*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62456 *** HELIODORA _And Other Poems_ Heliodora _And Other Poems by_ H. D. Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME AND LONDON Acknowledgment for the permission to reprint certain poems is due to: _Nation_, _Sphere_, _Egoist_ (London); _Bookman_, _Poetry_, _Double Dealer_ (New York, Chicago, New Orleans); _Transatlantic_, _Gargoyle_ (Paris); _The Imagist Anthologies_ and the _Miscellany of American Poetry_ (1922). _Note_ The poem Lais has in italics a translation of the Plato epigram in the Greek Anthology. Heliodora has in italics the two Meleager epigrams from the Anthology. In Nossis is the translation of the opening lines of the Garland of Meleager and the poem of Nossis herself in the Greek Anthology. The four Sappho fragments are re-worked freely. The Odyssey is a translation of the opening of the first book. The Ion is a translation of the latter part of the first long choros of the Ion of Euripides. _Contents_ PAGE WASH OF COLD RIVER 11 HOLY SATYR 13 LAIS 15 HELIODORA 18 HELEN 24 NOSSIS 25 CENTAUR SONG 29 OREAD 31 THE POOL 32 THETIS 33 AT ITHACA 39 WE TWO 42 FRAGMENT THIRTY-SIX 44 FLUTE SONG 48 AFTER TROY 49 CASSANDRA 51 EPIGRAMS 55 FRAGMENT FORTY 57 TOWARD THE PIRÆUS 61 MOONRISE 67 AT ELEUSIS 68 FRAGMENT FORTY-ONE 70 TELESILA 76 FRAGMENT SIXTY-EIGHT 81 LETHE 85 SITALKAS 86 HERMONAX 87 ORION DEAD 89 CHARIOTEER 91 THE LOOK-OUT 102 ODYSSEY 108 HYACINTH 116 ION 124 _Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow-ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers, clear, with delicate shell- like leaf enclosing frozen lily-leaf, camellia texture, colder than a rose;_ _wind-flower that keeps the breath of the north-wind-- these and none other;_ _intimate thoughts and kind reach out to share the treasure of my mind, intimate hands and dear draw garden-ward and sea-ward all the sheer rapture that I would take to mould a clear and frigid statue;_ _rare, of pure texture, beautiful space and line, marble to grace your inaccessible shrine._ _Holy Satyr_ Most holy Satyr, like a goat, with horns and hooves to match thy coat of russet brown, I make leaf-circlets and a crown of honey-flowers for thy throat; where the amber petals drip to ivory, I cut and slip each stiffened petal in the rift of carven petal; honey horn has wed the bright virgin petal of the white flower cluster: lip to lip let them whisper, let them lilt, quivering. Most holy Satyr, like a goat, hear this our song, accept our leaves, love-offering, return our hymn, like echo fling a sweet song, answering note for note. _Lais_ Let her who walks in Paphos take the glass, let Paphos take the mirror and the work of frosted fruit, gold apples set with silver apple-leaf, white leaf of silver wrought with vein of gilt. Let Paphos lift the mirror, let her look into the polished centre of the disk. Let Paphos take the mirror; did she press flowerlet of flame-flower to the lustrous white of the white forehead? did the dark veins beat a deeper purple than the wine-deep tint of the dark flower? Did she deck black hair one evening, with the winter-white flower of the winter-berry, did she look (reft of her lover) at a face gone white under the chaplet of white virgin-breath? Lais, exultant, tyrannizing Greece, Lais who kept her lovers in the porch, lover on lover waiting, (but to creep where the robe brushed the threshold where still sleeps Lais,) so she creeps, Lais, to lay her mirror at the feet of her who reigns in Paphos. Lais has left her mirror for she sees no longer in its depth the Lais’ self that laughed exultant tyrannizing Greece. Lais has left her mirror, for she weeps no longer, finding in its depth, a face, but other than dark flame and white feature of perfect marble. _Lais has left her mirror_, (so one wrote) _to her who reigns in Paphos; Lais who laughed a tyrant over Greece, Lais who turned the lovers from the porch, that swarm for whom now Lais has no use; Lais is now no lover of the glass, seeing no more the face as once it was, wishing to see that face and finding this_. _Heliodora_ He and I sought together, over the spattered table, rhymes and flowers, gifts for a name. He said, among others, I will bring (and the phrase was just and good, but not as good as mine,) “the narcissus that loves the rain.” We strove for a name, while the light of the lamps burnt thin and the outer dawn came in, a ghost, the last at the feast or the first, to sit within with the two that remained to quibble in flowers and verse over a girl’s name. He said, “the rain loving,” I said, “the narcissus, drunk, drunk with the rain.” Yet I had lost for he said, “the rose, the lover’s gift, is loved of love,” he said it, “loved of love;” I waited, even as he spoke, to see the room filled with a light, as when in winter the embers catch in a wind when a room is dank; so it would be filled, I thought, our room with a light when he said (and he said it first,) “the rose, the lover’s delight, is loved of love,” but the light was the same. Then he caught, seeing the fire in my eyes, my fire, my fever, perhaps, for he leaned with the purple wine stained on his sleeve, and said this: “did you ever think a girl’s mouth caught in a kiss, is a lily that laughs?” I had not. I saw it now as men must see it forever afterwards; no poet could write again, “the red-lily, a girl’s laugh caught in a kiss;” it was his to pour in the vat from which all poets dip and quaff, for poets are brothers in this. So I saw the fire in his eyes, it was almost my fire, (he was younger,) I saw the face so white, my heart beat, it was almost my phrase; I said, “surprise the muses, take them by surprise; it is late, rather it is dawn-rise, those ladies sleep, the nine, our own king’s mistresses.” A name to rhyme, flowers to bring to a name, what was one girl faint and shy, with eyes like the myrtle, (I said: “her underlids are rather like myrtle,”) to vie with the nine? Let him take the name, he had the rhymes, “the rose, loved of love, the lily, a mouth that laughs,” he had the gift, “the scented crocus, the purple hyacinth,” what was one girl to the nine? He said: “I will make her a wreath;” he said: “I will write it thus: _I will bring you the lily that laughs,_ _I will twine_ _with soft narcissus, the myrtle,_ _sweet crocus, white violet,_ _the purple hyacinth, and last,_ _the rose, loved-of-love,_ _that these may drip on your hair_ _the less soft flowers,_ _may mingle sweet with the sweet_ _of Heliodora’s locks,_ _myrrh-curled._” (He wrote myrrh-curled, I think, the first.) I said: “they sleep, the nine,” when he shouted swift and passionate: “_that_ for the nine! above the hills the sun is about to wake, _and to-day white violets_ _shine beside white lilies_ _adrift on the mountain side;_ _to-day the narcissus opens_ _that loves the rain_.” I watched him to the door, catching his robe as the wine-bowl crashed to the floor, spilling a few wet lees, (ah, his purple hyacinth!) I saw him out of the door, I thought: there will never be a poet in all the centuries after this, who will dare write, after my friend’s verse, “a girl’s mouth is a lily kissed.” _Helen_ All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses. _Nossis_ I thought to hear him speak the girl might rise and make the garden silver, as the white moon breaks, “Nossis,” he cried, “a flame.” I said: “a girl that’s dead some hundred years; a poet--what of that? for in the islands, in the haunts of Greek Ionia, Rhodes and Cyprus, girls are cheap.” I said, to test his mood, to make him rage or laugh or sing or weep, “in Greek Ionia and in Cyprus, many girls are found with wreaths and apple-branches.” “Only a hundred years or two or three, has she lain dead yet men forget;” he said, “I want a garden,” and I thought he wished to make a terrace on the hill, bend the stream to it, set out daffodils, plant Phrygian violets, such was his will and whim, I thought, to name and watch each flower. His was no garden bright with Tyrian violets, his was a shelter wrought of flame and spirit, and as he flung her name against the dark, I thought the iris-flowers that lined the path must be the ghost of Nossis. “_Who made the wreath,_ _for what man was it wrought?_ _speak, fashioned all of fruit-buds,_ _song, my loveliest,_ _say Meleager brought to Diodes_, (_a gift for that enchanting friend_) _memories with names of poets._ _He sought for Moero, lilies, and those many, red-lilies for Anyte, for Sappho, roses, with those few, he caught that breath of the sweet-scented leaf of iris, the myrrh-iris, to set beside the tablet and the wax which Love had burnt, when scarred across by Nossis._” when she wrote: “_I Nossis stand by this: I state that love is sweet: if you think otherwise assert what beauty or what charm_ _after the charm of love, retains its grace?_ _“Honey” you say: honey? I say “I spit honey out of my mouth: nothing is second-best after the sweet of Eros.”_ _I Nossis stand and state that he whom Love neglects has naught, no flower, no grace, who lacks that rose, her kiss._” I thought to hear him speak the girl might rise and make the garden silver as the white moon breaks, “Nossis,” he cried, “a flame.” _Centaur Song_ Now that the day is done, now that the night creeps soft and dims the chestnut clusters’ radiant spike of flower, O sweet, till dawn break through the branches of our orchard-garden, rest in this shelter of the osier-wood and thorn. They fall, the apple-flowers; nor softer grace has Aphrodite in the heaven afar, nor at so fair a pace open the flower-petals as your face bends down, while, breath on breath, your mouth wanders from my mouth o’er my face. What have I left to bring you in this place, already sweet with violets? (those you brought with swathes of earliest grass, forest and meadow balm, flung from your giant arms for us to rest upon.) Fair are these petals broken by your feet; your horse’s hooves tread softer than a deer’s; your eyes, startled, are like the deer eyes while your heart trembles more than the deer. O earth, O god, O forest, stream or river, what shall I bring that all the day hold back, that Dawn remember Love and rest upon her bed, and Zeus, forgetful not of Danæ or Maia, bid the stars shine forever. _Oread_ Whirl up, sea-- whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us, cover us with your pools of fir. _The Pool_ Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you--banded one? _Thetis_ He had asked for immortal life in the old days and had grown old, now he had aged apace, he asked for his youth, and I, Thetis, granted him freedom under the sea drip and welter of weeds, the drift of the fringing grass, the gift of the never-withering moss, and the flowering reed, and most, beauty of fifty nereids, sisters of nine, I one of their least, yet great and a goddess, granted Pelius, love under the sea, beauty, grace infinite: So I crept, at last, a crescent, a curve of a wave, (a man would have thought, had he watched for his nets on the beach) a dolphin, a glistening fish, that burnt and caught for its light, the light of the undercrest of the lifting tide, a fish with silver for breast, with no light but the light of the sea it reflects. Little he would have guessed, (had such a one watched by his nets,) that a goddess flung from the crest of the wave the blue of its own bright tress of hair, the blue of the painted stuff it wore for dress. No man would have known save he, whose coming I sensed as I strung my pearl and agate and pearl, to mark the beat and the stress of the lilt of my song. _Who dreams of a son, save one, childless, having no bright face to flatter its own, who dreams of a son?_ _Nereids under the sea, my sisters, fifty and one_, (_counting myself_) _they dream of a child of water and sea, with hair of the softest, to lie along the curve of fragile, tiny bones, yet more beautiful each than each, hair more bright and long, to rival its own._ _Nereids under the wave, who dreams of a son save I, Thetis, alone?_ _Each would have for a child, a stray self, furtive and wild, to dive and leap to the wind, to wheedle and coax_ _the stray birds bright and bland of foreign strands, to crawl and stretch on the sands, each would have for its own, a daughter for child._ _Who dreams, who sings of a son? I, Thetis, alone._ When I had finished my song, and dropped the last seed-pearl, and flung the necklet about my throat and found it none too bright, not bright enough nor pale enough, not like the moon that creeps beneath the sea, between the lift of crest and crest, had tried it on and found it not quite fair enough to fill the night of my blue folds of bluest dress with moon for light, I cast the beads aside and leapt, myself all blue with no bright gloss of pearls for crescent light; but one alert, all blue and wet, I flung myself, an arrow’s flight, straight upward through the blue of night that was my palace wall, and crept to where I saw the mark of feet, a rare foot-fall: Achilles’ sandal on the beach, could one mistake? perhaps a lover or a nymph, lost from the tangled fern and brake, that lines the upper shelf of land, perhaps a goddess or a nymph might so mistake Achilles’ footprint for the trace of a bright god alert to track the panther where he slinks for thirst across the sand; perhaps a goddess or a nymph, might think a god had crossed the track of weed and drift, had broken here this stem of reed, had turned this sea-shell to the light: So she must stoop, this goddess girl, or nymph, with crest of blossoming wood about her hair for cap or crown, must stoop and kneel and bending down, must kiss the print of such a one. Not I, the mother, Thetis self, I stretched and lay, a river’s slim dark length, a rivulet where it leaves the wood, and meets the sea, I lay along the burning sand, a river’s blue. _At Ithaca_ Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens and the sea takes on that desperate tone of dark that wives put on when all their love is done. Over and back, the tangled thread falls slack, over and up and on; over and all is sewn; now while I bind the end, I wish some fiery friend would sweep impetuously these fingers from the loom. My weary thoughts play traitor to my soul, just as the toil is over; swift while the woof is whole, turn now my spirit, swift, and tear the pattern there, the flowers so deftly wrought, the border of sea-blue, the sea-blue coast of home. The web was over-fair, that web of pictures there, enchantments that I thought he had, that I had lost; weaving his happiness within the stitching frame, weaving his fire and fame, I thought my work was done, I prayed that only one of those that I had spurned, might stoop and conquer this long waiting with a kiss. But each time that I see my work so beautifully inwoven and would keep the picture and the whole, Athene steels my soul, slanting across my brain, I see as shafts of rain his chariot and his shafts, I see the arrows fall, I see my lord who moves like Hector, lord of love, I see him matched with fair bright rivals and I see those lesser rivals flee. _We Two_ We two are left: I with small grace reveal distaste and bitterness; you with small patience take my hands; though effortless, you scald their weight as a bowl, lined with embers, wherein droop great petals of white rose, forced by the heat too soon to break. We two are left: as a blank wall, the world, earth and the men who talk, saying their space of life is good and gracious, with eyes blank as that blank surface their ignorance mistakes for final shelter and a resting-place. We two remain: yet by what miracle, searching within the tangles of my brain, I ask again, have we two met within this maze of dædal paths in-wound mid grievous stone, where once I stood alone? _Fragment Thirty-six_ I know not what to do: my mind is divided. SAPPHO I know not what to do, my mind is reft: is song’s gift best? is love’s gift loveliest? I know not what to do, now sleep has pressed weight on your eyelids. Shall I break your rest, devouring, eager? is love’s gift best? nay, song’s the loveliest: yet were you lost, what rapture could I take from song? what song were left? I know not what to do: to turn and slake the rage that burns, with my breath burn and trouble your cool breath? so shall I turn and take snow in my arms? (is love’s gift best?) yet flake on flake of snow were comfortless, did you lie wondering, wakened yet unawake. Shall I turn and take comfortless snow within my arms? press lips to lips that answer not, press lips to flesh that shudders not nor breaks? Is love’s gift best? shall I turn and slake all the wild longing? O I am eager for you! as the Pleiads shake white light in whiter water so shall I take you? My mind is quite divided, my minds hesitate, so perfect matched, I know not what to do: each strives with each as two white wrestlers standing for a match, ready to turn and clutch yet never shake muscle nor nerve nor tendon; so my mind waits to grapple with my mind, yet I lie quiet, I would seem at rest. I know not what to do: strain upon strain, sound surging upon sound makes my brain blind; as a wave-line may wait to fall yet (waiting for its falling) still the wind may take from off its crest, white flake on flake of foam, that rises, seeming to dart and pulse and rend the light, so my mind hesitates above the passion quivering yet to break, so my mind hesitates above my mind, listening to song’s delight. I know not what to do: will the sound break, rending the night with rift on rift of rose and scattered light? will the sound break at last as the wave hesitant, or will the whole night pass and I lie listening awake? _Flute Song_ Little scavenger away, touch not the door, beat not the portal down, cross not the sill, silent until my song, bright and shrill, breathes out its lay. Little scavenger avaunt, tempt me with jeer and taunt, yet you will wait to-day; for it were surely ill to mock and shout and revel; it were more fit to tell with flutes and calathes, your mother’s praise. _After Troy_ We flung against their gods, invincible, clear hate; we fought; frantic, we flung the last imperious, desperate shaft and lost: we knew the loss before they ever guessed fortune had tossed to them her favour and her whim; but how were we depressed? we lost yet as we pressed our spearsmen on their best, we knew their line invincible because there fell on them no shiverings of the white enchanteress, radiant Aphrodite’s spell: we hurled our shafts of passion, noblest hate, and knew their cause was blest, and knew their gods were nobler, better taught in skill, subtler with wit of thought, yet had it been God’s will that _they_ not we should fall, we know those fields had bled with roses lesser red. _Cassandra_ _O Hymen king._ Hymen, O Hymen king, what bitter thing is this? what shaft, tearing my heart? what scar, what light, what fire searing my eye-balls and my eyes with flame? nameless, O spoken name, king, lord, speak blameless Hymen. Why do you blind my eyes? why do you dart and pulse till all the dark is home, then find my soul and ruthless draw it back? scaling the scaleless, opening the dark? speak, nameless, power and might; when will you leave me quite? when will you break my wings or leave them utterly free to scale heaven endlessly? A bitter, broken thing, my heart, O Hymen lord, yet neither drought nor sword baffles men quite, why must they feign to fear my virgin glance? feigned utterly or real why do they shrink? my trance frightens them, breaks the dance, empties the market place; if I but pass they fall back, frantically; must always people mock? unless they shrink and reel as in the temple at your uttered will. O Hymen king, lord, greatest, power, might, look for my face is dark, burnt with your light, your fire, O Hymen lord; is there none left can equal me in ecstasy, desire? is there none left can bear with me the kiss of your white fire? is there not one, Phrygian or frenzied Greek, poet, song-swept, or bard, one meet to take from me this bitter power of song, one fit to speak, Hymen, your praises, lord? May I not wed as you have wed? may it not break, beauty, from out my hands, my head, my feet? may Love not lie beside me till his heat burn me to ash? may he not comfort me, then, spent of all that fire and heat, still, ashen-white and cool as the wet laurels, white, before your feet step on the mountain-slope, before your fiery hand lift up the mantle covering flower and land, as a man lifts, O Hymen, from his bride, (cowering with woman eyes,) the veil? O Hymen lord, be kind. _Epigrams_ 1 O ruthless, perilous, imperious hate, you can not thwart the promptings of my soul, you can not weaken nay nor dominate Love that is mateless, Love the rite, the whole measure of being: would you crush with bondage? nay, you would love me not were I your slave. 2 Torture me not with this or that or this, Love is my master, you his lesser self; while you are Love, I love you generously, be Eros, not a tyrannous, bitter mate: Love has no charm when Love is swept to earth: you’d make a lop-winged god, frozen and contrite, of god up-darting, winged for passionate flight. _Fragment Forty_ _Love ... bitter-sweet._ SAPPHO 1 Keep love and he wings with his bow, up, mocking us, keep love and he taunts us and escapes. Keep love and he sways apart in another world, outdistancing us. Keep love and he mocks, ah, bitter and sweet, your sweetness is more cruel than your hurt. Honey and salt, fire burst from the rocks to meet fire spilt from Hesperus. Fire darted aloft and met fire: in that moment love entered us. 2 Could Eros be kept? he were prisoned long since and sick with imprisonment; could Eros be kept? others would have broken and crushed out his life. Could Eros be kept? we too sinning, by Kypris, might have prisoned him outright. Could Eros be kept? nay, thank him and the bright goddess that he left us. 3 Ah, love is bitter and sweet, but which is more sweet, the sweetness or the bitterness? none has spoken it. Love is bitter, but can salt taint sea-flowers, grief, happiness? Is it bitter to give back love to your lover if he crave it? Is it bitter to give back love to your lover if he wish it for a new favourite? who can say, or is it sweet? Is it sweet to possess utterly? or is it bitter, bitter as ash? 4 I had thought myself frail; a petal, with light equal on leaf and under-leaf. I had thought myself frail; a lamp, shell, ivory or crust of pearl, about to fall shattered, with flame spent. I cried: “I must perish, I am deserted, an outcast, desperate in this darkness,” (such fire rent me with Hesperus,) then the day broke. 5 What need of a lamp when day lightens us, what need to bind love when love stands with such radiant wings over us? What need-- yet to sing love, love must first shatter us. _Toward the Piræus_ _Slay with your eyes, Greek, men over the face of the earth, slay with your eyes, the host, puny, passionless, weak._ _Break as the ranks of steel broke when the Persian lost: craven, we hated them then: now we would count them Gods beside these, spawn of the earth._ _Grant us your mantle, Greek; grant us but one to fright (as your eyes) with a sword, men, craven and weak, grant us but one to strike one blow for you, passionate Greek._ 1 You would have broken my wings, but the very fact that you knew I had wings, set some seal on my bitter heart, my heart broke and fluttered and sang. You would have snared me, and scattered the strands of my nest; but the very fact that you saw, sheltered me, claimed me, set me apart from the rest Of men--of _men_, made you a god, and me, claimed me, set me apart and the song in my breast, yours, yours forever-- if I escape your evil heart. 2 I loved you: men have writ and women have said they loved, but as the Pythoness stands by the altar, intense and may not move, till the fumes pass over; and may not falter or break, till the priest has caught the words that mar or make a deme or a ravaged town; so I, though my knees tremble, my heart break, must note the rumbling, heed only the shuddering down in the fissure beneath the rock of the temple floor; must wait and watch and may not turn nor move, nor break from my trance to speak so slight, so sweet, so simple a word as love. 3 What had you done had you been true, I can not think, I may not know. What could we do were I not wise, what play invent, what joy devise? What could we do if you were great? (Yet were you lost, who were there then, to circumvent the tricks of men?) What can we do, for curious lies have filled your heart, and in my eyes sorrow has writ that I am wise. 4 If I had been a boy, I would have worshipped your grace, I would have flung my worship before your feet, I would have followed apart, glad, rent with an ecstasy to watch you turn your great head, set on the throat, thick, dark with its sinews, burned and wrought like the olive stalk, and the noble chin and the throat. I would have stood, and watched and watched and burned, and when in the night, from the many hosts, your slaves, and warriors and serving men you had turned to the purple couch and the flame of the woman, tall like the cypress tree that flames sudden and swift and free as with crackle of golden resin and cones and the locks flung free like the cypress limbs, bound, caught and shaken and loosed, bound, caught and riven and bound and loosened again, as in rain of a kingly storm or wind full from a desert plain. So, when you had risen from all the lethargy of love and its heat, you would have summoned me, me alone, and found my hands, beyond all the hands in the world, cold, cold, cold, intolerably cold and sweet. 5 It was not chastity that made me cold nor fear, only I knew that you, like myself, were sick of the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lisps of love and love and lovers and love’s deceit. It was not chastity that made me wild, but fear that my weapon, tempered in different heat, was over-matched by yours, and your hand skilled to yield death-blows, might break With the slightest turn--no ill will meant-- my own lesser, yet still somewhat fine-wrought, fiery-tempered, delicate, over-passionate steel. _Moonrise_ Will you glimmer on the sea? will you fling your spear-head on the shore? what note shall we pitch? we have a song, on the bank we share our arrows; the loosed string tells our note: O flight, bring her swiftly to our song. she is great, we measure her by the pine trees. _At Eleusis_ _What they did, they did for Dionysos, for ecstasy’s sake:_ now take the basket, think; think of the moment you count most foul in your life; conjure it, supplicate, pray to it; your face is bleak, you retract, you dare not remember it: stop; it is too late. the next stands by the altar step, a child’s face yet not innocent, it will prove adequate, but you, I could have spelt your peril at the gate, yet for your mind’s sake, though you could not enter, wait. _What they did, they did for Dionysos, for ecstasy’s sake:_ Now take the basket basket-- (ah face in a dream, did I not know your heart, I would falter, for each that fares onward is my child; ah can you wonder that my hands shake, that my knees tremble, I a mortal, set in the goddess’ place?) _Fragment Forty-one_ _ ... thou flittest to Andromeda._ SAPPHO 1 Am I blind alas, am I blind? I too have followed her path. I too have bent at her feet. I too have wakened to pluck amaranth in the straight shaft, amaranth purple in the cup, scorched at the edge to white. Am I blind? am I the less ready for her sacrifice? am I the less eager to give what she asks, she the shameless and radiant? Am I quite lost, I towering above you and her glance, walking with swifter pace, with clearer sight, with intensity beside which you two are as spent ash? Nay, I give back to the goddess the gift she tendered me in a moment of great bounty. I return it. I lay it again on the white slab of her house, the beauty she cast out one moment, careless. Nor do I cry out: “why did I stoop? why did I turn aside one moment from the rocks marking the sea-path? Aphrodite, shameless and radiant, have pity, turn, answer us.” Ah no--though I stumble toward her altar-step, though my flesh is scorched and rent, shattered, cut apart, slashed open; though my heels press my own wet life black, dark to purple, on the smooth, rose-streaked threshold of her pavement. 2 Am I blind alas, deaf too that my ears lost all this? nay, O my lover, shameless and still radiant, I tell you this: I was not asleep, I did not lie asleep on those hot rocks while you waited. I was not unaware when I glanced out toward the sea watching the purple ships. I was not blind when I turned. I was not indifferent when I strayed aside or loitered as we three went or seemed to turn a moment from the path for that same amaranth. I was not dull and dead when I fell back on our couch at night. I was not indifferent when I turned and lay quiet. I was not dead in my sleep. 3 Lady of all beauty, I give you this: say I have offered small sacrifice, say I am unworthy your touch, but say not: “she turned to some cold, calm god, silent, pitiful, in preference.” Lady of all beauty, I give you this: say not: “she deserted my altar-step, the fire on my white hearth was too great, she fell back at my first glance.” Lady, radiant and shameless, I have brought small wreaths, (they were a child’s gift,) I have offered myrrh-leaf, crisp lentisk, I have laid rose-petal and white rock-rose from the beach. But I give now a greater, I give life and spirit with this. I render a grace no one has dared to speak, lest men at your altar greet him as slave, callous to your art; I dare more than the singer offering her lute, the girl her stained veils, the woman her swathes of birth, or pencil and chalk, mirror and unguent box. I offer more than the lad singing at your steps, praise of himself, his mirror his friend’s face, more than any girl, I offer you this: (grant only strength that I withdraw not my gift,) I give you my praise and this: the love of my lover for his mistress. _Telesila_ _In Argos--that statue of her; at her feet the scroll of her love-poetry, in her hand a helmet._ War is a fevered god who takes alike maiden and king and clod, and yet another one, (ah withering peril!) deprives alike, with equal skill, alike indifferently, hoar spearsman of his shaft, wan maiden of her zone, even he, Love who is great War’s very over-lord. War bent and kissed the forehead, yet Love swift, planted on chin and tenderest cyclamen lift of fragrant mouth, fevered and honeyed breath, breathing o’er and o’er those tendrils of her hair, soft kisses like bright flowers. Love took and laid the sweet, (being extravagant,) on lip and chin and cheek, but ah he failed even he, before the luminous eyes that dart no suave appeal, alas, impelling me to brave incontinent, grave Pallas’ high command. And yet the mouth! ah Love ingratiate, how was it you, so poignant, swift and sure, could not have taken all and left me free, free to desert the Argives, let them burn, free yet to turn and let the city fall: yea, let high War take all his vengeful way, for what am I? I cannot save nor stay the city’s fall. War is a fevered god, (yet who has writ as she the power of Love?) War bent and kissed the forehead, that bright brow, ignored the chin and the sweet mouth, for that and the low laugh were his, Eros ingratiate, who sadly missed in all the kisses count, those eyebrows and swart eyes, O valiant one who bowed falsely and vilely trapped us, traitorous lord. And yet, (remembrance mocks,) should I have bent the maiden to a kiss? Ares the lover or enchanting Love? but had I moved I feared for that astute regard; for that bright vision, how might I have erred? I might have marred and swept another not so sweet into my exile; I might have kept a look recalling many and many a woman’s look, not this alone, astute, imperious, proud. And yet I turn and ask again, again, again, who march to death, what was it worth, reserve and pride and hurt? what is it worth to such as I who turn to meet the invincible Spartans’ massed and serried host? what had it cost, a kiss? _Fragment Sixty-eight_ _ ... even in the house of Hades._ SAPPHO 1 I envy you your chance of death, how I envy you this. I am more covetous of him even than of your glance, I wish more from his presence though he torture me in a grasp, terrible, intense. Though he clasp me in an embrace that is set against my will and rack me with his measure, effortless yet full of strength, and slay me in that most horrible contest, still, how I envy you your chance. Though he pierce me--imperious-- iron--fever--dust-- though beauty is slain when I perish, I envy you death. What is beauty to me? has she not slain me enough, have I not cried in agony of love, birth, hate, in pride crushed? What is left after this? what can death loose in me after your embrace? your touch, your limbs are more terrible to do me hurt. What can death mar in me that you have not? 2 What can death send me that you have not? you gathered violets, you spoke: “your hair is not less black, nor less fragrant, nor in your eyes is less light, your hair is not less sweet with purple in the lift of lock;” why were those slight words and the violets you gathered of such worth? How I envy you death; what could death bring, more black, more set with sparks to slay, to affright, than the memory of those first violets, the chance lift of your voice, the chance blinding frenzy as you bent? 3 So the goddess has slain me for your chance smile and my scarf unfolding as you stooped to it; so she trapped me with the upward sweep of your arm as you lifted the veil, and the swift smile and selfless. Could I have known? nay, spare pity, though I break, crushed under the goddess’ hate, though I fall beaten at last, so high have I thrust my glance up into her presence. Do not pity me, spare that, but how I envy you your chance of death. _Lethe_ Nor skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar-wood be over you, Nor the fir-tree Nor the pine. Nor sight of whin nor gorse Nor river-yew, Nor fragrance of flowering bush, Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you, Nor of linnet, Nor of thrush. Nor word nor touch nor sight Of lover, you Shall long through the night but for this: The roll of the full tide to cover you Without question, Without kiss. _Sitalkas_ Thou art come at length more beautiful than any cool god in a chamber under Lycia’s far coast, than any high god who touches us not here in the seeded grass: aye, than Argestes scattering the broken leaves. _Hermonax_ Gods of the sea; Ino, leaving warm meads for the green, grey-green fastnesses of the great deeps; and Palemon, bright seeker of sea-shaft, hear me. Let all whom the sea loves, come to its altar front, and I who can offer no other sacrifice to thee bring this. Broken by great waves, the wavelets flung it here, this sea-gliding creature, this strange creature like a weed, covered with salt foam, torn from the hillocks of rock. I, Hermonax, caster of nets, risking chance, plying the sea craft, came on it. Thus to sea god, gift of sea wrack; I, Hermonax, offer it to thee, Ino, and to Palemon. _Orion Dead_ (Artemis speaks.) The cornel-trees uplift from the furrows, the roots at their bases, strike lower through the barley-sprays. So arise and face me. I am poisoned with the rage of song. I once pierced the flesh of the wild deer, now I am afraid to touch the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths? I will tear the full flowers and the little heads of the grape-hyacinths, I will strip the life from the bulb until the ivory layers lie like narcissus petals on the black earth. Arise, lest I bend an ash-tree into a taut bow, and slay--and tear all the roots from the earth. The cornel-wood blazes and strikes through the barley-sprays but I have lost heart for this. I break a staff, I break the tough branch. I know no light in the woods. I have lost pace with the wind. _Charioteer_ _In that manner_ (_archaic_) _he finished the statue of his brother. It stands mid-way in the hall of laurels ... between the Siphnians’ offering and the famous tripod of Naxos._ Only the priest of the inmost house has such height, only the faun in the glade such light, strong ankles, only the shade of the bay-tree such rare dark as the darkness caught under the fillet that covers your brow, only the blade of the ash-tree such length, such beauty as thou, O my brother; and only the gods have such love as I bring you; but now, taut with love, more than any bright lover, I vowed to the innermost god of the temple, this vow. God of beauty, I cried, as the four stood alert, awaiting the shout at the goal to be off; god of beauty, I cried to that god, if he merit the laurel, I dedicate all of my soul to you; to you all my strength and my power; if he merit the bay, I will fashion a statue of him, of my brother, out of thought, and the strength of my wrist and the fire of my brain; I will strive night and day till I mould from the clay, till I strike from the bronze, till I conjure the rock, the chisle, the tool, to embody this image; an image to startle, to capture men’s hearts, to make all other bronze, all art to come after, a mock, all beauty to follow, a shell that is empty; I’ll stake all my soul on that beauty, till God shall awake again in men’s hearts, who have said he is dead, our King and our Lover. Then the start, ah the sight, ah but dim, veiled with tears, (so Achilles must weep who finds his friend dead,) will he win? then the ring of the steel as two met at the goal, entangled and foul, misplaced at the start, who, who blunders? not you? what omens are set? alas, gods of the track, what ill wreaks its hate, speak it clear, let me know what evil, what fate? for the ring of sharp steel told two were in peril, two, two, one is you, already involved with the fears of defeat; two grazed; which must go? As the wind, Althaia’s beauty came; as one after a cruel march, catches sight, toward the cold dusk, of the flower that’s her name-sake, strayed apart toward the road-dust, from the stream in the wood-depth, so I in that darkness, my mouth bitter with sheer loss, took courage, my heart spoke, remembering how she spoke: “I will seek hour by hour fresh cones, resin and pine-flowers, flower of pine, laurel flower; I will pray: ‘let him come back to us, to our home, with the trophy of zeal, with the love and the proof of the favour of god; let him merit the bay.’ (I expect it,) I myself on earth pray that our father may pray; his voice nearer the gods must carry beyond my mere mortal prayer: ‘O my father beyond, look down and be proud, ask this thing that we win, ask it straight of the gods.’” Was he glad, did he know? for the strength of his prayer and her prayer met me now in one flame, all my head, all my brow was one flame, taut and beaten and faintly aglow, as the wine-cup encrusted and beaten and fine with the pattern of leaves, (so my brow,) yet metallic and cool, as the gold of the frigid metal that circles the heat of the wine. Then the axel-tree cleft, not ours, gods be blest; now but three of you left, three alert and abreast, three--one streak of what fire? three straight for the goal: ah defeat, ah despair, still fate tricked our mares, for they swerved, flanks quivering and wet, as the wind at the mid-stretch caught and fluttered a white scarf; a veil shivering, only the fluttering of a white band, yet unnerved and champing, they turned, (only knowing the swards of Achæa) and he, O my love, that stranger, his stallions stark frenzied and black, had taken the inmost course, overtook, overcame, overleapt, and crowded you back. O those horses we loved and we prized; I had gathered Alea mint and soft branch of the vine-stock in flower, I had stroked Elaphia; as one prays to a woman “be kind,” I had prayed Daphnaia; I had threatened Orea for her trick of out-pacing the three, even these, I had almost despaired at her fleet, proud pace, O the four, O swift mares of Achæa. Should I pray them again? or the gods of the track? or Althaia at home? or our father who died for Achæa? or our fathers beyond who had vanquished the east? should I threaten or pray? The sun struck the ridge of white marble before me: white sun on white marble was black: the day was of ash, blind, unrepentant, despoiled, my soul cursed the race and the track, you had lost. _You_, lost at the last? Ah fools, so you threatened to win? ah fools, so you knew my brother? Greeks all, all crafty and feckless, even so, had you guessed what ran in his veins and mine, what blood of Achæa, had you dared, dared enter the contest, dared aspire with the rest? You had gained, you outleapt them; a sudden, swift lift of the reins, a sudden, swift, taut grip of the reins, as suddenly loosed, you had gained. When death comes I will see no vision of after, (as some count there may be an hereafter,) no thought of old lover, no girl, no woman, neither mother, nor yet my father who died for Achæa, neither God with the harp and the sun on His brow, but thou, O my brother. When death comes, instead of a vision, (I will catch it in bronze) you will stand as you stood at the end, (as the herald announced it, proclaiming aloud, “Achæa has won,”) in-reining them now, so quiet, not turning to answer the shout of the crowd. _The Look-out_ Better the wind, the sea, the salt in your eyes, than this, this, this. You grumble and sweat; my ears are acute to catch your complaint, almost the sea’s roar is less than your constant threat of “back and back to the shore, and let us rest.” You grumble and curse your luck and I hear: “O Lynceus, aloft by the prow, his head on his arms, his eyes half closed, almost asleep, to watch for a rock, (and hardly ever we need his ‘to left’ or ‘to right’) let Lynceus have my part, let me rest like Lynceus.” “Rest like Lynceus!” I’d change my fate for yours, the very least, I’d take an oar with the rest. “Like Lynceus,” as if my lot were the best. O God, if I could speak, if I could taunt the lot of the wretched crew, with my fate, my work. But I may not, I may not tell of the forms that pass and pass, of that constant old, old face that leaps from each wave to wait underneath the boat in the hope that at last she’s lost. Could I speak, I would tell of great mountains that flow, great weeds that float and float to tangle our oars if I fail “to left, to right;” where the dolphin leaps you saw a sign from the god, I saw why he leapt from the deep. “To right, to left;” it is easy enough to lean on the prow, half asleep, and you think, “no work for Lynceus.” No work? If only you’d let me take an oar, if only my back could break with the hurt, if the sun could blister my feet, pain, pain that I might forget the face that just this moment passed through the prow when you said, “asleep.” Many and many a sight if I could speak, many and many tales I’d tell, many and many a struggle, many a death, many and many my hurts and my pain so great, I’d gladly die if I did not love the quest. Grumble and swear and curse, brother, god and the boat, and the great waves, but could you guess what strange terror lurks in the sea-depth, you’d thank the gods for the ship, the timber and giant oars, god-like, and the god-like quest. If you could see as I, what lurks in the sea-depth, you’d pray to the ropes and the solid timbers like god, like god; you’d pray to the oars and your work, you’d pray and thank the boat for her very self; timber and oar and plank and sail and the sail-ropes, these are beautiful things and great. But Lynceus at the prow has nothing to do but wait till we reach a shoal or some rocks and then he has only to lift his arms, right, left; O brother, I’d change my place for the worst seat in the cramped bench, for an oar, for an hour’s toil, for sweat and the solid floor. I’d change my place as I sit with eyes half closed, if only I could see just the ring cut by the boat, if only I could see just the water, the crest and the broken crest, the bit of weed that rises on the crest, the dolphin only when he leaps. But Lynceus, though they cannot guess the hurt, though they do not thank the oars for the dead peace of heart and brain worn out, you must wait, alert, alert, alert. _Odyssey_ _Muse, tell me of this man of wit, who roamed long years after he had sacked Troy’s sacred streets._ All the rest who had escaped death, returned, fleeing battle and the sea; only Odysseus, captive of a goddess, desperate and home-sick, thought but of his wife and palace; but Calypso, that nymph and spirit, yearning in the furrowed rock-shelf, burned and sought to be his mistress; but years passed, the time was ripe, the gods decreed, (although traitors plot to betray him in his own court,) he was to return to Ithaca; and all the gods pitied him; but Poseidon steadfast to the last hated god-like Odysseus. The sea-god visited a distant folk, Ethiopians, who at the edge of earth are divided into two parts, (half watch the sun rise, half, the sun set,) there the hecatomb of slain sheep and oxen await his revels: and while he rejoiced, seated at the feast, the rest of the gods gathered in the palace of Olympian Zeus; and the father of men and of gods spoke thus: (for he remembered bright Egisthus, slain of Agamemnon’s child, great Orestes:) O you spirits, how men hate the gods, for they say evil comes of us, when they themselves, by their own wickedness, court peril beyond their fate; so Egisthus, defiant, sought Agamemnon’s wife and slew Agamemnon returning to his own palace, though we ourselves sent bright Hermes, slayer of Argos, to warn him lest Orestes, attaining to man’s estate, demand his inheritance and take vengeance: we forbade him to strike the king, we warned him to respect his wife: but could Hermes of gracious aspect, subtle with kindly speech, thus avert the foul work? Then the grey-eyed Athene, the goddess, spoke: O my father, Kronos begot, first among the great, his death at least was just, so may all perish who err thus; but my heart is rent for the prudent Odysseus, who, exiled from his friends, is kept too long distressed in an island, sea swept, in the sea midst, a forest island, haunt of a spirit, child of Atlas, crafty of thought, who knows the sea depth, who supports the high pillars which cut sky from earth; it is his child who keeps Odysseus lamenting with broken heart, ceaseless to tempt him with soft and tender speech, that he forget Ithaca; but Odysseus, yearning to see but the smoke drift above his own house, prefers death; your heart, is it not touched, O Olympian? did not Odysseus please you when he made sacrifice before the Grecian ships in great Troy? why are you angry, Zeus? Then Zeus, keeper of the clouds, answering her, spoke: O my child, what quaint words have sped your lips, for how could I forget the god-like Odysseus, a spirit surpassing men, first to make sacrifice to the deathless in the sky-space? but Poseidon girder of earth, though yet he spares his life, nurtures unending hate; he goads him from place to place because of the Cyclops blinded of Odysseus, Polyphemus, half-god, greatest of the Cyclops, whom the nymph Thoosa, child of Phorcys, king of the waste sea, begot when she lay with Poseidon among the shallow rocks: but come, let us plot to reinstate Odysseus, and Poseidon must abandon his wrath; for what can one god accomplish, striving alone to defy all the deathless? Then the grey-eyed Athene, the goddess, spoke: O my father, Kronos begot, first among the great, if then it seems just to the highest, that Odysseus return to his own house, let us swiftly send Hermes, slayer of Argos, your attendant, that he state to the fair-haired nymph, our irrevocable wish, that Odysseus, valiant of heart, be sent back: and I will depart to Ithaca, to incite his son, to put courage in his heart, that he call to the market place the long-haired Greeks and shut his gates to the pretendants who ceaselessly devour his flocks, sheep and horned oxen of gentle pace: that he strive for his father’s sake and gain favour in men’s thoughts, I will send him to Sparta, to Pylos’ sandy waste. _She spoke and about her feet clasped bright sandals, gold-wrought, imperishable, which lift her above sea, across the land stretch, wind-like, like the wind breath._ _From the Masque_ _Hyacinth_ 1 Your anger charms me, and yet all the time I think of chaste, slight hands, veined snow; snow craters filled with first wild-flowerlets; glow of ice-gentian, whitest violet; snow craters and the ice ridge spilling light; dawn and the lover chaste dawn leaves bereft-- I think of these and snow-cooled Phrygian wine. Your anger charms me subtly and I know that you would take the still hands where I’d rest; you would despoil for very joy of theft; list, lady, I would give you one last hint: quench your red mouth in some cold forest lake, cover your russet locks with arum leaf, quench out the colour, still the fevered glance, cover your want, your fire insatiate, I can not match your fervour, nay, nor still my ache with any but white hands inviolate. 2 Take the red spoil of grape and pomegranate, the red camellia, the most, most red rose; take all the garden spills, inveterate, prodigal spender just as summer goes, the red scales of the deep in-folded spice, the Indian, Persian and the Syrian pink, their scent undaunted even in that faint, unmistakable fragrance of the late tuberose, (heavy its petals, eye-lids of dark eyes that open languorous and more languorous close--the east, further than scent of our wind-smitten isle,) take these: O lady, take them, prodigal I cull and offer this and this and these last definite whorls of clustered peonies, the last, the first that stained our stainless ledge of blue and white and the white foam of sea, rocks, and that strait ledge whiter than the rock the Parians break from their enchanted hill; take, lady, but leave me with my weed and shell and those slight, hovering gull-wings that recall silver of far Hymettus’ asphodel. 3 Take all for you have taken everything, but do not let me see you taking this; Adonis lying spent with Venus’ care, Adonis dying were a lesser ache than this, to have even your slightest breath breathe in the crystal air where he takes breath. Take all for you have taken everything, save the broad ledge of sea which no man takes, take all for you have taken mirth and ease and all the small delights of simple poets, the lilt of rhyme, the sway and lift and fall, the first spring gold your fire has scorched to ash, the fresh winds that go halt where you have passed, the Tyrian iris I so greatly loved, its dark head speared through its wet spray of leaves. Take all, but ah, lady, a fool, a poet may even know when you have taken all: up on the mountain slope one last flower cleaves to the wet marge of ice, the blue of snow, keep all your riot in the swales below, of grape and autumn, take all, taking these, for you and autumn yet can not prevail against that flame, that flower, (ice, spark or jewel,) the cyclamen, parting its white cyclamen leaves. 4 O, I am ill with dust as you with stain, O, I am worthless, weary, world-bedragged, nevertheless to mountains still the rain falls on the tangle of dead under-brush, freshens the loam, the earth and broken leaves for that hoar-frost of later star or flower, the fragile host of Greek anemones. Say I am little meet to call the youth, say I have little magic to enchant, but is that reason why your flaring will should sweep and scorch, should lap and seethe and fill with last red flame the tender ditch and runnel which the spring freshet soon must fill again? White violets have no place on your hot brow; how can I bring you what the spring must bring? what can I offer? lush and heady mallow? the fire-grass or the serpent-spotted fire-flower? O take them, for I stand a ruinous cloud between you and the chaste uplifted hill. O take them swiftly and more swiftly go, for spring is distant yet, for spring is far; you have your tense, short space of blazing sun, your melons, vines, your terraces of fruit; now all you have, all, all I gladly give who long but for the ridge, the crest and hollow, the lift and fall, the reach and distant ledge of the sun-smitten, wind-indented snow. _The bird-choros of Ion_ Birds from Parnassus, swift you dart from the loftiest peaks; you hover, dip, you sway and perch undaunted on the gold-set cornice; you eagle, god’s majestic legate, who tear, who strike song-birds in mid-flight, my arrow whistles toward you, swift be off; ah drift, ah drift so soft, so light, your scarlet foot so deftly placed to waft you neatly to the pavement, swan, swan and do you really think your song that tunes the harp of Helios, will save you from the arrow-flight? turn back, back to the lake of Delos; lest all the song notes pause and break across a blood-stained throat gone songless, turn back, back ere it be too late, to wave-swept Delos. Alas, and still another, what? you’d place your mean nest in the cornice? sing, sing my arrow-string, tell to the thief that plaits its house for fledglings in the god’s own house, that still the Alpheus whispers sweet to lure the birdlets to the place, that still the Isthmus shines with forests; on the white statues must be found no straw nor litter of bird-down, Phœbos must have his portal fair; and yet, O birds, though this my labour is set, though this my task is clear, though I must slay you, I, god’s servant, I who take here my bread and life and sweep the temple, still I swear that I would save you, birds or spirits, winged songs that tell to men god’s will; still, still the Alpheus whispers clear to lure the bird-folk to its waters, ah still the Isthmus blossoms fair; lest all the song notes pause and break across a blood-stained throat gone songless, turn back, back ere it be too late, to wave-swept Delos. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Heliodora, by Hilda Doolittle *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62456 ***