HEPHAESTUS

PERSEPHONE AT ENNA AND

SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA

BY

ARTHUR STRINGER

Take her, O Ares! As Demeter mourned

Through many-fountained Enna, I shall grieve

Forlorn a time, and then, it may be, learn,

Some still autumnal twilight by the sea

Golden with sunlight, to remember not!

As the dark pine forgoes the pilgrim thrush

I, sad of heart, yet unimpassioned, yield

To you this surging bosom soft with dreams,

This body fashioned of Aegean foam

And languorous moonlight. But I give you not

The eluding soul that in her broods and sleeps,

And ne’er was mine of old, nor can be yours.

It was not born of sea and moon with her,

And though it nests within her, no weak hand

Of hers shall cage it as it comes and goes,

Sorrows and wakens, sleeps, and sings again.

And so I give you but the hollow lute,

The lute alone, and not the voices low

That sang of old to some forgotten touch.

The lamp I give, but not the glimmering flame

Some alien fire must light, some alien dusk

Enisle, ere it illume your land and sea.

The shell I give you, Ares, not the song

Of murmuring winds and waves once haunting it;

The cage, but not love’s wings that come and go.

I give you them, light brother, as the earth

Gives up the dew, the mountain-side the mist!

  Farewell sad face, that gleamed so like a flower

Through Paphian groves to me of old—farewell!

Some Fate beyond our dark-robed Three ordained

This love should wear the mortal rose and not

Our timeless amaranth. ’Twas writ of old, and lay

Not once with us. As we ourselves have known,

And well your sad Dodonian mother found,

From deep to deep the sails of destined love

Are blown and tossed by tides no god controls;

And at the bud of our too golden life

Eats this small canker of mortality!

  I loved her once, O Ares—

I loved her once as waters love the wind;

I sought her once as rivers seek the sea;

And her deep eyes, so dream-besieged, made dawn

And midnight one. Flesh of my flesh she was,

And we together knew dark days and glad.

Then fell the change;—some hand unknown to us

Shook one white petal from the perfect flower,

And all the world grew old. Ah, who shall say

When Summer dies, or when is blown the rose?

Who, who shall know just when the quiet star

Out of the golden West is born again?

Or when the gloaming saddens into night?

’Twas writ, in truth, of old; the tide of love

Has met its turn, the long horizon lures

The homing bird, the harbour calls the sail.

Home, home to your glad heart she goes, while I

Fare on alone, and only broken dreams

Abide with me! And yet, when you shall tread

Lightly your sunlit hills with her and breathe

Life’s keener air, all but too exquisite,

Or look through purpling twilight on the world,

Think not my heart has followed nevermore

Those glimmering feet that walked once thus with me,

Nor dream my passion by your passion paled.

But lower than the god the temple stands;

As deeper is the sea than any wave,

Sweeter the summer than its asphodel,

So love far stronger than this woman is.

She from the untiring ocean took her birth,

And from torn wave and foam her first faint breath;

Child of unrest and change, still through her sweeps

Her natal sea’s tumultuous waywardness!

And losing her, lo, one thin drifting cloud

Curls idly from the altar in that grove

Where burn the fires that know not change or death!

  Yet she shall move the strange desires of men;

For in her lie dim glories that she dreams

Not of, and on her ever broods a light

Her Cyprian eyes ne’er saw; and evermore

Round her pale face shall pleading faces press;

Round her shall mortal passion beat and ebb.

Years hence, as waves on islands burst in foam,

Madly shall lives on her strange beauty break.

When she is yours and in ambrosial glooms

You secretly would chain her kiss by kiss,

Though close you hold her in your hungering arms,

And with voluptuous pantings you and she

Mingle, and seem the insentient moment one,

Yet will your groping soul but lean to her

Across the dusk, as hill to lonely hill,

And in your warmest raptures you shall learn

There is a citadel surrenders not

To any captor of the outer walls;

In sorrow you shall learn there is a light

Illumines not, a chamber it were best

To leave untrod.

                    O Ares, dread the word

That silences this timorous nightingale,

The touch that wakens strings too frail for hands;

For, giving her, I gain what you shall lose;

Forsaking her, I hold her closer still.

The sea shall take a deeper sound; the stars

Stranger and more mysterious henceforth

Shall seem, the darkening sky-line of the West

For me, the solitary dreamer, now shall hold

Voices and faces that I knew not of.

More, henceforth, shall all music mean to me,

And she, through lonely musings, ever seem

As beautiful as are the dead. But you—

You in your hand shall guard the gathered rose,

Shall hold the riven veil, the loosened chord!

So love your hour, bright god, ere it is lost,

A swan that sings its broken life away.

In that brief hour, ’tis writ, you shall hear breathe

Songs blown from some enchanted island home,

Then mourn for evermore life’s silent throats,—

Aye, seek and find the altar when its fires

Are ashes, and the worship vain regret!

A mystic law more strong than all delight

Or pain shall each delicious rapture chill,

Exacting sternly for each ecstasy;

And when her voice enwraps you and in arms

Luxurious your softest languor comes,

Faintly torn wings shall flutter for the sun,

Madly old dreams shall struggle toward the light,

And, drugged with opiate passion, you shall know

Dark days and shadowy moods when she may seem

To some dusk underworld enchaining you.

Yet I shall know her as she was of old,

Fashioned of moonlight and Aegean foam;

Some visionary gleam, some glory strange

Shall day by day engolden her lost face.

The slow attrition of the years shall wear

No tenderest charm away, and she shall live

A lonely star, a gust of music sweet,

A voice upon the Deep, a mystery!

But in the night, I know, the lonely wind

Shall sigh of her, the restless ocean moan

Her name with immemorial murmurings,

And the sad golden summer moon shall mourn

With me, and through the gloom of rustling leaves

The shaken throats of nightingales shall bring

Her low voice back, the incense of the fields

Recall too well the odour of her hair.

But lo, the heart doth bury all its dead,

As mother Earth her unremembered leaves;

So the sad hour shall pass, and with the dawn

Serene I shall look down where hills and seas

Throb through their dome of brooding hyaline

And see from Athens gold to Indus gray

New worlds awaiting me, and gladly go,—

Go down among the toilers of the earth

And seek the rest, the deeper peace that comes

Of vast endeavour and the dust of strife.

There my calm soul shall know itself, and watch

The golden-sandalled Seasons come and go,

Still god-like in its tasks of little things;

And, woven not with grandeurs and red wars,

Wanting somewhat in gold and vermeil, shall

The Fates work out my life’s thin tapestry,

As sorrow brings me wisdom, and the pang

Of solitude, O Ares, keeps me strong!

Goddess and Mother, let me smooth thy brow

And cling about thee for a little time

With these pale hands,—for see, still at the glow

Of all this white-houred noon and alien sun

I tremble like a new-born nightingale

Blown from its nest into bewildering rain.

How shall I tell thee, Mother, of those days

My aching eyes saw not this azure sea

Of air, unknown in Death’s gray Underworld

And only whispered of by restless Shades

Rememb’ring shadowy things across their dusk?—

Or how I often asked: “Canst thou, dark heart,

Remember home? So far and long forlorn

Canst thou, my heart, remember Sicily?”

Then didst thou, weeping, call Persephone

The Many-Songed, and where thy lonely voice

Once fell all greenness faded and the song

Of birds all died, and down from brazen heights

A blood-red sun long noon by sullen noon

On ashen days and desolation shone;

And cattle lowed about the withered springs,

And Earth gaped wide, each arid Evening moaned

Amid the dusk for rain, or dew at most.

But thou in anger didst withhold the green,

And grim of breast forbade the bursting sap,

And dared the darkest sky-line of lone Deeps

For thy lost daughter, and could find her not.

Then came the Arethusan whisper, and release;

The refreshing rains washed down and gushed

And sluiced the juicy grasses once again,

And bird by bird, the Summer was re-born,

And drooping in thine arms I wakened here.

Yet all those twilight days I was content

Though silent as a frozen river crept

The hours entombed, though far I was from thee

And from the Nysian fields of open sun,

The sound of waters, and the throats of song.

But when with happier lips I tell thee all

Thou must, worn Mother, leave me here alone

Where soft as early snow the white hours fall

About my musing eyes, and life seems strange,

And strange the muffled piping of the birds,

And strange the drowsy music of the streams,

The whispering pavilions of the pines;

And more than strange the immersing wash of air

That breathes and sways and breaks through all my being

And lulls away, like seas intangible,

Regrets, and tears, and days of heavy gloom.

O Mother, all these things are told not of

Where I have been, and on these eyes estranged

Earth’s vernal sweetness falls so mystical

Its beauty turns a thing of bitter tears;

And even in my gladness I must grieve

For this dark change, where Death has died to me,—

For my lost Gloom, where life was life to me!

Long years from now shall ages yet unborn

Watch the returning Spring and strangely yearn;

Others shall thrill with joy like unto mine;

Vague things shall move them and strange voices steal

Through sad, bud-scented April eves to them.

Round them shall fall a glory not of earth,

As now o’er these Sicilian meadows fall

Dim memories that come I know not whence.

In lands I know not of some sorrowing girl

Shall faintly breathe: “I am Persephone

On such a day!” and through the world shall run

The immemorial rapture and the pangs,

And pale-eyed ghosts shall creep out to the light

And drink the sun, like wine, and live once more.

The dower of my delight shall make them glad;

The tears of my regret shall weigh them down,

And men with wondering eyes shall watch the Spring

Return, and weep, indeed, these selfsame tears,

And laugh with my good laughter, knowing not

Whence came their passing bliss so torn with pain.

For good is Enna, and the wide, glad Earth,

And good the comfortable green of grass

And Nysian meadows still so milky pale;

Good seems the dark steer in the noonday sun,

The ploughman’s keel that turns black waves of loam,

The laughing girls, the fluting shepherd boys,

And beautiful the song of many birds;

Good seem these golden bees whose busy wings

With wavering music drone and die away,—

The orchard odours and the seas of bloom;

And good the valleys where the green leaves breathe,

The hills where all the patient pines look down;

Good seem the lowland poplars bathed in light,

That pillar from the plain this tent of blue,—

The quiet homes amid the cooling fields,

The flashing rivers and the woods remote,

The little high white town among the hills!

All, all are good to look on, and most dear

To my remembering eyes. Each crocus, too,

And gold narcissus, gleams memorial,—

Untouched of sorrow for that troubled day

Impetuous hoof and wheel threshed through the wheat,

And ’mid these opiate blooms the Four-Horsed One

Swept down on me, half lost in pensive dreams,

And like a poppy in some panting noon,

All drooping, bore me to the gates of Hell,—

When on my fragile girlhood closed his arms

As on some seed forlorn Earth’s darkest loam.

Yet think not, Mother, this fierce Son of Night

Brought only sorrow with him, for behold,

In learning to forbear I learned to love;

And battling pale on his impassioned breast

I felt run through my veins some golden pang

Of dear defeat, some subjugation dim,

Presaging all this bosom once was made

To be thus crushed, ere once it could be glad.

Thus are we fashioned, Mother, though we live

Immortal or the sons of men; and so

Each day on my disdain some tendril new

Bound me the closer to him; loving not,

Some wayward bar of pity caged me down,

And day by languid day amid Death’s gloom,

I grew to lean upon him, and in time

I watched his coming and his absence wept.

I walked companion to his pallid shades,

And pale as yon thin crescent noonday moon

I dwelt with him, a ghost amid his ghosts.

If this was love, I loved him more than life.

And now he means to me what flame and ruin

And tumultuous conflagration of great towers

And citadels must mean to martial eyes,

Bewildering the blood like dizzy wine

And sweeping on to any maddened end:

I came to glory in him,—felt small hands

Clutch at my breast when he was standing near,

And knew his cruel might, yet thrilled to it

And in his strength even took my weak delight.

Stern were his days, yet leaned he patient o’er

This wayward heart, till I in wonder saw

From those dark weeds of wanton lust creep forth

Belated violets of calmer love,—

And, link by link, found all my life enchained!

Only at times the music of the Sea

Sang in my ears its old insistent note;

Only at times I heard the wash and rush

Of waves on open shores and windy cliffs;

Only at times I seemed to see great wings

Scaling some crystal stairway to the Sun,

And languid eagles shouldering languid clouds.

Singing on summer mornings too I heard,—

I caught the sound that sweet green waters make,

The music—O so delicate!—of leaves

And rustling grasses, and the stir of wings

About dim gardens. Where shy nightingales

Shook their old sorrow over Ida’s gloom

I into immortality was touched

Once more by song and moonlight, far away.

I mused beside dim fires with Memory

And through my tears rebuilt some better life

Untouched of time and change, and dreaming thus

Forgot my woe, and, first of all the gods,

I, wistful-eyed, with Aspiration walked!

For, Mother, see, this dubious death in life

Makes beautiful my immortality:

Once all my world was only phantom stream

And shadowy flower, and song that was not song,

And wrapt in white eternities I walked

A daughter of the gods, who knew not Death:

I was a thing of coldness and disdain,

Half-losing all that was so dear in life:

Enthroned in astral taciturnity,

I, looking tranquil-eyed on beauties old,

E’er faced some dull Forever, strange to Hope

And strange to Sorrow, strange to Tears,—Regrets;

Joy was not joy, and living was not life.

So unreluctantly the long years went,

Though I had all that we, the gods, have asked,

Drunk with life’s wine, I could not sing the grape,

And knew not once, till Hades touched my hand

And made me wise, how good the world could be.

Now, now I know the solace and the thrill

Of passing Autumns and awakening Springs;

I know and love the Darkness, many-voiced,

Since Night it was that taught me to be strong;

The meaning of all music now I know,—

The song autumnal sky and twilit seas

Would sing so well, if once they found the words,—

The sorrow of dear shores grown low and dim

To darkling eyes, that may not look again,—

The beauty of the rose made rich by death,—

The throbbing lark that hymns amid the yew,

And mortal love grown glorious by the grave.

For worlds and faces now I see beyond

The sad-aisled avenues of evening stars;

The Future, like an opal dawn, unfurls

To me, and all the dreaming Long Ago

Lies wide and luring as the open Deep.

And so, still half in gloom and half in sun

Shall men and women dwell as I have dwelt.

Half happy and half sad their days shall fall,

And grief shall only learn beside the grave

How beauteous life can be, how deep is love.

As snow makes soft Earth’s vernal green, so tears

Shall make its laughter sweet, and lovers strange

To thee and me, gray Mother, many years

From now shall feel this thing and dimly know

The bitter-sweetness of this hour to me,

Whom Life has given unto Death and Death

Back unto Life—both ghost and goddess, lo,

Who faced these mortal tears to fathom love!

Phaon

    What Love remembers little things?—what wave

    Withholds itself for sighs of broken reeds?

Sappho

    The wave remembers not, till reed by reed

    The lyric shores of youth lie ruinous;

    It was not much I asked in those old days;—

    As waters come whence reeds may never see,

    So men have wider missions than we know.

    ’Tis not thro’ all their moods they hunger for

    Our poor pale faces; as a flame at sea

    They seek us in the gloom, and then forget.

    ’Tis when by dusk the battle-sweat has dried;

    ’Tis when the port is won, and wind and storm

    Are past; ’tis when the heart for solace aches;

    ’Tis when the road is lost in darkling woods,

    Or under alien stars the fire is lit

    And when strange dreams make deep the idle hour;

    Then would I have my name sing throbbingly

    Thro’ some beloved heart, soft as a bird,—

    And swing with it—swing sweet as silver bells!

    Not all your hours I hoped to see you turn

    To my poor face; but when the wayside flower

    Shone through the dust and won the softer mood,

    And when the soul aspired for better things,

    Disturbed by voices calling past the Dawn,

    I hoped your troubled eyes would seek my eyes.

    And in those days that I have cried for you

    And went uncomforted, had you returned,

    I could have washed your guilty feet with tears,

    And unto you still grown, and gone thro’ sun

    And gloom beside you, holding in my arms

    Hope’s hostage children, while I gladly felt

    The keen captivity of love re-wake

    At each light touch, and in the sweet dread bliss

    Of motherhood and most mysterious birth

    Forgot old wrongs, and starred the hills of grief

    With primrose faith and opiate asphodel.

Phaon

    Why brood on things turned ashes long ago

    When softly dawn by golden dawn, and eve

    By opal eve, Earth whispers: Life is good?