d - Her sunken sense, and waked her eyes to meet - The kingly bird of Zeus, himself that curb’d - His swooping course, alighting at her feet; - With motion gentle, his far-darting eye - In kindness dim’d upon her, he drew nigh, - And thus in words unveil’d her foe’s deceit: - - -25 - - - ‘In vain, poor Psyche, hast thou hither striven - Across the fiery plain toiling so well; - Cruelly to destruction art thou driven - By her, whose hate thou canst not quit nor quell. - No mortal foot may scale this horrid mount, - And those black waters of its topmost fount - Are guarded by the hornèd snakes of hell. - - -26 - - ‘Its little rill is an upleaping jet - Of cold Cocytus, which for ever licks - Earth’s base, and when with Acheron ’tis met, - Its waters with that other cannot mix, - Which holds the elemental air dissolved; - But with it in its ceaseless course revolved - Issues unmingl’d in the lake of Styx. - - -27 - - ‘The souls of murderers, in guise of fish, - Scream as they swim therein and wail for cold, - Their times of woe determined by the wish - Of them they murder’d on the earth of old: - Whom each five years they see, whene’er they make - Their passage to the Acherusian lake, - And there release may win from pains condoled. - - -28 - - ‘For if the pitying ear of them they slew - Be haply piercèd by their voices spare, - Then are they freed from pain; as are some few; - But, for the most, again they forward fare - To Tartarus obscene, and outcast thence - Are hurried back into the cold intense, - And with new company their torments share. - - -29 - - ‘Its biting lymph may not be touch’d of man - Or god, unless the Fates have so ordain’d; - Nor coud I in thy favour break the ban, - Nor pass the dragons that thereby are chain’d, - Didst thou not bear the sacred cup of Zeus; - Which, for thy peril lent, shall turn to use, - And truly do the service which it feign’d.’ - - -30 - - Thus as he spake, his talons made he ring - Around the crystal bowl, and soaring high - Descended as from heaven upon the spring: - Nor dared the hornèd snakes of hell deny - The minister of Zeus, that bore his cup, - To fill it with their trusted water up, - Thence to the King of heaven therewith to fly. - - -31 - - But he to Psyche bent his gracious speed, - And bidding her to mount his feather’d back - Bore her aloft as once young Ganymede; - Nor ever made his steady flight to slack, - Ere that he set her down beside her goal, - And gave into her hands the crystal bowl - Unspill’d, o’erbrimming with the water black. - - - - - JANUARY - - -1 - - But Eros now recover’d from his hurt, - Felt other pangs; for who would not relent - Weighing the small crime and unmatch’d desert - Of Psyche with her cruel punishment? - And shamed he grew to be so near allied - To her, who by her taunts awoke his pride, - As his compassion by her spite unspent. - - -2 - - Which Aphrodite seeing, wax’d more firm - That he should never meet with Psyche more; - And had in thought already set the term - To their communion with that trial sore, - Which sent her forth upon a quest accurst, - And not to be accomplisht, that of thirst - She there might perish on hell’s torrid shore. - - -3 - - And now it chanced that she had called her son - Into her presence-chamber, to unfold - Psyche’s destruction, that her fate might stun - What love remained by duty uncontrol’d; - And he to hide his tears’ rebellious storm - Was fled; when in his place another form - Rose ’neath the golden lintel; and behold - - -4 - - Psyche herself, in slow and balanced strain, - Poising the crystal bowl with fearful heed, - Her eyes at watch upon the steadied plane, - And whole soul gather’d in the single deed. - Onward she came, and stooping to the floor - Set down the cup unspill’d and brimming o’er - At Aphrodite’s feet, and rose up freed. - - -5 - - Surprise o’ercame the goddess, and she too - Stood like a statue, but with passion pale: - Till, when her victim nothing spake, she threw - Some kindness in her voice, and bade her hail; - But in the smiling judge ’twas plain to see-- - Saying ‘What water bringst thou here to me?’— - That justice over hate should not prevail. - - -6 - - Then Psyche said ‘This is the biting flood - Of black Cocytus, silver’d with the gleam - Of souls, that guilty of another’s blood - Are pent therein, and as they swim they scream. - The hornèd snakes of hell, upon the mount - Enchain’d, for ever guard the livid fount: - And but the Fates can grant to touch the stream.’ - - -7 - - ‘Wherefore,’ the goddess cried, ‘’tis plain that none - But one I wot of coud this thing have wrought. - That which another doth may well be done, - Nor thou the nearer to my promise brought. - Thou buildest on a hope to be destroy’d, - If thou accept conditions, and avoid - Thy parcel, nor thyself accomplish aught. - - -8 - - ‘Was it not kindness in me, being averse - To all thy wish, to yield me thus to grant - Thy heart’s desire,--and nothing loathe I worse,— - If thou wouldst only work as well as want? - See, now I will not yet be all denial, - But offer thee one last determining trial; - And let it be a mutual covenant: - - -9 - - ‘This box,’ and in her hands she took a pyx - Square-cut, of dark obsidian’s rarest green, - ‘Take; and therewith beyond Tartarean Styx - Go thou, and entering Hades’ house obscene, - Say to Persephonè, _If ’tis thy will - To shew me so much favour, prithee fill - This little vase with beauty for Love’s queen_. - - -10 - - ‘_She begs but what shall well o’erlast a day; - For of her own was much of late outspent - In nursing of her son, in bed who lay - Wounded by me, who for the gift am sent._ - Then bring me what she gives, and with all speed; - For truth to say I stand, thou seest, in need - Of some such charm in my disparagement. - - -11 - - ‘If thou return to me with that acquist, - Having thyself the journey made, I swear - That day to give thee whatsoe’er thou list, - An be it my son. Now, Psyche, wilt thou dare?’ - And Psyche said ‘If this thou truly mean, - I will go down to Tartarus obscene, - And beg of Hades’ queen thy beauty there. - - -12 - - ‘Show me the way.’ But Aphrodite said, - ‘That mayst thou find. Yet I will place thee whence - A way there is: mortals have on it sped; - Ay, and return’d thereby: so let us hence.’ - Then swift to earth her willing prey she bore, - And left her on the wide Laconian shore, - Alone, at midnight, in the darkness dense. - - -13 - - ’Twas winter; and as shivering Psyche sat - Waiting for morn, she question’d in her mind - What place the goddess meant, arrived whereat - She might descend to hell, or how should find - The way which Gods to living men deny. - ‘No Orpheus, nay, nor Hercules am I,’ - Said she,‘to loosen where the great Gods bind.’ - - -14 - - And when at length the long-delaying dawn - Broke on the peaks of huge Taÿgetus, - And Psyche through the skirts of dark withdrawn - Look’d on that promontory mountainous, - And saw high-crested Taleton in snow, - Her heart sank, and she wept with head bent low - The malice of her foe dispiteous. - - -15 - - And seeing near at hand an ancient tower, - Deserted now, but once a hold of men, - She came thereto, and, though ’twas all her power, - Mounted its steep unbroken stair again. - ‘Surely,’ she said, for now a second time - She thought to die--‘this little height I climb - Will prove my shortest road to Pluto’s den. - - -16 - - ‘Hence must I come to Tartarus; once there - Turn as I may,’ and straight to death had sprung; - When in the mossy tower the imprison’d air - Was shaken, and the hoary stones gave tongue, - ‘Stand firm! stand firm!’ that rugged voice outcried; - ‘Of such as choose despondency for guide - Hast thou not heard what bitterest fate is sung? - - -17 - - ‘Hearken; for I the road and means can teach - How thou mayst come to hell and yet escape. - And first must thou, that upper gate to reach, - Along these seagirt hills thy journey shape, - To where the land in sea dips furthest South - At Tænarus and Hades’ earthly mouth, - Hard by Poseidon’s temple at the cape. - - -18 - - ‘Thereby may one descend: but they that make - That passage down must go provided well. - So take in either hand a honey-cake - Of pearlèd barley mix’d with hydromel; - And in thy mouth two doits, first having bound - The pyx beneath thy robe enwrap’d around: - Thus set thou forth; and mark what more I tell. - - -19 - - ‘When thou hast gone alone some half thy road - Thou wilt o’ertake a lame outwearied ass; - And one that beats him, tottering ’neath his load - Of loosely bundl’d wood, will cry _Alas; - Help me, kind friend, my faggots to adjust!_ - But thou that silly cripple’s words mistrust; - ’Tis planted for thy death. Note it and pass. - - -20 - - ‘And when thy road the Stygian river joins, - Where woolly Charon ferries o’er the dead, - He will demand his fare: one of thy coins - Force with thy tongue between thy teeth, thy head - Offering instead of hand to give the doit. - His fingers in this custom are adroit, - And thine must not set down the barleybread. - - -21 - - ‘Then in his crazy bark as, ferrying o’er - The stream, thou sittest, one that seems to float - Rather than swim, midway ’twixt shore and shore, - Will stretch his fleshless hand upon the boat, - And beg thee of thy pity take him in. - Shut thy soft ear unto his clamour thin, - Nor for a phantom deed thyself devote. - - -22 - - ‘Next, on the further bank when thou art stept, - Three wizen’d women weaving at the woof - Will stop, and pray thee in their art adept - To free their tangl’d threads. Hold thou aloof; - For this and other traps thy foe hath plan’d - To make thee drop the cakes out of thy hand, - Putting thy prudence to perpetual proof. - - -23 - - ‘For by one cake thou comest into Hell, - And by one cake departest; since the hound - That guards the gate is ever pleasèd well - To taste man’s meal, or sweeten’d grain unground. - Cast him a cake; for that thou mayst go free - Even to the mansion of Persephonè, - Withouten stay or peril, safe and sound. - - -24 - - ‘She will receive thee kindly; thou decline - Her courtesies, and make the floor thy seat; - Refusing what is offer’d, food or wine; - Save only beg a crust of bread to eat. - Then tell thy mission, and her present take; - Which when thou hast, set forth with pyx and cake, - One in each hand, while yet thou mayst retreat. - - -25 - - ‘Giving thy second cake to Cerberus, - The coin to Charon, and that way whereby - Thou earnest following, thou comest thus - To see again the starry choir on high. - But guard thou well the pyx, nor once uplift - The lid to look on Persephassa’s gift; - Else ’tis in vain I bid thee now not die.’ - -26 - - Then Psyche thank’d the tower, and stoopt her mouth - To kiss the stones upon his rampart hoary; - And coming down his stair went hasting south, - Along the steep Tænarian promontory; - And found the cave and temple by the cape, - And took the cakes and coins, and made escape - Beneath the earth, according to his story. - - -27 - - And overtook the ass, but lent no aid; - And offer’d Charon with her teeth his fee; - And pass’d the floating ghost, in vain who pray’d; - And turned her back upon the weavers three: - And threw the honey-cake to that hell-hound - Three-headed Cerberus; and safe and sound, - Came to the mansion of Persephonè. - - -28 - - Kindly received, she courtesy declined; - Sat on the ground; ate not, save where she lay, - A crust of bread; reveal’d the goddess’ mind; - The gift took; and return’d upon her way: - Gave Cerberus his cake, Charon his fare, - And saw through Hell’s mouth to the purple air - And one by one the keen stars melt in day. - - -29 - - Awhile from so long journeying in the shades - Resting at Tænarus she came to know - How, up the eastern coast some forty stades, - There stood a temple of her goddess foe. - There would she make her offering, there reclaim - The prize, which now ’twas happiness to name, - The joy that should redeem all passèd woe. - - -30 - - And wending by the sunny shore at noon, - She with her pyx, and wondering what it hid, - Of what kind, what the fashion of the boon - Coud be, that she to look on was forbid,— - Alas for Innocence so hard to teach!— - At fancy’s prick she sat her on the beach, - And to content desire lifted the lid. - - -31 - - She saw within nothing: But o’er her sight - That looked on nothing gan a darkness creep. - A cloudy poison, mix’d of Stygian night, - Rapt her to deadly and infernal sleep. - Backward she fell, like one when all is o’er, - And lay outstretch’d, as lies upon the shore - A drown’d corpse cast up by the murmuring deep. - - - - - FEBRUARY - - -1 - - While Eros in his chamber hid his tears, - Mourning the loss of Psyche and her fate, - The rumour of her safety reacht his ears - And how she came to Aphrodite’s gate: - Whereat with hope return’d his hardihood, - And secretly he purposed while he coud - Himself to save her from the goddess’ hate. - - -2 - - Then learning what he might and guessing more, - His ready wit came soon to understand - The journey to the far Laconian shore; - Whither to fly and seek his love he plan’d: - And making good escape in dark of night, - Ere the sun crost his true meridian flight - He by Teuthronè struck the southern strand. - - -3 - - There as it chanct he found that snowy bird - Of Crete, that late made mischief with his queen, - And now along the cliffs with wings unstir’d - Sail’d, and that morn had cross’d the sea between: - Whom as he past he hail’d, and question’d thus, - ‘O snowy gull, if thou from Tænarus - Be come, say, hast thou there my Psyche seen?’ - - -4 - - The gull replied ‘Thy Psyche have I seen; - Walking beside the sea she joy’th to bear - A pyx of dark obsidian’s rarest green, - Wherein she gazeth on her features fair. - She is not hence by now six miles at most.’ - Then Eros bade him speed, and down the coast - Held on his passage through the buoyant air. - - -5 - - With eager eye he search’d the salty marge - Boding all mischief from his mother’s glee; - And wondering of her wiles, and what the charge - Shut in the dark obsidian pyx might be. - And lo! at last, outstretch’d beside the rocks, - Psyche as lifeless; and the open box - Laid with the weedy refuse of the sea. - - -6 - - He guess’d all, flew down, and beside her knelt. - With both his hands stroking her temples wan; - And for the poison with his fingers felt, - And drew it gently from her; and anon - She slowly from those Stygian fumes was freed; - Which he with magic handling and good heed - Replaced in pyx, and shut the lid thereon. - - -7 - - ‘O Psyche,’ thus, and kissing her he cried, - ‘O simple-hearted Psyche, once again - Hast thou thy foolish longing gratified, - A second time hath prying been thy bane. - But lo! I, love, am come, for I am thine: - Nor ever more shall any fate malign, - Or spite of goddess smite our love in twain. - - -8 - - ‘Let now that I have saved thee twice outweigh - The once that I deserted thee: and thou - Hast much obey’d for once to disobey, - And wilt no more my bidding disallow. - Take up thy pyx; to Aphrodite go, - And claim the promise of thy mighty foe; - Maybe that she will grant it to thee now. - - -9 - - ‘If she should yet refuse, despair not yet!’ - Then Psyche, when she felt his arms restore - Their old embrace, and as their bodies met, - Knew the great joy that grief is pardon’d for; - And how it doth first ecstasy excel, - When love well-known, long-lost, and mournèd well - In long days of no hope, comes home once more. - - -10 - - But Eros leaping up with purpose keen - Into the air, as only love can fly, - Bore her to heaven, and setting her unseen - At Aphrodite’s golden gate,--whereby - They came as night was close on twilight dim,— - There left, and bidding her say nought of him, - Went onward to the house of Zeus most high. - - -11 - - Where winning audience of the heavenly sire, - Who well disposed to him was used to be, - He told the story of his strong desire; - And boldly begg’d that Zeus would grant his plea, - That he might have sweet Psyche for his wife, - And she be dower’d with immortal life, - Since she was worthy, by his firm decree. - - -12 - - And great Zeus smiled; and at the smile of Zeus - All heaven was glad, and on the earth below - Was calm and peace awhile and sorrow’s truce: - The sun shone forth and smote the winter snow, - The flowërs sprang, the birds gan sing and pair, - And mortals, as they drew the brighten’d air, - Marvel’d, and quite forgot their common woe. - - -13 - - Yet gave the Thunderer not his full consent - Without some words: ‘At length is come the day,’ - Thus spake he, ‘when for all thy youth misspent, - Thy mischief-making and thy wanton play - Thou art upgrown to taste the sweet and sour: - Good shall it work upon thee: from this hour - Look we for better things. And this I say, - - -14 - - ‘That since thy birth, which all we took for bliss, - Thou hast but mock’d us; and no less on me - Hast brought disfavour and contempt, ywiss, - Than others that have had to do with thee: - Till only such as vow’d themselves aloof - From thee and thine were held in good aproof; - And few there were, who thus of shame went free. - - -15 - - ‘That punishment is shapen as reward - Is like thy fortune: but our good estate - We honour, while we sit to be adored: - And thus ’twas written in the book of Fate. - Not for thy pleasure, but the general weal - Grant I the grace for which thou here dost kneel; - And that which I determine shall not wait.’ - - -16 - - So wingèd Hermes through the heaven he sped, - To warn the high celestials to his hall, - Where they should Psyche see with Eros wed, - And keep the day with feast ambrosial. - And Hermes, flying through the skiey ways - Of high Olympus, spread sweet Psyche’s praise, - And bade the mighty gods obey his call. - - -17 - - Then all the Kronian gods and goddesses - Assembl’d at his cry,--and now ’twas known - Why Zeus had smiled,--the lesser majesties - Attending them before his royal throne. - Athena, mistress good of them that know, - Came, and Apollo, warder off of woe, - Who had to Psyche’s sire her fate foreshown; - - -18 - - Demeter, giver of the golden com, - Fair Hebe, honour’d at her Attic shrine, - And Artemis with hunting spear and horn, - And Dionysos, planter of the vine, - With old Poseidon from the barren sea, - And Leto, and the lame Hephæstos, he - Himself who built those halls with skill divine. - - -19 - - And ruddy Pan with many a quip and quirk - Air’d ’mong those lofty gods his mirth illbred, - Bearing a mighty bowl of cretan work: - Stern Arês, with his crisp hair helmeted, - Came, and retirèd Hestia, and the god - Hermes, with wingèd cap and ribbon’d rod, - By whom the company was heralded. - - -20 - - And Hera sat by Zeus, and all around - The Muses, that of learning make their choice; - Who, when Apollo struck his strings to sound, - Sang in alternate music with sweet voice: - And righteous Themis, and the Graces three - Ushering the anger’d Aphrodite; she - Alone of all were there might not rejoice. - - -21 - - But ere they sat to feast, Zeus bade them fill - The cup ambrosial of immortal life, - And said ‘If Psyche drink,--and ’tis my will,— - There is an end of this unhappy strife. - Nor can the goddess, whose mislike had birth - From too great honour paid the bride on earth, - Forbid her any more for Eros’ wife.’ - - -22 - - Then Aphrodite said ‘So let it be.’ - And Psyche was brought in, with such a flush - Of joy upon her face, as there to see - Was fairer to love’s eye than beauty’s blush. - And then she drank the eternal wine, whose draught - Can Terror cease: which flesh hath never quafft, - Nor doth it flow from grape that mortals crush. - - -23 - - And next stood Eros forth, and took her hand, - And kisst her happy face before them all: - And Zeus proclaim’d them married, and outban’d - From heaven whoever should that word miscall. - And then all sat to feast, and one by one - Pledged Psyche ere they drank and cried _Well done_! - And merry laughter rang throughout the hall. - - -24 - - So thus was Eros unto Psyche wed, - The heavenly bridegroom to his earthly bride, - Who won his love, in simple maidenhead: - And by her love herself she glorified, - And him from wanton wildness disinclined; - Since in his love for her he came to find - A joy unknown through all Olympus wide. - - -25 - - And Psyche for her fall was quite forgiven, - Since ’gainst herself when tempted to rebel, - By others’ malice on her ruin driven, - Only of sweet simplicity she fell:— - Wherein who fall may fall unto the skies;— - And being foolish she was yet most wise, - And took her trials patiently and well. - - -26 - - And Aphrodite since her full defeat - Is kinder and less jealous than before, - And smiling on them both, calls Psyche sweet; - But thinks her son less manly than of yore: - Though still she holds his arm of some renown, - When he goes smiting mortals up and down, - Piercing their marrow with his weapons sore. - - -27 - - _So now in steadfast love and happy state_ - They hold for aye their mansion in the sky, - And send down heavenly peace on those who mate, - In virgin love, to find their joy thereby: - Whom gently Eros shooteth, and apart - Keepeth for them from all his sheaf that dart - Which Psyche in his chamber pickt to try. - - -28 - - Now in that same month Psyche bare a child, - Who straight in heaven was namèd Hedonè - In mortal tongues by other letters styled; - Whom all to love, however named, agree: - Whom in our noble English JOY we call, - And honour them among us most of all, - Whose happy children are as fair as she. - - -29 - - _ENVOY_ - - IT IS MY PRAYER THAT SHE MAY SMILE ON ALL - WHO READ MY TALE AS SHE HATH SMILED ON ME. - - - - - THE GROWTH - OF - LOVE - - - - - THE GROWTH OF LOVE - - -1 - - They that in play can do the thing they would, - Having an instinct throned in reason’s place, - --And every perfect action hath the grace - Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood-- - These are the best: yet be there workmen good - Who lose in earnestness control of face, - Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base - Reach to their end by steps well understood. - - Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains - Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve, - --Even as a painter breathlessly who strains - His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve-- - Behold me, now that I have cast my chains, - Master of the art which for thy sake I serve. - - -2 - - For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed - To have usèd means to win so pure acquist, - And of my trembling fear that might have misst - Thro’ very care the gold at which I aim’d; - And am as happy but to hear thee named, - As are those gentle souls by angels kisst - In pictures seen leaving their marble cist - To go before the throne of grace unblamed. - - Nor surer am I water hath the skill - To quench my thirst, or that my strength is freed - In delicate ordination as I will, - Than that to be myself is all I need - For thee to be most mine: so I stand still, - And save to taste my joy no more take heed. - - -3 - - The whole world now is but the minister - Of thee to me: I see no other scheme - But universal love, from timeless dream - Waking to thee his joy’s interpreter. - I walk around and in the fields confer - Of love at large with tree and flower and stream, - And list the lark descant upon my theme, - Heaven’s musical accepted worshipper. - - Thy smile outfaceth ill: and that old feud - ’Twixt things and me is quash’d in our new truce; - And nature now dearly with thee endued - No more in shame ponders her old excuse, - But quite forgets her frowns and antics rude, - So kindly hath she grown to her new use. - - -4 - - The very names of things belov’d are dear, - And sounds will gather beauty from their sense, - As many a face thro’ love’s long residence - Groweth to fair instead of plain and sere: - But when I say thy name it hath no peer, - And I suppose fortune determined thence - Her dower, that such beauty’s excellence - Should have a perfect title for the ear. - - Thus may I think the adopting Muses chose - Their sons by name, knowing none would be heard - Or writ so oft in all the world as those,— - Dan Chaucer, mighty Shakespeare, then for third - The classic Milton, and to us arose - Shelley with liquid music in the word. - - -5 - - The poets were good teachers, for they taught - Earth had this joy; but that ’twould ever be - That fortune should be perfected in me, - My heart of hope dared not engage the thought. - So I stood low, and now but to be caught - By any self-styled lords of the age with thee - Vexes my modesty, lest they should see - I hold them owls and peacocks, things of nought. - - And when we sit alone, and as I please - I taste thy love’s full smile, and can enstate - The pleasure of my kingly heart at ease, - My thought swims like a ship, that with the weight - Of her rich burden sleeps on the infinite seas - Becalm’d, and cannot stir her golden freight. - - -6 - - While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry - And blackening east that so embitters March, - Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch, - And driven dust and withering snowflake fly; - Already in glimpses of the tarnish’d sky - The sun is warm and beckons to the larch, - And where the covert hazels interarch - Their tassell’d twigs, fair beds of primrose lie. - - Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid - A million buds but stay their blossoming; - And trustful birds have built their nests amid - The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing - Till one soft shower from the south shall bid, - And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of spring. - - -7 - - In thee my spring of life hath bid the while - A rose unfold beyond the summer’s best, - The mystery of joy made manifest - In love’s self-answering and awakening smile; - Whereby the lips in wonder reconcile - Passion with peace, and show desire at rest,— - A grace of silence by the Greek unguesst, - That bloom’d to immortalize the Tuscan style: - - When first the angel-song that faith had ken’d - Fancy pourtray’d, above recorded oath - Of Israel’s God, or light of poem pen’d; - The very countenance of plighted troth - ’Twixt heaven and earth, where in one moment blend - The hope of one and happiness of both. - - -8 - - For beauty being the best of all we know - Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims - Of nature, and on joys whose earthly names - Were never told can form and sense bestow; - And man hath sped his instinct to outgo - The step of science; and against her shames - Imagination stakes out heavenly claims, - Building a tower above the head of woe. - - Nor is there fairer work for beauty found - Than that she win in nature her release - From all the woes that in the world abound: - Nay with his sorrow may his love increase, - If from man’s greater need beauty redound, - And claim his tears for homage of his peace. - - -9 - - Thus to thy beauty doth my fond heart look, - That late dismay’d her faithless faith forbore; - And wins again her love lost in the lore - Of schools and script of many a learned book: - For thou what ruthless death untimely took - Shalt now in better brotherhood restore, - And save my batter’d ship that far from shore - High on the dismal deep in tempest shook. - - So in despite of sorrow lately learn’d - I still hold true to truth since thou art true, - Nor wail the woe which thou to joy hast turn’d: - Nor come the heavenly sun and bathing blue - To my life’s need more splendid and unearn’d - Than hath thy gift outmatch’d desire and due. - - -10 - - Winter was not unkind because uncouth; - His prison’d time made me a closer guest, - And gave thy graciousness a warmer zest, - Biting all else with keen and angry tooth: - And bravelier the triumphant blood of youth - Mantling thy cheek its happy home possest, - And sterner sport by day put strength to test, - And custom’s feast at night gave tongue to truth. - - Or say hath flaunting summer a device - To match our midnight revelry, that rang - With steel and flame along the snow-girt ice? - Or when we hark’t to nightingales that sang - On dewy eves in spring, did they entice - To gentler love than winter’s icy fang? - - -11 - - There’s many a would-be poet at this hour, - Rhymes of a love that he hath never woo’d, - And o’er his lamplit desk in solitude - Deems that he sitteth in the Muses’ bower: - And some the flames of earthly love devour, - Who have taken no kiss of Nature, nor renew’d - In the world’s wilderness with heavenly food - The sickly body of their perishing power. - - So none of all our company, I boast, - But now would mock my penning, could they see - How down the right it maps a jagged coast; - Seeing they hold the manlier praise to be - Strong hand and will, and the heart best when most - ’Tis sober, simple, true, and fancy-free. - - -12 - - How could I quarrel or blame you, most dear, - Who all thy virtues gavest and kept back none; - Kindness and gentleness, truth without peer, - And beauty that my fancy fed upon? - Now not my life’s contrition for my fault - Can blot that day, nor work me recompence, - Tho’ I might worthily thy worth exalt, - Making thee long amends for short offence. - - For surely nowhere, love, if not in thee - Are grace and truth and beauty to be found; - And all my praise of these can only be - A praise of thee, howe’er by thee disown’d: - While still thou must be mine tho’ far removed, - And I for one offence no more beloved. - - -13 - - Now since to me altho’ by thee refused - The world is left, I shall find pleasure still; - The art that most I have loved but little used - Will yield a world of fancies at my will: - And tho’ where’er thou goest it is from me, - I where I go thee in my heart must bear; - And what thou wert that wilt thou ever be, - My choice, my best, my loved, and only fair. - - Farewell, yet think not such farewell a change - From tenderness, tho’ once to meet or part - But on short absence so could sense derange - That tears have graced the greeting of my heart; - They were proud drops and had my leave to fall, - Not on thy pity for my pain to call. - - -14 - - When sometimes in an ancient house where state - From noble ancestry is handed on, - We see but desolation thro’ the gate, - And richest heirlooms all to ruin gone; - Because maybe some fancied shame or fear, - Bred of disease or melancholy fate, - Hath driven the owner from his rightful sphere - To wander nameless save to pity or hate: - - What is the wreck of all he hath in fief, - When he that hath is wrecking? nought is fine - Unto the sick, nor doth it burden grief - That the house perish when the soul doth pine. - Thus I my state despise, slain by a sting - So slight ’twould not have hurt a meaner thing. - - -15 - - Who builds a ship must first lay down the keel - Of health, whereto the ribs of mirth are wed: - And knit, with beams and knees of strength, a bed - For decks of purity, her floor and ceil. - Upon her masts, Adventure, Pride, and Zeal, - To fortune’s wind the sails of purpose spread: - And at the prow make figured maidenhead - O’erride the seas and answer to the wheel. - - And let him deep in memory’s hold have stor’d - Water of Helicon: and let him fit - The needle that doth true with heaven accord: - Then bid her crew, love, diligence and wit - With justice, courage, temperance come aboard, - And at her helm the master reason sit. - - -16 - - This world is unto God a work of art, - Of which the unaccomplish’d heavenly plan - Is hid in life within the creature’s heart, - And for perfection looketh unto man. - Ah me! those thousand ages: with what slow - Pains and persistence were his idols made, - Destroy’d and made, ere ever he could know - The mighty mother must be so obey’d. - - For lack of knowledge and thro’ little skill - His childish mimicry outwent his aim; - His effort shaped the genius of his will; - Till thro’ distinction and revolt he came, - True to his simple terms of good and ill, - Seeking the face of Beauty without blame. - - -17 - - Say who be these light-bearded, sunburnt faces - In negligent and travel-stain’d array, - That in the city of Dante come to-day, - Haughtily visiting her holy places? - O these be noble men that hide their graces, - True England’s blood, her ancient glory’s stay, - By tales of fame diverted on their way - Home from the rule of oriental races. - - Life-trifling lions these, of gentle eyes - And motion delicate, but swift to fire - For honour, passionate where duty lies, - Most loved and loving: and they quickly tire - Of Florence, that she one day more denies - The embrace of wife and son, of sister or sire. - - -18 - - Where San Miniato’s convent from the sun - At forenoon overlooks the city of flowers - I sat, and gazing on her domes and towers - Call’d up her famous children one by one: - And three who all the rest had far outdone, - Mild Giotto first, who stole the morning hours, - I saw, and god-like Buonarroti’s powers, - And Dante, gravest poet, her much-wrong’d son. - - Is all this glory, I said, another’s praise? - Are these heroic triumphs things of old, - And do I dead upon the living gaze? - Or rather doth the mind, that can behold - The wondrous beauty of the works and days, - Create the image that her thoughts enfold? - - -19 - - Rejoice, ye dead, where’er your spirits dwell, - Rejoice that yet on earth your fame is bright; - And that your names, remember’d day and night, - Live on the lips of those that love you well. - ’Tis ye that conquer’d have the powers of hell, - Each with the special grace of your delight: - Ye are the world’s creators, and thro’ might - Of everlasting love ye did excel. - - Now ye are starry names, above the storm - And war of Time and nature’s endless wrong - Ye flit, in pictured truth and peaceful form, - Wing’d with bright music and melodious song,— - The flaming flowers of heaven, making May-dance - In dear Imagination’s rich pleasance. - - -20 - - The world still goeth about to shew and hide, - Befool’d of all opinion, fond of fame: - But he that can do well taketh no pride, - And see’th his error, undisturb’d by shame: - So poor’s the best that longest life can do, - The most so little, diligently done; - So mighty is the beauty that doth woo, - So vast the joy that love from love hath won. - - God’s love to win is easy, for He loveth - Desire’s fair attitude, nor strictly weighs - The broken thing, but all alike approveth - Which love hath aim’d at Him: that is heaven’s praise: - And if we look for any praise on earth, - ’Tis in man’s love: all else is nothing worth. - - -21 - - O flesh and blood, comrade to tragic pain - And clownish merriment; whose sense could wake - Sermons in stones, and count death but an ache, - All things as vanity, yet nothing vain: - The world, set in thy heart, thy passionate strain - Reveal’d anew; but thou for man didst make - Nature twice natural, only to shake - Her kingdom with the creatures of thy brain. - - Lo, Shakespeare, since thy time nature is loth - To yield to art her fair supremacy; - In conquering one thou hast so enrichèd both. - What shall I say? for God--whose wise decree - Confirmeth all He did by all He doth-- - Doubled His whole creation making thee. - - -22 - - I would be a bird, and straight on wings I arise, - And carry purpose up to the ends of the air: - In calm and storm my sails I feather, and where - By freezing cliffs the unransom’d wreckage lies: - Or, strutting on hot meridian banks, surprise - The silence: over plains in the moonlight bare - I chase my shadow, and perch where no bird dare - In treetops torn by fiercest winds of the skies. - - Poor simple birds, foolish birds! then I cry, - Ye pretty pictures of delight, unstir’d - By the only joy of knowing that ye fly; - Ye are not what ye are, but rather, sum’d in a word, - The alphabet of a god’s idea, and I - Who master it, I am the only bird. - - -23 - - O weary pilgrims, chanting of your woe, - That turn your eyes to all the peaks that shine, - Hailing in each the citadel divine - The which ye thought to have enter’d long ago; - Until at length your feeble steps and slow - Falter upon the threshold of the shrine, - And your hearts overburden’d doubt in fine - Whether it be Jerusalem or no: - - Dishearten’d pilgrims, I am one of you; - For, having worshipp’d many a barren face, - I scarce now greet the goal I journey’d to: - I stand a pagan in the holy place; - Beneath the lamp of truth I am found untrue, - And question with the God that I embrace. - - -24 - - Spring hath her own bright days of calm and peace; - Her melting air, at every breath we draw, - Floods heart with love to praise God’s gracious law: - But suddenly--so short is pleasure’s lease-- - The cold returns, the buds from growing cease, - And nature’s conquer’d face is full of awe; - As now the traitrous north with icy flaw - Freezes the dew upon the sick lamb’s fleece, - - And ’neath the mock sun searching everywhere - Rattles the crispèd leaves with shivering din: - So that the birds are silent with despair - Within the thickets; nor their armour thin - Will gaudy flies adventure in the air, - Nor any lizard sun his spotted skin. - - -25 - - Nothing is joy without thee: I can find - No rapture in the first relays of spring, - In songs of birds, in young buds opening, - Nothing inspiriting and nothing kind; - For lack of thee, who once wert throned behind - All beauty, like a strength where graces cling,— - The jewel and heart of light, which everything - Wrestled in rivalry to hold enshrined. - - Ah! since thou’rt fled, and I in each fair sight - The sweet occasion of my joy deplore, - Where shall I seek thee best, or whom invite - Within thy sacred temples and adore? - Who shall fill thought and truth with old delight, - And lead my soul in life as heretofore? - - -26 - - The work is done, and from the fingers fall - The bloodwarm tools that brought the labour thro’: - The tasking eye that overrunneth all - Rests, and affirms there is no more to do. - Now the third joy of making, the sweet flower - Of blessed work, bloometh in godlike spirit; - Which whoso plucketh holdeth for an hour - The shrivelling vanity of mortal merit. - - And thou, my perfect work, thou’rt of to-day; - To-morrow a poor and alien thing wilt be, - True only should the swift life stand at stay: - Therefore farewell, nor look to bide with me. - Go find thy friends, if there be one to love thee; - Casting thee forth, my child, I rise above thee. - - -27 - - The fabled seasnake, old Leviathan, - Or else what grisly beast of scaly chine - That champ’d the oceanwrack and swash’d the brine, - Before the new and milder days of man, - Had never rib nor bray nor swindging fan - Like his iron swimmer of the Clyde or Tyne, - Late-born of golden seed to breed a line - Of offspring swifter and more huge of plan. - - Straight is her going, for upon the sun - When once she hath look’d, her path and place are plain; - With tireless speed she smiteth one by one - The shuddering seas and foams along the main; - And her eased breath, when her wild race is run, - Roars thro’ her nostrils like a hurricane. - - -28 - - A thousand times hath in my heart’s behoof - My tongue been set his passion to impart; - A thousand times hath my too coward heart - My mouth reclosed and fix’d it to the roof; - Then with such cunning hath it held aloof, - A thousand times kept silence with such art - That words could do no more: yet on thy part - Hath silence given a thousand times reproof. - - I should be bolder, seeing I commend - Love, that my dilatory purpose primes, - But fear lest with my fears my hope should end: - Nay I would truth deny and burn my rhymes, - Renew my sorrows rather than offend, - A thousand times, and yet a thousand times. - - -29 - - I travel to thee with the sun’s first rays, - That lift the dark west and unwrap the night; - I dwell beside thee when he walks the height, - And fondly toward thee at his setting gaze. - I wait upon thy coming, but always-- - Dancing to meet my thoughts if they invite-- - Thou hast outrun their longing with delight, - And in my solitude dost mock my praise. - - Now doth my drop of time transcend the whole: - I see no fame in Khufu’s pyramid, - No history where loveless Nile doth roll. - --This is eternal life, which doth forbid - Mortal detraction to the exalted soul, - And from her inward eye all fate hath hid. - - -30 - - My lady pleases me and I please her; - This know we both, and I besides know well - Wherefore I love her, and I love to tell - My love, as all my loving songs aver. - But what on her part could the passion stir, - Tho’ ’tis more difficult for love to spell, - Yet can I dare divine how this befel, - Nor will her lips deny it if I err. - - She loves me first because I love her, then - Loves me for knowing why she should be loved, - And that I love to praise her, loves again. - So from her beauty both our loves are moved, - And by her beauty are sustain’d; nor when - The earth falls from the sun is this disproved. - - -31 - - In all things beautiful, I cannot see - Her sit or stand, but love is stir’d anew: - ’Tis joy to watch the folds fall as they do, - And all that comes is past expectancy. - If she be silent, silence let it be; - He who would bid her speak might sit and sue - The deep-brow’d Phidian Jove to be untrue - To his two thousand years’ solemnity. - - Ah, but her launchèd passion, when she sings. - Wins on the hearing like a shapen prow - Borne by the mastery of its urgent wings: - Or if she deign her wisdom, she doth show - She hath the intelligence of heavenly things, - Unsullied by man’s mortal overthrow. - - -32 - - Thus to be humbled: ’tis that ranging pride - No refuge hath; that in his castle strong - Brave reason sits beleaguer’d, who so long - Kept field, but now must starve where he doth hide; - That industry, who once the foe defied, - Lies slaughter’d in the trenches; that the throng - Of idle fancies pipe their foolish song, - Where late the puissant captains fought and died. - - Thus to be humbled: ’tis to be undone; - A forest fell’d; a city razed to ground; - A cloak unsewn, unwoven and unspun - Till not a thread remains that can be wound. - And yet, O lover, thee, the ruin’d one, - Love who hath humbled thus hath also crown’d. - - -33 - - I care not if I live, tho’ life and breath - Have never been to me so dear and sweet. - I care not if I die, for I could meet-- - Being so happy--happily my death. - I care not if I love; to-day she saith - She loveth, and love’s history is complete. - Nor care I if she love me; at her feet - My spirit bows entranced and worshippeth. - - I have no care for what was most my care, - But all around me see fresh beauty born, - And common sights grown lovelier than they were: - I dream of love, and in the light of morn - Tremble, beholding all things very fair - And strong with strength that puts my strength to scorn. - - -34 - - _O my goddess divine_ sometimes I say:— - Now let this word for ever and all suffice; - Thou art insatiable, and yet not twice - Can even thy lover give his soul away: - And for my acts, that at thy feet I lay; - For never any other, by device - Of wisdom, love or beauty, could entice - My homage to the measure of this day. - - I have no more to give thee: lo, I have sold - My life, have emptied out my heart, and spent - Whate’er I had; till like a beggar, bold - With nought to lose, I laugh and am content. - A beggar kisses thee; nay love, behold, - I fear not: thou too art in beggarment. - - -35 - - All earthly beauty hath one cause and proof, - To lead the pilgrim soul to beauty above: - Yet lieth the greater bliss so far aloof, - That few there be are wean’d from earthly love. - Joy’s ladder it is, reaching from home to home, - The best of all the work that all was good; - Whereof ’twas writ the angels aye upclomb, - Down sped, and at the top the Lord God stood. - - But I my time abuse, my eyes by day - Center’d on thee, by night my heart on fire-- - Letting my number’d moments run away-- - Nor e’en ’twixt night and day to heaven aspire: - So true it is that what the eye seeth not - But slow is loved, and loved is soon forgot. - - -36 - - O my life’s mischief, once my love’s delight, - That drew’st a mortgage on my heart’s estate, - Whose baneful clause is never out of date, - Nor can avenging time restore my right: - Whom first to lose sounded that note of spite, - Whereto my doleful days were tuned by fate: - That art the well-loved cause of all my hate, - The sun whose wandering makes my hopeless night: - - Thou being in all my lacking all I lack, - It is thy goodness turns my grace to crime, - Thy fleetness from my goal which holds me back; - Wherefore my feet go out of step with time, - My very grasp of life is old and slack, - And even my passion falters in my rhyme. - - -37 - - At times with hurried hoofs and scattering dust - I race by field or highway, and my horse - Spare not, but urge direct in headlong course - Unto some fair far hill that gain I must: - But near arrived the vision soon mistrust, - Rein in, and stand as one who sees the source - Of strong illusion, shaming thought to force - From off his mind the soil of passion’s gust. - - My brow I bare then, and with slacken’d speed - Can view the country pleasant on all sides, - And to kind salutation give good heed: - I ride as one who for his pleasure rides, - And stroke the neck of my delighted steed, - And seek what cheer the village inn provides. - - -38 - - An idle June day on the sunny Thames, - Floating or rowing as our fancy led, - Now in the high beams basking as we sped, - Now in green shade gliding by mirror’d stems; - By lock and weir and isle, and many a spot - Of memoried pleasure, glad with strength and skill, - Friendship, good wine, and mirth, that serve not ill - The heavenly Muse, tho’ she requite them not: - - I would have life--thou saidst--all as this day, - Simple enjoyment calm in its excess, - With not a grief to cloud, and not a ray - Of passion overhot my peace to oppress; - With no ambition to reproach delay, - Nor rapture to disturb its happiness. - - -39 - - A man that sees by chance his picture, made - As once a child he was, handling some toy, - Will gaze to find his spirit within the boy, - Yet hath no secret with the soul pourtray’d: - He cannot think the simple thought which play’d - Upon those features then so frank and coy; - ’Tis his, yet oh! not his: and o’er the joy - His fatherly pity bends in tears dismay’d. - - Proud of his prime maybe he stand at best, - And lightly wear his strength, or aim it high, - In knowledge, skill and courage self-possest:— - Yet in the pictured face a charm doth lie, - The one thing lost more worth than all the rest, - Which seeing, he fears to say _This child was I_. - - -40 - - Tears of love, tears of joy and tears of care, - Comforting tears that fell uncomforted, - Tears o’er the new-born, tears beside the dead, - Tears of hope, pride and pity, trust and prayer, - Tears of contrition; all tears whatsoe’er - Of tenderness or kindness had she shed - Who here is pictured, ere upon her head - The fine gold might be turn’d to silver there. - - The smile that charm’d the father hath given place - Unto the furrow’d care wrought by the son; - But virtue hath transform’d all change to grace: - So that I praise the artist, who hath done - A portrait, for my worship, of the face - Won by the heart my father’s heart that won. - - -41 - - If I could but forget and not recall - So well my time of pleasure and of play, - When ancient nature was all new and gay, - Light as the fashion that doth last enthrall,— - Ah mighty nature, when my heart was small, - Nor dream’d what fearful searchings underlay - The flowers and leafy ecstasy of May, - The breathing summer sloth, the scented fall: - - Could I forget, then were the fight not hard, - Press’d in the melée of accursed things, - Having such help in love and such reward: - But that ’tis I who once--’tis this that stings-- - Once dwelt within the gate that angels guard, - Where yet I’d be had I but heavenly wings. - - -42 - - When I see childhood on the threshold seize - The prize of life from age and likelihood, - I mourn time’s change that will not be withstood, - Thinking how Christ said _Be like one of these_. - For in the forest among many trees - Scarce one in all is found that hath made good - The virgin pattern of its slender wood, - That courtesied in joy to every breeze; - - But scath’d, but knotted trunks that raise on high - Their arms in stiff contortion, strain’d and bare; - Whose patriarchal crowns in sorrow sigh. - So, little children, ye--nay nay, ye ne’er - From me shall learn how sure the change and nigh, - When ye shall share our strength and mourn to share. - - -43 - - When parch’d with thirst, astray on sultry sands - The traveller faints, upon his closing ear - Steals a fantastic music: he may hear - The babbling fountain of his native land. - Before his eyes the vision seems to stand, - Where at its terraced brink the maids appear, - Who fill their deep urns at its waters clear, - And not refuse the help of lover’s hand. - - O cruel jest--he cries, as some one flings - The sparkling drops in sport or shew of ire-- - O shameless, O contempt of holy things. - But never of their wanton play they tire, - As not athirst they sit beside the springs, - While he must quench in death his lost desire. - - -44 - - The image of thy love, rising on dark - And desperate days over my sullen sea, - Wakens again fresh hope and peace in me, - Gleaming above upon my groaning bark. - Whate’er my sorrow be, I then may hark - A loving voice: whate’er my terror be, - This heavenly comfort still I win from thee, - To shine my lodestar that wert once my mark. - - Prodigal nature makes us but to taste - One perfect joy, which given she niggard grows; - And lest her precious gift should run to waste, - Adds to its loss a thousand lesser woes: - So to the memory of the gift that graced - Her hand, her graceless hand more grace bestows. - - -45 - - In this neglected, ruin’d edifice - Of works unperfected and broken schemes, - Where is the promise of my early dreams, - The smile of beauty and the pearl of price? - No charm is left now that could once entice - Wind-wavering fortune from her golden streams, - And full in flight decrepit purpose seems, - Trailing the banner of his old device. - - Within the house a frore and numbing air - Has chill’d endeavour: sickly memories reign - In every room, and ghosts are on the stair: - And hope behind the dusty window-pane - Watches the days go by, and bow’d with care - Forecasts her last reproach and mortal stain. - - -46 - - Once I would say, before thy vision came, - _My joy, my life, my love_, and with some kind - Of knowledge speak, and think I knew my mind - Of heaven and hope, and each word hit its aim. - Whate’er their sounds be, now all mean the same, - Denoting each the fair that none can find; - Or if I say them, ’tis as one long blind - Forgets the sights that he was used to name. - - Now if men speak of love, ’tis not my love; - Nor are their hopes nor joys mine, nor their life - Of praise the life that I think honour of: - Nay tho’ they turn from house and child and wife - And self, and in the thought of heaven above - Hold, as do I, all mortal things at strife. - - -47 - - Since then ’tis only pity looking back, - Fear looking forward, and the busy mind - Will in one woeful moment more upwind - Than lifelong years unroll of bitter or black; - What is man’s privilege, his hoarding knack - Of memory with foreboding so combined, - Whereby he comes to dream he hath of kind - The perpetuity which all things lack? - - Which but to hope is doubtful joy, to have - Being a continuance of what, alas, - We mourn, and scarcely bear with to the grave; - Or something so unknown that it o’erpass - The thought of comfort, and the sense that gave - Cannot consider it thro’ any glass. - - -48 - - Come gentle sleep, I woo thee: come and take - Not now the child into thine arms, from fright - Composed by drowsy tune and shaded light, - Whom ignorant of thee thou didst nurse and make; - Nor now the boy, who scorn’d thee for the sake - Of growing knowledge or mysterious night, - Tho’ with fatigue thou didst his limbs invite, - And heavily weigh the eyes that would not wake; - - No, nor the man severe, who from his best - Failing, alert fled to thee, that his breath, - Blood, force and fire should come at morn redrest; - But me, from whom thy comfort tarrieth, - For all my wakeful prayer sent without rest - To thee, O shew and shadow of my death. - - -49 - - The spirit’s eager sense for sad or gay - Filleth with what he will our vessel full: - Be joy his bent, he waiteth not joy’s day, - But like a child at any toy will pull: - If sorrow, he will weep for fancy’s sake, - And spoil heaven’s plenty with forbidden care. - What fortune most denies we slave to take; - Nor can fate load us more than we can bear. - - Since pleasure with the having disappeareth, - He who hath least in hand hath most at heart, - While he keep hope: as he who alway feareth - A grief that never comes hath yet the smart; - And heavier far is our self-wrought distress, - For when God sendeth sorrow, it doth bless. - - -50 - - The world comes not to an end: her city-hives - Swarm with the tokens of a changeless trade, - With rolling wheel, driver and flagging jade, - Rich men and beggars, children, priests and wives. - New homes on old are set, as lives on lives; - Invention with invention overlaid: - But still or tool or toy or book or blade - Shaped for the hand, that holds and toils and strives. - - The men to-day toil as their fathers taught, - With little better’d means; for works depend - On works and overlap, and thought on thought: - And thro’ all change the smiles of hope amend - The weariest face, the same love changed in nought: - In this thing too the world comes not to an end. - - -51 - - O my uncared-for songs, what are ye worth, - That in my secret book with so much care - I write you, this one here and that one there, - Marking the time and order of your birth? - How, with a fancy so unkind to mirth, - A sense so hard, a style so worn and bare, - Look ye for any welcome anywhere - From any shelf or heart-home on the earth? - - Should others ask you this, say then I yearn’d - To write you such as once, when I was young, - Finding I should have loved and thereto turn’d. - ’Twere something yet to live again among - The gentle youth beloved, and where I learn’d - My art, be there remember’d for my song. - - -52 - - Who takes the census of the living dead, - Ere the day come when memory shall o’ercrowd - The kingdom of their fame, and for that proud - And airy people find no room nor stead? - Ere hoarding Time, that ever thrusteth back - The fairest treasures of his ancient store, - Better with best confound, so he may pack - His greedy gatherings closer, more and more? - - Let the true Muse rewrite her sullied page, - And purge her story of the men of hate, - That they go dirgeless down to Satan’s rage - With all else foul, deform’d and miscreate: - She hath full toil to keep the names of love - Honour’d on earth, as they are bright above. - - -53 - - I heard great Hector sounding war’s alarms, - Where thro’ the listless ghosts chiding he strode, - As tho’ the Greeks besieged his last abode, - And he his Troy’s hope still, her king-at-arms. - But on those gentle meads, which Lethe charms - With weary oblivion, his passion glow’d - Like the cold night-worm’s candle, and only show’d - Such mimic flame as neither heats nor harms. - - ’Twas plain to read, even by those shadows quaint, - How rude catastrophe had dim’d his day, - And blighted all his cheer with stern complaint: - _To arms! to arms!_ what more the voice would say - Was swallow’d in the valleys, and grew faint - Upon the thin air, as he pass’d away. - - -54 - - Since not the enamour’d sun with glance more fond - Kisses the foliage of his sacred tree, - Than doth my waking thought arise on thee, - Loving none near thee, like thee nor beyond; - Nay since I am sworn thy slave, and in the bond - Is writ my promise of eternity; - Since to such high hope thou’st encouraged me, - That if thou look but from me I despond; - - Since thou’rt my all in all, O think of this: - Think of the dedication of my youth: - Think of my loyalty, my joy, my bliss: - Think of my sorrow, my despair and ruth, - My sheer annihilation if I miss: - Think--if thou shouldst be false--think of thy truth. - - -55 - - These meagre rhymes, which a returning mood - Sometimes o’errateth, I as oft despise; - And knowing them illnatured, stiff and rude, - See them as others with contemptuous eyes. - Nay, and I wonder less at God’s respect - For man, a minim jot in time and space, - Than at the soaring faith of His elect, - That gift of gifts, the comfort of His grace. - - O truth unsearchable, O heavenly love, - Most infinitely tender, so to touch - The work that we can meanly reckon of: - Surely--I say--we are favour’d overmuch. - But of this wonder, what doth most amaze - Is that we know our love is held for praise. - - -56 - - Beauty sat with, me all the summer day, - Awaiting the sure triumph of her eye; - Nor mark’d I till we parted, how, hard by, - Love in her train stood ready for his prey. - She, as too proud to join herself the fray, - Trusting too much to her divine ally, - When she saw victory tarry, chid him--‘Why - Dost thou not at one stroke this rebel slay?’ - - Then generous Love, who holds my heart in fee, - Told of our ancient truce: so from the fight - We straight withdrew our forces, all the three. - Baffled but not dishearten’d she took flight - Scheming new tactics: Love came home with me, - And prompts my measured verses as I write. - - -57 - - In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan - Is fragrant in the wake of summer hence, - ’Tis sweet to sit entranced, and muse thereon - In melancholy and godlike indolence: - When the proud spirit, lull’d by mortal prime - To fond pretence of immortality, - Vieweth all moments from the birth of time, - All things whate’er have been or yet shall be. - - And like the garden, where the year is spent, - The ruin of old life is full of yearning, - Mingling poetic rapture of lament - With flowers and sunshine of spring’s sure returning; - Only in visions of the white air wan - By godlike fancy seized and dwelt upon. - - -58 - - When first I saw thee, dearest, if I say - The spells that conjure back the hour and place, - And evermore I look upon thy face, - As in the spring of years long passed away; - No fading of thy beauty’s rich array, - No detriment of age on thee I trace, - But time’s defeat written in spoils of grace, - From rivals robb’d, whom thou didst pity and slay. - - So hath thy growth been, thus thy faith is true, - Unchanged in change, still to my growing sense, - To life’s desire the same, and nothing new: - But as thou wert in dream and prescience - At love’s arising, now thou standst to view - In the broad noon of his magnificence. - - -59 - - ’Twas on the very day winter took leave - Of those fair fields I love, when to the skies - The fragrant Earth was smiling in surprise - At that her heaven-descended, quick reprieve, - I wander’d forth my sorrow to relieve; - Yet walk’d amid sweet pleasure in such wise - As Adam went alone in Paradise, - Before God of His pity fashion’d Eve. - - And out of tune with all the joy around - I laid me down beneath a flowering tree, - And o’er my senses crept a sleep profound; - In which it seem’d that thou wert given to me, - Rending my body, where with hurried sound - I feel my heart beat, when I think of thee. - - -60 - - Love that I know, love I am wise in, love, - My strength, my pride, my grace, my skill untaught, - My faith here upon earth, my hope above, - My contemplation and perpetual thought: - The pleasure of my fancy, my heart’s fire, - My joy, my peace, my praise, my happy theme, - The aim of all my doing, my desire - Of being, my life by day, by night my dream: - - Love, my sweet melancholy, my distress, - My pain, my doubt, my trouble, my despair, - My only folly and unhappiness, - And in my careless moments still my care: - O love, sweet love, earthly love, love divine, - Sayst thou to-day, O love, that thou art mine? - - -61 - - The dark and serious angel, who so long - Vex’d his immortal strength in charge of me, - Hath smiled for joy and fled in liberty - To take his pastime with the peerless throng. - Oft had I done his noble keeping wrong, - Wounding his heart to wonder what might be - God’s purpose in a soul of such degree; - And there he had left me but for mandate strong. - - But seeing thee with me now, his task at close - He knoweth, and wherefore he was bid to stay, - And work confusion of so many foes: - The thanks that he doth look for, here I pay, - Yet fear some heavenly envy, as he goes - Unto what great reward I cannot say. - - -62 - - I will be what God made me, nor protest - Against the bent of genius in my time, - That science of my friends robs all the best, - While I love beauty, and was born to rhyme. - Be they our mighty men, and let me dwell - In shadow among the mighty shades of old, - With love’s forsaken palace for my cell; - Whence I look forth and all the world behold, - - And say, These better days, in best things worse, - This bastardy of time’s magnificence, - Will mend in fashion and throw off the curse, - To crown new love with higher excellence. - Curs’d tho’ I be to live my life alone, - My toil is for man’s joy, his joy my own. - - -63 - - I live on hope and that I think do all - Who come into this world, and since I see - Myself in swim with such good company, - I take my comfort whatsoe’er befall. - I abide and abide, as if more stout and tall - My spirit would grow by waiting like a tree; - And, clear of others’ toil, it pleaseth me - In dreams their quick ambition to forestall. - - And if thro’ careless eagerness I slide - To some accomplishment, I give my voice - Still to desire, and in desire abide. - I have no stake abroad; if I rejoice - In what is done or doing, I confide - Neither to friend nor foe my secret choice. - - -64 - - Ye blessed saints, that now in heaven enjoy - The purchase of those tears, the world’s disdain, - Doth Love still with his war your peace annoy, - Or hath Death freed you from his ancient pain? - Have ye no springtide, and no burst of May - In flowers and leafy trees, when solemn night - Pants with love-music, and the holy day - Breaks on the ear with songs of heavenly light? - - What make ye and what strive for? keep ye thought - Of us, or in new excellence divine - Is old forgot? or do ye count for nought - What the Greek did and what the Florentine? - We keep your memories well: O in your store - Live not our best joys treasured evermore? - - -65 - - Ah heavenly joy! But who hath ever heard, - Who hath seen joy, or who shall ever find - Joy’s language? There is neither speech nor word; - Nought but itself to teach it to mankind. - Scarce in our twenty thousand painful days - We may touch something: but there lives--beyond - The best of art, or nature’s kindest phase-- - The hope whereof our spirit is fain and fond: - - The cause of beauty given to man’s desires, - Writ in the expectancy of starry skies, - The faith which gloweth in our fleeting fires, - The aim of all the good that here we prize; - Which but to love, pursue and pray for well - Maketh earth heaven, and to forget it, hell. - - -66 - - My wearied heart, whenever, after all, - Its loves and yearnings shall be told complete, - When gentle death shall bid it cease to beat, - And from all dear illusions disenthrall: - However then thou shalt appear to call - My fearful heart, since down at others’ feet - It bade me kneel so oft, I’ll not retreat - From thee, nor fear before thy feet to fall. - - And I shall say, ‘Receive this loving heart - Which err’d in sorrow only; and in sin - Took no delight; but being forced apart - From thee, without thee hoping thee to win, - Most prized what most thou madest as thou art - On earth, till heaven were open to enter in.’ - - -67 - - Dreary was winter, wet with changeful sting - Of clinging snowfall and fast-flying frost; - And bitterer northwinds then withheld the spring, - That dallied with her promise till ’twas lost. - A sunless and half-hearted summer drown’d - The flowers in needful and unwelcom’d rain; - And Autumn with a sad smile fled uncrown’d - From fruitless orchards and unripen’d grain. - - But could the skies of this most desolate year - In its last month learn with our love to glow, - Men yet should rank its cloudless atmosphere - Above the sunsets of five years ago: - Of my great praise too part should be its own, - Now reckon’d peerless for thy love alone. - - -68 - - Away now, lovely Muse, roam and be free: - Our commerce ends for aye, thy task is done: - Tho’ to win thee I left all else unwon, - Thou, whom I most have won, art not for me. - My first desire, thou too foregone must be, - Thou too, O much lamented now, tho’ none - Will turn to pity thy forsaken son, - Nor thy divine sisters will weep for thee. - - None will weep for thee: thou return, O Muse, - To thy Sicilian fields: I once have been - On thy loved hills, and where thou first didst use - Thy sweetly balanced rhyme, O thankless queen, - Have pluck’d and wreath’d thy flowers; but do thou choose - Some happier brow to wear thy garlands green. - - -69 - - Eternal Father, who didst all create, - In whom we live, and to whose bosom move, - To all men be Thy name known, which is Love, - Till its loud praises sound at heaven’s high gate. - Perfect Thy kingdom in our passing state, - That here on earth Thou mayst as well approve - Our service, as Thou ownest theirs above, - Whose joy we echo and in pain await. - - Grant body and soul each day their daily bread: - And should in spite of grace fresh woe begin, - Even as our anger soon is past and dead - Be Thy remembrance mortal of our sin: - By Thee in paths of peace Thy sheep be led, - And in the vale of terror comforted. - - - - - NOTES - - -NOTE ON EROS AND PSYCHE. - -This Poem is in all essentials a faithful translation of Apuleius’ -story, the chief differences being that first, in the way of form, I -have, for the sake of balance and contrast, chosen to lengthen the -introductory portion; I have also located the story in Crete, and this -gives rise to occasional description.--The description of the sunset -on p. 83 is a portrait of the phenomena which followed the great -eruption of Krakatoa.--Secondly, in the way of ethic I have made a -gentler characterization of Psyche, who deserves more care in handling -the motives of her conduct than was perhaps felt in Apuleius’ time and -country. - -The acrostic on p. 102 is a remnant of my original dedication. In the -first edition there was a note acknowledging the frequent translations -from the Greek, and other robberies: and in the second, in which I -altered the spelling, I gave my reasons for that, in so far as it is -unusual. These reasons I need not repeat here, especially as the -spelling is not at all as I should wish to see it. I advocate liberty -in these matters instead of the conventional tyranny. But I will add -here that the main inconsistencies of the punctuation are owing to this -volume being a reprint of three separate books. The stops are intended -solely for the readers’ convenience; and almost anything is better -than the regulations of a methodic punctuation, which by assuming the -possibility of indicating all the varieties of grammatical structure -and rhythmic pause by four symbols, cannot be applied without perpetual -vexation and injury. - - -NOTE ON THE GROWTH OF LOVE. - -It was not my wish or intention to offer these sonnets to the public, -but since they have been published in America without my permission, -and some of them have appeared in collections of poetry in this -country, and have been mentioned in professional criticism, I have -thought it wise to come to their rescue, and include them in this -edition of my poems; to which end I have, while this volume was in the -press, revised them; cutting out ten, and amending the worst places in -others where I could. As they now stand they still make an imperfect -poem, but one for which I need not further apologize. - -_Note on Sonnet XIX._--The octett forms part of my ‘Purcell -Commemoration Ode,’ published as No. 2 of Elkin Mathews’ ‘Shilling -Garland,’ 1896, and set to music by Dr. Hubert Parry. - -_XXXV._ The argument is partly from Michael Angelo’s Madrigal xix. - -_LXIII._ Partly from the anonymous sonnet No. 3793 in the Libro reale, -‘Io vivo di speranza.’ - -_LXIV._ The first quatrain from Michael Angelo’s Madrigal, ‘Beati voi.’ - -_LXVII._ ‘The sunsets of five years ago,’ which happen to be described -on p. 83 of this volume. - - R. B. - - 1898. - - - * * * * * - - -Transcriber's Notes - -Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations -in hyphenation spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. - - -Italics are represented thus _italic_. - -There are many small decorative illustrations within the book. 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