Poems. Volume 2

POEMS AND LYRICS OF THE JOY OF EARTH

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN

IEnter these enchanted woods,   You who dare.Nothing harms beneath the leavesMore than waves a swimmer cleaves.Toss your heart up with the lark,Foot at peace with mouse and worm,   Fair you fare.Only at a dread of darkQuaver, and they quit their form:Thousand eyeballs under hoods   Have you by the hair.Enter these enchanted woods,   You who dare.IIHere the snake across your pathStretches in his golden bath:Mossy-footed squirrels leapSoft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:Yaffles on a chuckle skimLow to laugh from branches dim:Up the pine, where sits the star,Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.Each has business of his own;But should you distrust a tone,   Then beware.Shudder all the haunted roods,All the eyeballs under hoods   Shroud you in their glare.Enter these enchanted woods,   You who dare.IIIOpen hither, open hence,Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,Where the strawberry runs red,With white star-flower overhead;Cumbered by dry twig and cone,Shredded husks of seedlings flown,Mine of mole and spotted flint:Of dire wizardry no hint,Save mayhap the print that showsHasty outward-tripping toes,Heels to terror on the mould.These, the woods of Westermain,Are as others to behold,Rich of wreathing sun and rain;Foliage lustreful aroundShadowed leagues of slumbering sound.Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,Shelter eager minikins,Myriads, free to peck and pipe:Would you better? would you worse?You with them may gather ripePleasures flowing not from purse.Quick and far as Colour fliesTaking the delighted eyes,You of any well that springsMay unfold the heaven of things;Have it homely and within,And thereof its likeness win,Will you so in soul’s desire:This do sages grant t’ the lyre.This is being bird and more,More than glad musician this;Granaries you will have a storePast the world of woe and bliss;Sharing still its bliss and woe;Harnessed to its hungers, no.On the throne Success usurps,You shall seat the joy you feelWhere a race of water chirps,Twisting hues of flourished steel:Or where light is caught in hoopUp a clearing’s leafy rise,Where the crossing deerherds troopClassic splendours, knightly dyes.Or, where old-eyed oxen chewSpeculation with the cud,Read their pool of vision through,Back to hours when mind was mud;Nigh the knot, which did untwineTimelessly to drowsy suns;Seeing Earth a slimy spine,Heaven a space for winging tons.Farther, deeper, may you read,Have you sight for things afield,Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;Showing a kind face and sweet:Look you with the soul you see’t.Glory narrowing to grace,Grace to glory magnified,Following that will you embraceClose in arms or aëry wide.Banished is the white Foam-bornNot from here, nor under banPhoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn,Pipings of the reedy Pan.Loved of Earth of old they were,Loving did interpret her;And the sterner worship barsNone whom Song has made her stars.You have seen the huntress moonRadiantly facing dawn,Dusky meads between them strewnGlimmering like downy awn:Argent Westward glows the hunt,East the blush about to climb;One another fair they front,Transient, yet outshine the time;Even as dewlight off the roseIn the mind a jewel sows.Thus opposing grandeurs liveHere if Beauty be their dower:Doth she of her spirit give,Fleetingness will spare her flower.This is in the tune we play,Which no spring of strength would quell;In subduing does not slay;Guides the channel, guards the well:Tempered holds the young blood-heat,Yet through measured grave accord,Hears the heart of wildness beatLike a centaur’s hoof on sward.Drink the sense the notes infuse,You a larger self will find:Sweetest fellowship ensuesWith the creatures of your kind.Ay, and Love, if Love it beFlaming over I and ME,Love meet they who do not shoveCravings in the van of Love.Courtly dames are here to woo,Knowing love if it be true.Reverence the blossom-shootFervently, they are the fruit.Mark them stepping, hear them talk,Goddess, is no myth inane,You will say of those who walkIn the woods of Westermain.Waters that from throat and thighDart the sun his arrows back;Leaves that on a woodland sighChat of secret things no lack;Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,Bare or veiled they move sincere;Not by slavish terrors trippedBeing anew in nature dipped,Growths of what they step on, these;With the roots the grace of trees.Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,For a tyrant’s flattered pride,Mind, which nourished not by light,Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite:Whereof are strange tales to tell;Some in blood writ, tombed in bell.Here the ancient battle ends,Joining two astonished friends,Who the kiss can give and takeWith more warmth than in that worldWhere the tiger claws the snake,Snake her tiger clasps infurled,And the issue of their fightPeople lands in snarling plight.Here her splendid beast she leadsSilken-leashed and decked with weedsWild as he, but breathing faintSweetness of unfelt constraint.Love, the great volcano, flingsFires of lower Earth to sky;Love, the sole permitted, singsSovereignly of ME and I.Bowers he has of sacred shade,Spaces of superb parade,Voiceful . . . But bring you a noteWrangling, howsoe’er remote,Discords out of discord spinRound and round derisive din:Sudden will a pallor pantChill at screeches miscreant;Owls or spectres, thick they flee;Nightmare upon horror broods;Hooded laughter, monkish glee,   Gaps the vital air.Enter these enchanted woods   You who dare.IVYou must love the light so wellThat no darkness will seem fell.Love it so you could accostFellowly a livid ghost.Whish! the phantom wisps away,Owns him smoke to cocks of day.In your breast the light must burnFed of you, like corn in quernEver plumping while the wheelSpeeds the mill and drains the meal.Light to light sees little strange,Only features heavenly new;Then you touch the nerve of Change,Then of Earth you have the clue;Then her two-sexed meanings meltThrough you, wed the thought and felt.Sameness locks no scurfy pondHere for Custom, crazy-fond:Change is on the wing to budRose in brain from rose in blood.Wisdom throbbing shall you seeCentral in complexity;From her pasture ’mid the beastsRise to her ethereal feasts,Not, though lightnings track your witStarward, scorning them you quit:For be sure the bravest wingPreens it in our common spring,Thence along the vault to soar,You with others, gathering more,Glad of more, till you rejectYour proud title of elect,Perilous even here while fewRoam the arched greenwood with you.   Heed that snare.Muffled by his cavern-cowlSquats the scaly Dragon-fowl,Who was lord ere light you drank,And lest blood of knightly rankStream, let not your fair princessStray: he holds the leagues in stress,   Watches keenly there.Oft has he been riven; slainIs no force in Westermain.Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,Put his fangs to uses, tame,Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,How to cure him sick and lame.Much restricted, much enringed,Much he frets, the hooked and winged,   Never known to spare.’Tis enough: the name of SageHits no thing in nature, nought;Man the least, save when grave AgeFrom yon Dragon guards his thought.Eye him when you hearken dumbTo what words from Wisdom come.When she says how few are byListening to her, eye his eye.   Self, his name declare.Him shall Change, transforming late,Wonderously renovate.Hug himself the creature may:What he hugs is loathed decay.Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!Change will strip his armour off;Make of him who was all maw,Inly only thrilling-shrewd,Such a servant as none sawThrough his days of dragonhood.Days when growling o’er his bone,Sharpened he for mine and thine;Sensitive within alone;Scaly as the bark of pine.Change, the strongest son of Life,Has the Spirit here to wife.Lo, their young of vivid breed,Bear the lights that onward speed,Threading thickets, mounting glades,Up the verdurous colonnades,Round the fluttered curves, and down,Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown,Whither, in her central space,Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase.Fount unresting, Lure divine!There meet all: too late look most.Fire in water hued as wine,Springs amid a shadowy host,Circled: one close-headed mob,Breathless, scanning divers heaps,Where a Heart begins to throb,Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.And ’tis very strange, ’tis said,How you spy in each of themSemblance of that Dragon red,As the oak in bracken-stem.And, ’tis said, how each and each:Which commences, which subsides:First my Dragon! doth beseechHer who food for all provides.And she answers with no sign;Utters neither yea nor nay;Fires the water hued as wine;Kneads another spark in clay.Terror is about her hid;Silence of the thunders locked;Lightnings lining the shut lid;Fixity on quaking rocked.Lo, you look at Flow and DroughtInterflashed and interwrought:Ended is begun, begunEnded, quick as torrents run.Young Impulsion spouts to sink;Luridness and lustre link;’Tis your come and go of breath;Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;Each of either reaped and sown:Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.See you so? your senses drift;’Tis a shuttle weaving swift.Look with spirit past the sense,Spirit shines in permanence.That is She, the view of whomIs the dust within the tomb,Is the inner blush above,Look to loathe, or look to love;Think her Lump, or know her Flame;Dread her scourge, or read her aim;Shoot your hungers from their nerve;Or, in her example, serve.Some have found her sitting grave;Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,Hurling dust of fool and knaveIn a hissing smithy’s jet.More it were not well to speak;Burn to see, you need but seek.Once beheld she gives the keyAiring every doorway, she.Little can you stop or steerEre of her you are the seër.On the surface she will witch,Rendering Beauty yours, but gazeUnder, and the soul is richPast computing, past amaze.Then is courage that enduresEven her awful tremble yours.Then, the reflex of that FountSpied below, will Reason mountLordly and a quenchless force,Lighting Pain to its mad source,Scaring Fear till Fear escapes,Shot through all its phantom shapes.Then your spirit will perceiveFleshly seed of fleshly sins;Where the passions interweave,How the serpent tangle spinsOf the sense of Earth misprised,Brainlessly unrecognized;She being Spirit in her clods,Footway to the God of Gods.Then for you are pleasures pure,Sureties as the stars are sure:Not the wanton beckoning flagsWhich, of flattery and delight,Wax to the grim Habit-HagsRiding souls of men to night:Pleasures that through blood run sane,Quickening spirit from the brain.Each of each in sequent birth,Blood and brain and spirit, three,(Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),Join for true felicity.Are they parted, then expectSome one sailing will be wrecked:Separate hunting are they sped,Scan the morsel coveted.Earth that Triad is: she hidesJoy from him who that divides;Showers it when the three are oneGlassing her in union.Earth your haven, Earth your helm,You command a double realm;Labouring here to pay your debt,Till your little sun shall set;Leaving her the future task:Loving her too well to ask.Eglantine that climbs the yew,She her darkest wreathes for thoseKnowing her the Ever-new,And themselves the kin o’ the rose.Life, the chisel, axe and sword,Wield who have her depths explored:Life, the dream, shall be their robeLarge as air about the globe;Life, the question, hear its cryEchoed with concordant Why;Life, the small self-dragon ramped,Thrill for service to be stamped.Ay, and over every heightLife for them shall wave a wand:That, the last, where sits affright,Homely shows the stream beyond.Love the light and be its lynx,You will track her and attain;Read her as no cruel SphinxIn the woods of Westermain,Daily fresh the woods are ranged;Glooms which otherwhere appal,Sounded: here, their worths exchangedUrban joins with pastoral:Little lost, save what may dropHusk-like, and the mind preserves.Natural overgrowths they lop,Yet from nature neither swerves,Trained or savage: for this cause:Of our Earth they ply the laws,Have in Earth their feeding root,Mind of man and bent of brute.Hear that song; both wild and ruled.Hear it: is it wail or mirth?Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?None, and all: it springs of Earth.O but hear it! ’tis the mind;Mind that with deep Earth unites,Round the solid trunk to windRings of clasping parasites.Music have you there to feedSimplest and most soaring need.Free to wind, and in desireWinding, they to her attachedFeel the trunk a spring of fire,And ascend to heights unmatched,Whence the tidal world is viewedAs a sea of windy wheat,Momently black, barren, rude;Golden-brown, for harvest meet,Dragon-reaped from folly-sown;Bride-like to the sickle-blade:Quick it varies, while the moan,Moan of a sad creature strayed,Chiefly is its voice.  So fleshConjures tempest-flails to threshGood from worthless.  Some clear lampsLight it; more of dead marsh-damps.Monster is it still, and blind,Fit but to be led by Pain.Glance we at the paths behind,Fruitful sight has Westermain.There we laboured, and in turnForward our blown lamps discern,As you see on the dark deepFar the loftier billows leap,   Foam for beacon bear.Hither, hither, if you will,Drink instruction, or instil,Run the woods like vernal sap,Crying, hail to luminousness!   But have care.In yourself may lurk the trap:On conditions they caress.Here you meet the light invokedHere is never secret cloaked.Doubt you with the monster’s fryAll his orbit may exclude;Are you of the stiff, the dry,Cursing the not understood;Grasp you with the monster’s claws;Govern with his truncheon-saws;Hate, the shadow of a grain;You are lost in Westermain:Earthward swoops a vulture sun,Nighted upon carrion:Straightway venom wine-cups shoutToasts to One whose eyes are out:Flowers along the reeling floorDrip henbane and hellebore:Beauty, of her tresses shorn,Shrieks as nature’s maniac:Hideousness on hoof and hornTumbles, yapping in her track:Haggard Wisdom, stately once,Leers fantastical and trips:Allegory drums the sconce,Impiousness nibblenips.Imp that dances, imp that flits,Imp o’ the demon-growing girl,Maddest! whirl with imp o’ the pitsRound you, and with them you whirlFast where pours the fountain-routOut of Him whose eyes are out:Multitudes on multitudes,Drenched in wallowing devilry:And you ask where you may be,   In what reek of a lairGiven to bones and ogre-broods:   And they yell you Where.Enter these enchanted woods,   You who dare.

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN

ILast night returning from my twilight walkI met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless browWas bent on me, and from his hand of chalkHe reached me flowers as from a withered bough:O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!IIDeath said, I gather, and pursued his way.Another stood by me, a shape in stone,Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:O Life, how naked and how hard when known!IIILife said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,Joined notes of Death and Life till night’s declineOf Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES

IHe who has looked upon EarthDeeper than flower and fruit,Losing some hue of his mirth,As the tree striking rock at the root,Unto him shall the marvellous taleOf Callistes more humanly comeWith the touch on his breast than a hailFrom the markets that hum.IINow the youth footed swift to the dawn.’Twas the season when wintertide,In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,By light throwing shallow shade,Between the beam and the gloom,Sicilian Enna, whose MaidSuch aspect wears in her bloomUnderneath since the CharioteerOf Darkness whirled her away,On a reaped afternoon of the year,Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.O and naked of her, all dust,The majestic Mother and Nurse,Ringing cries to the God, the Just,Curled the land with the blight of her curse:Recollected of this glad isleStill quaking.  But now more fair,And momently fraying the whileThe veil of the shadows there,Soft Enna that prostrate griefSang through, and revealed round the vines,Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,The wheat-blades tripping in lines,A hue unillumined by sunOf the flowers flooding grass as from founts:All the penetrable dun   Of the morn ere she mounts.IIINor had saffron and sapphire and redWaved aloft to their sisters below,When gaped by the rock-channel headOf the lake, black, a cave at one blow,Reverberant over the plain:A sound oft fearfully swungFor the coming of wrathful rain:And forth, like the dragon-tongueOf a fire beaten flat by the gale,But more as the smoke to behold,A chariot burst.  Then a wailQuivered high of the love that would foldBliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed,And the team of the chariot swartReared in marble, the six, dismayed,Like hoofs that by night plashing seaCurve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:For, lo, the Great Mother, She!And Callistes gazed, he gaveHis eyeballs up to the sight:The embrace of the Twain, of whomTo men are their day, their night,Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:Our Lady of the SheavesAnd the Lily of Hades, the SweetOf Enna: he saw through leavesThe Mother and Daughter meet.They stood by the chariot-wheel,Embraced, very tall, most likeFellow poplars, wind-taken, that reelDown their shivering columns and strikeHead to head, crossing throats: and apart,For the feast of the look, they drew,Which Darkness no longer could thwart;And they broke together anew,Exulting to tears, flower and bud.But the mate of the Rayless was grave:She smiled like Sleep on its flood,That washes of all we crave:Like the trance of eyes awakeAnd the spirit enshrouded, she castThe wan underworld on the lake.   They were so, and they passed.IVHe tells it, who knew the lawUpon mortals: he stood aliveDeclaring that this he saw:   He could see, and survive.VNow the youth was not ware of the beamsWith the grasses intertwined,For each thing seen, as in dreams,Came stepping to rear through his mind,Till it struck his remembered prayerTo be witness of this which had flownLike a smoke melted thinner than air,That the vacancy doth disown.And viewing a maiden, he thoughtIt might now be morn, and afarWithin him the memory wroughtOf a something that slipped from the carWhen those, the august, moved by:Perchance a scarf, and perchanceThis maiden.  She did not fly,Nor started at his advance:She looked, as when infinite thirstPants pausing to bless the springs,Refreshed, unsated.  Then firstHe trembled with awe of the thingsHe had seen; and he did transfer,Divining and doubting in turn,His reverence unto her;Nor asked what he crouched to learn:The whence of her, whither, and whyHer presence there, and her name,Her parentage: under which skyHer birth, and how hither she came,So young, a virgin, alone,Unfriended, having no fear,As Oreads have; no moan,Like the lost upon earth; no tear;Not a sign of the torch in the blood,Though her stature had reached the heightWhen mantles a tender rudIn maids that of youths have sight,If maids of our seed they be:For he said: A glad vision art thou!And she answered him: Thou to me!   As men utter a vow.VIThen said she, quick as the criesOf the rainy cranes: Light! light!And Helios rose in her eyes,That were full as the dew-balls bright,Relucent to him as dewsUnshaded.  Breathing, she sentHer voice to the God of the Muse,And along the vale it went,Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill:Sweet, but no young maid’s throat:The echo beyond the hillRan falling on half the note:And under the shaken groundWhere the Hundred-headed groansBy the roots of great Aetna bound,As of him were hollow tonesOf wondering roared: a taleRepeated to sunless halls.But now off the face of the valeShadows fled in a breath, and the wallsOf the lake’s rock-head were gold,And the breast of the lake, that swellOf the crestless long wave rolledTo shore-bubble, pebble and shell.A morning of radiant lidsO’er the dance of the earth opened wide:The bees chose their flowers, the snub kidsUpon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:There was milk, honey, music to make:Up their branches the little birds billed:Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.O shining in sunlight, chiefAfter water and water’s caress,Was the young bronze-orange leaf,That clung to the tree as a tress,Shooting lucid tendrils to wedWith the vine-hook tree or pole,Like Arachne launched out on her thread.Then the maiden her dusky stoleIn the span of the black-starred zone,Gathered up for her footing fleet.As one that had toil of her ownShe followed the lines of wheatTripping straight through the fields, green blades,To the groves of olive grey,Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to gladesWhere the pear-blossom thickens the sprayIn a night, like the snow-packed storm:Pear, apple, almond, plum:Not wintry now: pushing, warm!And she touched them with finger and thumb,As the vine-hook closes: she smiled,Recounting again and again,Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child,With the meaning known to men.For hours in the track of the ploughAnd the pruning-knife she stepped,And of how the seed works, and of howYields the soil, she seemed adept.Then she murmured that name of the dearth,The Beneficent, Hers, who badeOur husbandmen sow for the birthOf the grain making earth full glad.She murmured that Other’s: the dirgeOf life-light: for whose dark lapOur locks are clipped on the vergeOf the realm where runs no sap.She said: We have looked on both!And her eyes had a wavering beamOf various lights, like the frothOf the storm-swollen ravine streamIn flame of the bolt.  What linksWere these which had made him her friend?He eyed her, as one who drinks,   And would drink to the end.VIINow the meadows with crocus besprent,And the asphodel woodsides she left,And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scentOf narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleftThat tutors the torrent-brook,Delaying its forceful spleenWith many a wind and crookThrough rock to the broad ravine.By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes,And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid,And the sun-loving lizards and snakesOn the cleft’s barren ledges, that slidOut of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all,At a snap of twig or barkIn the track of the foreign foot-fall,She climbed to the pineforest dark,Overbrowing an emerald chineOf the grass-billows.  Thence, as a wreath,Running poplar and cypress to pine,The lake-banks are seen, and beneath,Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms,The citadel watching the bay,The bay with the town in its arms,The town shining white as the sprayOf the sapphire sea-wave on the rock,Where the rock stars the girdle of sea,White-ringed, as the midday flock,Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree.That hour of the piercing shaftTransfixes bough-shadows, confusedIn veins of fire, and she laughed,With her quiet mouth amusedTo see the whole flock, adroop,Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one,Imperceptibly filling the loopOf its shade at a slant of sun.The pipes under pent of the crag,Where the goatherds in piping recline,Have whimsical stops, burst and flagUncorrected as outstretched swine:For the fingers are slack and unsure,And the wind issues querulous:—thornsAnd snakes!—but she listened demure,Comparing day’s music with morn’s.Of the gentle spirit that slipsFrom the bark of the tree she discoursed,And of her of the wells, whose lipsAre coolness enchanting, rock-sourced.And much of the sacred loon,The frolic, the Goatfoot God,For stories of indolent noonIn the pineforest’s odorous nod,She questioned, not knowing: he canBe waspish, irascible, rude,He is oftener friendly to man,And ever to beasts and their brood.For the which did she love him well,She said, and his pipes of the reed,His twitched lips puffing to tellIn music his tears and his need,Against the sharp catch of his hurt.Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak,Nor spake as the schools, to divert,But fondly, perceiving him weakBefore Gods, and to shepherds a fear,A holiness, horn and heel.All this she had learnt in her earFrom Callistes, and taught him to feel.Yea, the solemn divinity flushedThrough the shaggy brown skin of the beast,And the steeps where the cataract rushed,And the wilds where the forest is priest,Were his temple to clothe him in awe,While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she readThe haunts of the beak and the clawAs plain as the land of bread,But Cities and martial States,Whither soon the youth veered his theme,Were impervious barrier-gatesTo her: and that ship, a trireme,Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance,Though he dwelt on the message it boreOf sceptre and sword and lanceTo the bee-swarms black on the shore,Which were audible almost,So black they were.  It befelThat he called up the warrior hostOf the Song pouring hydromelIn thunder, the wide-winged Song.And he named with his boyish prideThe heroes, the noble throngPast Acheron now, foul tide!With his joy of the godlike bandAnd the verse divine, he namedThe chiefs pressing hot on the strand,Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed.The fleetfoot and ireful; the King;Him, the prompter in stratagem,Many-shifted and masterful: Sing,O Muse!  But she cried: Not of themShe breathed as if breath had failed,And her eyes, while she bade him desist,Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed,As you see the grey river-mistHold shapes on the yonder bank.A moment her body waned,The light of her sprang and sank:Then she looked at the sun, she regainedClear feature, and she breathed deep.She wore the wan smile he had seen,As the flow of the river of Sleep,On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.In sunlight she craved to bask,Saying: Life!  And who was she? who?Of what issue?  He dared not ask,   For that partly he knew.VIIIA noise of the hollow groundTurned the eye to the ear in debate:Not the soft overflowing of soundOf the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,Barely swayed to some whispers remote,Some swarming whispers above:Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,Hush-hushing the nested dove:It was not the pines, or the routOft heard from mid-forest in chase,But the long muffled roar of a shoutSubterranean.  Sharp grew her face.She rose, yet not moved by affright;’Twas rather good haste to useHer holiday of delightIn the beams of the God of the Muse.And the steeps of the forest she crossed,On its dry red sheddings and conesUp the paths by roots green-mossed,Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.Then out where the brook-torrent startsTo her leap, and from bend to curveA hurrying elbow dartsFor the instant-glancing swerve,Decisive, with violent willIn the action formed, like hers,The maiden’s, ascending; and stillAscending, the bud of the furze,The broom, and all blue-berried shootsOf stubborn and prickly kind,The juniper flat on its roots,The dwarf rhododaphne, behindShe left, and the mountain sheepFar behind, goat, herbage and flower.The island was hers, and the deep,All heaven, a golden hour.Then with wonderful voice, that rangThrough air as the swan’s nigh death,Of the glory of Light she sang,She sang of the rapture of Breath.Nor ever, says he who heard,Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,From bosom of singer or birdA sweetness thus rich of the GodWhose harmonies always are sane.She sang of furrow and seed,The burial, birth of the grain,The growth, and the showers that feed,And the green blades waxing matureFor the husbandman’s armful brown.O, the song in its burden ran pure,And burden to song was a crown.Callistes, a singer, skilledIn the gift he could measure and praise,By a rival’s art was thrilled,Though she sang but a Song of Days,Where the husbandman’s toil and strifeLittle varies to strife and toil:But the milky kernel of life,With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oilThe song did give him to eat:Gave the first rapt vision of Good,And the fresh young sense of SweetThe grace of the battle for food,With the issue Earth cannot refuseWhen men to their labour are sworn.’Twas a song of the God of the Muse   To the forehead of Morn.IXHim loved she.  Lo, now was he veiled:Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,Bent abeam, with a whitened track,Surprised, fast hauling the net,As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.She said: Is it night?  O not yet!With a travail of thoughts in her look.The mountain heaved up to its peak:Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.Night? but never so fell a scowlWore night, nor the sky since thenWhen ocean ran swallowing shore,And the Gods looked down for men.Broke tempest with that stern roarNever yet, save when black on the whirlRode wrath of a sovereign Power.Then the youth and the shuddering girl,Dim as shades in the angry shower,Joined hands and descended a mazeOf the paths that were racing aliveRound boulder and bush, cleaving ways,Incessant, with sound of a hive.The height was a fountain-urnPouring streams, and the whole solid heightLeaped, chasing at every turnThe pair in one spirit of flightTo the folding pineforest.  Yet here,Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,The stillness bred spectral fearOf the awfulness ranging without,And imminent.  Downward they fled,From under the haunted roof,To the valley aquake with the treadOf an iron-resounding hoof,As of legions of thunderful horseBroken loose and in line tramping hard.For the rage of a hungry forceRoamed blind of its mark over sward:They saw it rush dense in the cloakOf its travelling swathe of steam;All the vale through a thin thread-smokeWas thrown back to distance extreme:And dull the full breast of it blinked,Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er,Diminished, in strangeness distinct,Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:An Enna of fields beyond sun,Out of light, in a lurid web;And the traversing fury spunUp and down with a wave’s flow and ebb;As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,Retire, and in ravenous greed,Inveterate, swell its return.Up and down, as if wringing from speedSights that made the unsighted appear,Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.Lo, a sea upon land held careerThrough the plain of the vale half-devoured.Callistes of home and escapeMuttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.She gazed at the Void of shape,She put her white hand to his reach,Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.And divided from day, from night,From air that is breath, stood she,   Like the vale, out of light.XThen again in disorderly wordsHe muttered of home, and was mute,With the heart of the cowering birdsEre they burst off the fowler’s foot.He gave her some redness that streamedThrough her limbs in a flitting glow.The sigh of our life she seemed,The bliss of it clothing in woe.Frailer than flower when the roundOf the sickle encircles it: strongTo tell of the things profound,Our inmost uttering song,Unspoken.  So stood she awhileIn the gloom of the terror afield,And the silence about her smileSaid more than of tongue is revealed.I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:It said: and not joylessly shoneThe remembrance of light through the screenOf a face that seemed shadow and stone.She led the youth trembling, appalled,To the lake-banks he saw sink and riseLike a panic-struck breast.  Then she called,And the hurricane blackness had eyes.It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt.Pale she drooped, and the youth by her sideWould have clasped her and dared a revoltSacrilegious as ever defiedHigh Olympus, but vainly for strengthHis compassionate heart shook a frameStricken rigid to ice all its length.On amain the black traveller came.Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,And the lord of the steeds was in formHe, the God of implacable brow,Darkness: he: he in person: he ragedThrough the wave like a boar of the wildsFrom the hunters and hounds disengaged,And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s.Horror melted in anguish to hear.Lo, the wave hissed apart for the pathOf the terrible Charioteer,With the foam and torn features of wrath,Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;And the steeds clove it, rushing at landLike the teeth of the famished at meat.   Then he swept out his hand.XIThis, no more, doth Callistes recall:He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,On the maiden the chariot fall,As a thundercloud swings on the moon.Forth, free of the deluge, one cryFrom the vanishing gallop rose clear:And: Skiágeneia! the skyRang; Skiágeneia! the sphere.And she left him therewith, to rejoice,Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,The life of their day in her voice,   Left her life in her name.XIINow the valley in ruin of fieldsAnd fair meadowland, showing at eveLike the spear-pitted warrior’s shieldsAfter battle, bade men believeThat no other than wrathfullest GodHad been loose on her beautiful breast,Where the flowery grass was clod,Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.The valley, discreet in grief,Disclosed but the open truth,And Enna had hope of the sheaf:There was none for the desolate youthDevoted to mourn and to crave.Of the secret he had divinedOf his friend of a day would he rave:How for light of our earth she pined:For the olive, the vine and the wheat,Burning through with inherited fire:And when Mother went Mother to meet,She was prompted by simple desireIn the day-destined car to have placeAt the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,And be drawn to the dear earth’s face.She was fire for the blue and the greenOf our earth, dark fire; athirstAs a seed of her bosom for dawn,White air that had robed and nursedHer mother.  Now was she goneWith the Silent, the God without tear,Like a bud peeping out of its sheathTo be sundered and stamped with the sere.And Callistes to her beneath,As she to our beams, extinct,Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.In division so were they linked.But the song which had betrayedHer flight to the cavernous earFor its own keenly wakeful: that songOf the sowing and reaping, and cheerOf the husbandman’s heart made strongThrough droughts and deluging rainsWith his faith in the Great Mother’s love:O the joy of the breath she sustains,And the lyre of the light above,And the first rapt vision of Good,And the fresh young sense of Sweet:That song the youth ever pursuedIn the track of her footing fleet.For men to be profited muchBy her day upon earth did he sing:Of her voice, and her steps, and her touchOn the blossoms of tender Spring,Immortal: and how in her soulShe is with them, and tearless abides,Folding grain of a love for one goalIn patience, past flowing of tides.And if unto him she was tears,He wept not: he wasted within:Seeming sane in the song, to his peers,Only crazed where the cravings begin.Our Lady of Gifts prized he lessThan her issue in darkness: the dimLost Skiágencia’s caressOf our earth made it richest for him.And for that was a curse on him raised,And he withered rathe, dry to his prime,Though the bounteous Giver be praisedThrough the island with rites of old timeExceedingly fervent, and reapedVeneration for teachings devout,Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heapedAnd the wine-presses ruddily spout,And the olive and apple are juiceAt a touch light as hers lost below.Whatsoever to men is of useSprang his worship of them who bestow,In a measure of songs unexcelled:But that soul loving earth and the sunFrom her home of the shadows he heldFor his beacon where beam there is none:And to join her, or have her brought back,In his frenzy the singer would call,Till he followed where never was track,On the path trod of all.