The Thracian Stranger

Contents

Preface

The Thracian Stranger was begun a quarter of a century ago, and finished shortly after I went to India in!910. It is obviously a young man’s work, and belongs to a world other than the one which is ours and the author’s today.

The other poems are practically all the shorter pieces I have that have not appeared in book form some time or other. One or two are War relics; most belong to my post-War period in India; the rest to!924-26, and to!927 two or three only, and one to!928. Ten have appeared in periodicals: in the Nation and Athenaum four, in the New Statesman two, and in Punch, the London Mercury, the Observer, and the Spectator one each.

Oxford.

The Thracian Stranger

The First Sestiad

Of old in Greece a famous city stood
Hight Thebae---to the north Copais’ flood
Thrust out its reedy arms, which near and wide
The villagers with eel and fish supplied;
While to the west Parnassus, capped with snows,
Endorsed with beetling crag and pine, arose;
And south Cithaeron, with its valleys full
Of savage beasts, the panther, boar, and bull,
That in those tangled coverts strove alway
(While peaceful Thebes beneath its shadow lay).

In sooth, it was a goodly land, for there
Rich store of plenteous wheat the furrows bare,
And in the soft earth’s grassy lap there grew
Fair fruits and berries, flowers of varied hue
And so surpassing scent that not a breeze
Could blow thereby, but, clustered like the bees,
Blue-robèd Aeolus’ vassals kept all day
Their silver-veined and gauzy wings at play,
Drinking the fragrance, hovering over them,
And running up and down each playmate’s stem.

Moreover, pleasant to the Gods withal
Was Thebae; built to music was its wall,
Though not by Phoebus yet, be sure, by one
Who gained his mastery from Leto’s son---
Amphion wise, whose lyre’s compelling law
The unquarried boulders did together draw,
Whose flocking notes their craft and cunning tone
No master gave but Loxias alone,
His gracious playfellow in periods old,
Since first amazed in the evening’s gold
Twin shepherd children marked a glow divine
Blot out the sunset from the whispering pine,
Where mid the reddened boles were Heroes seen
Of visage haught and mighty presence sheen,
The Darter from Afar and Maia’s Child;
Thereafter in Cithaeron’s thickets wild
And on the ridgy yokes these Brethren great
Oft mingled with the royal boys their state,
And from the Argus-Bane Amphion had
A silver harp, and Loxias taught the lad
The lordship deep wherewith in after-days
He built the master-city of our praise,
Whence justly Thebes of men was named still
The Phoebusburg, since Phoebus gave the skill.
And this is certain: oftentimes the God
Slipped from the heavens and earthly meadows trod,
In weeds and visage like a very hind,
To fling celestial measures to the wind
And every little breeze that strayed thereby
To ravish into sweet captivity,
Till every bud that in those borders grew,
Hearkening to that all-worshipped magic, knew
To its far roots that groped beneath the earth
A holy nurture and a heavenly birth,
And every covert, every conscious stone
A present Godhead did with trembling own,
Who to the fervent woods a rapture gave
And deeper music to the running wave.
And, while the intertwisted wind and song,
Like wedded lovers, danced the glades along,
For those that heard them (few, but fortunate!)
Straightway the tangled ravel of their fate,
The mystery of the Gods, and all the pain
Which clings to fairest spirits, as a stain
Of mist upon the most transcendent blue,
Were gone, and only in their stead they knew
That never from their souls would pass away
The echo of the music of that day,
But mid their springing sorrows should be heard
Across that woeful forest, as a bird
Whose earliest treble, through the darkness borne,
Although it knows not, cheers a wight forlorn,
Or songs wherewith the wave-clad Naiades
Uphold a struggling swimmer on the seas.

Now of this country Pentheus was the king,
A man most wise, nor slack in anything
Regarding reverence to the Gods and state,
Himself, or to his subjects congregate,
Except---and here within the perfect fruit
The canker lurked, the rift within the lute,
And, as one stone will oft a tower displace
And fling the cloud-wrapt splendour to its base,
So from this one remission wreck and shame,
Maugre all virtues, on the Monarch came,
Dragging him down i’ the end to cruel fate.
Hearken, while I the tale at length relate.

Cadmus, that heard the mountain-singing Nine,
Being full of years, to Pentheus did resign
The name and all the adjuncts to a throne,
Reserving but what time had made his own---
The regal carriage and imperious port
Which aye with long authority doth sort;
And now, retired from every public care,
He passed his days in augury and prayer,
Devoting, as his former life, to Heaven
This lingering residue the Gods had given,
With ever-deepening zeal as closer drew
His steps each day death’s starry gates unto.
For know, this man I speak of was indeed
Cadmus the friend of Gods, of Gods the seed,
Agenor’s child who from the Asian strand
To Thebae travelled at a God’s command,
Favoured himself progenitor to be
Of Gods, since grandsire to that Semele
Right dear to Zeus (from which illicit flame
The altogether-loved Iacchus came).

Now since in blood as grandsire to the king
He stood, this great propinquity did bring
To Cadmus much authority, albeit
With many years of abstinence from the heat
Of public clamour, controversial faction,
His soul had grown to revel in inaction,
And, pent aloof in green and leafy shade,
With time’s work in it goodly havoc made,
Cleansing itself of many a crooked saw
And harsh arbitrament of human law;
Because, as hallowed streams against their fount
Did by the magic of a God once mount,
When Phoebus in the lone Parnassian glade
His deity to Marsyas displayed
And by the lyre’s constraint and conquering might
Recalled the huddling torrents up the height,
So Cadmus’ thoughts, their weary turmoil ceased,
From the vain traffic of the world released,
With climbing current and receding head
Ran to the caves from whence they first were fed,
Even childhood’s milky fountains, and the hours
When all his converse with Celestial Powers
Stood, though he knew it not; and unto him
The Gods no more were far away and dim,
With lineaments that mingled with the air,
Abstract and of reality made bare,
But all the images the mind receives
From willow-coverts, prankt with quivering leaves,
Or flying winds that gently through our tresses
Pass, like a mother’s hand when she caresses,
Then turn again to winnow the blue sky,
Stood in the gaze of his believing eye
As palpable divinities confest,
No mere reflections of the world’s unrest,
Which worship something must, be what it may
Of all the attributes that throng the day,
Crowding each hour, from dawn to setting sun,
With radiance from some heavenly presence won,
Or starlike burn along the gloomy night,
Their sovran lustre crowning every height,
A flashing glory through the cerements dim
Wherewith our Rulers wrap, in mystic whim,
The living body of the pomp they bear,
Whereof we witness scarce the straying hair
And outskirts of its path, educing thence
Behind the glow a strength transcending sense,
Powers habitant in sun and falling rains,
The Host of Heaven to whom we build our fanes,
Gods whom we half believe nor wholly fear,
Changing our faith with winds that shift and veer,
Bold-hearted sceptics when the sun is warm,
Devout believers in a thunderstorm.

But Cadmus was not so; to him, indeed,
In pipe of bird and soughing of the reed
A thousand Gods cried out; and when the trees
O’ the woods, the sedge, the matted bulrushes
Bent all one way before the swaying wind,
Then ’twas King Aeolus fluting to his mind
Upon the various pipes his blue-veined bands
And moist and heat, which work to his commands,
Had fashioned, raising from their quaking bed
And moulding into brown, imperious head,
Or ’twas amid the forest (like a lyre
Spread green-limbed out) in dance a dryad quire
That singing moved, while mighty music leapt
Of One who o’er that harp his fingers swept.

Moreover, unto Cadmus, it is told,
The Gods were very gracious from of old,
Loving the pious purpose of the man,
Which ever to their rightful worship ran,
And to his marriage came, the Muses Nine
Crowning his head with myrtle and with vine,
With orange-blossom and with crisp Thessalian pine,
And singing as they crowned him; also there,
Flying from chill Olympus’ cloudy air,
With winged steps that in the storm-wind’s track
Flashed ever as they spurned the flocking rack,
Casting the frost and fluttering flakes aside
As swiftly through the tempest’s plunging tide
A travelling and a fearless foot he plied,
Came Hermes, with his twisted serpent-wand,
As herald of the Gods, whose gathered band
Was hot behind, to watch with kindly eyes
A mortal’s rites, to watch and sympathise
And with their glorious presence solemnise.

And therefore was his will accounted great
In all the events and customs of the state,
And by the King to every utterance lent
An ear compliant and a mind attent;
His stored wisdom and politic skill
Won worship and an eager audience still,
That yet, though now in Thebes another kept
His royal place, a potent magic slept
In Cadmus’ name, a shield from alien ills---
When lo! a stranger’s foot is on the hills.

The Second Sestiad

Now when to Hellas young Iacchus came,
Setting the hills with many a torch aflame,
Making arousal in each Theban street
By clash of timbrel and the tom-tom’s beat,
Against the face of those whose deed began
The bitter tale of guilt his fury ran,
Angered that they in whom ’twere greatest wrong,
His mother’s sisters, plied a scoffing tongue
At Semele, with many a scorn and flout,
And on her marriage with a God cast doubt
(Averring Cadmus’ craft the treason veiled
Whereby a mortal paramour prevailed,
Whence Zeus, by such misprision moved to ire,
Justly against her sped the penal fire).
Revengeful of his own dear mother’s slight,
He laid on all the women madness’ blight,
Driving them forth to desert caves and rocks,
To couch beside the brinded lion and fox,
That maid and matron on the roofless stone,
Or sheltered by the ragged pine alone,
In garb which ill their helpless plight became
Sat mingled, all oblivious of their shame.
With forceful arts and magic next he wrought
Teiresias and Cadmus to his thought,
Cadmus, the lord of brain and mighty brow,
Of whom the reverent Muse has sung but now,
Lauding his wisdom vast and worldly ken,
Proclaiming him the kingliest of men.

Such being his meed, now who can praise in words
Teiresias, that from the flight of birds
Could speak the flight of actions and events
While folded up in Heaven’s dread Presidents,
Who knew which side the issue of aught would sway,
While yet upon the high Gods’ knees it lay,
And of all deeds and hidden days to come
Had sovran ken and utmost masterdom?
For since from Zeus his lofty lineage fell
And glorious Apollo loved him well,
These twain were kind, to him preferring none,
And of their triple synod made him one,
In wisdom granting him their chiefest bliss,
Which Zeus, who willed that knowledge such as this
By many should be sought but sought in vain,
Locked in the secret casket of his brain.

But yet---and here the Muse’s voice grows sad---
With all this wondrous wealth one lack he had,
For he was blind, not from the womb indeed
But rather from the tenor of a rede
Uttered by angry Pallas, when his eyes
Gazed on too much---the tale runs on this wise:

It chanced that in the playtime of his years
Teiresias and others of his peers,
Wearied with hunting through the chilly night
(For know that in the absence of the light,
When every beast is stirring, ’twas the wont
Of all the Theban youth to rise and hunt),
Beset with bur and bramble, brake and thorn,
Stood on a mountain-slope, when first the morn
Showed her gray spectral fingers in the sky.
On either side did precipices lie,
Slanting a thousand fathoms down, to where
The secrets of the central earth lay bare,
But at their tops with woolly vapours shrouded
And dripping mists, which ever curled and clouded
Their glistening sides, with fern and heather hung
And mountain-ash that to the crannies clung.
Behind, there was a waving wood of pine,
And yet behind the towering frozen line
Of peaks beneath a sky whose quiet glow
Masked everlasting magazines of snow.
Here paused they, for in front a knotted thick
Of briar and every sort of thornèd stick,
Stiff-pleached holly, stubbed with spur and spine,
Stark bullace, knit with clambered bramble-vine,
Stout zizyph, all with prickles quickly set,
Athwart them interposed with horrid let;
Thorough which stern and dismal wilderness
Teiresias and his mates perforce must press,
Perforce must break the hedge that shut them there
And reach the valleys and the warmer air.
Then, though this to their wearied limbs seemed vain,
Yet, since a storm was gathering strength amain
And from the caverns of the hill the wind
Was issuing now and flying fast behind,
Bending the pines, snapping the brittle thorn,
And chilling all these wanderers forlorn,
While even the snow began to fall, they knew
That they must quickly burst their passage through.
So, breaking through the tangles every way,
They came to where a little valley lay
Of marvellous beauty and surpassing calm;
Here, in the midst of branching willow-palm
And towering rushes green, whose kexes tall
The secret Goat-God filled with wailing fall
Of never-ceasing threne for Syrinx fled,
A babbling fount its sacred waters shed
To where a brook with deeper utterance played
Past sloping woods and meadows wherein stayed
Throughout the smiling year the enamoured Spring,
Ruling this sheltered place where everything
Was awful from its utter loveliness.
Then did these wearied travellers praise and bless
The Gods, that to their frozen limbs had granted
Such rest and nowise of their bounties scanted.
But a few backward steps had been the snow,
The tempest and the thicket drear, and lo!
Here, like a singing pilgrim on his road,
The stream was sweet beside them as they strode;
Here was there nought but whispering breezes warm,
Which ranged the uplands and forbade a storm,
While summer flowers were growing, and fruits withal,
For rarely fell the snow here, if at all.

Now, as these men, by a deep dread possessed,
In slow and reverent silence forward pressed,
Teiresias, it chanced, before the rest,
Urged by his own impetuous wonder, strode
And, sundering from his fellows, came where flowed
The river through a marble bason white
Whose limpid depths gave back the laughing light
And mocked the overhanging azure weather;
A thousand mountain rills here fell together,
Checking their rapid current for a space,
Bubbling and dimpling all the water’s face,
Whose afterflow did into byways turn
And strain in muffled murmurs through the fern.
Brown-headed reeds, a giant’s height or more,
Stood next the edge, behind, about, before,
Shading it every side from curious eyes,
And only to the kind, conniving skies
Did this sequestered river-break disclose,
Whose waters clear betrayed from whence they rose
Being pure and cold as are the virgin snows
Or she that did to bathe therein delight.
And here Teiresias gained the luckless sight
Of crystal-browed Athena in the wave,
Gazing with eyes whose aspect mild and grave
Had changed into a flashing, angry pride.
From that dire glance he hid his face and cried:
“Ah! who can look on deity and live?
Unwillingly I sinned. I pray, forgive
My fault, though great, committed unaware!”
Meanwhile, the attendant nymphs with hasty care
Upon their Queen her robes and armour threw
And her far-straying locks together drew,
Till now, completely clad in every limb,
The Gorgon-dight Athena answered him:
“For ever prying, curious! Surely thou
Hast seen far more than thou desired’st now!
A sight to purge whose guilt thy soul requires,
Hurled hence to Tartar quick and penal fires,
For which that from my anger should befall
No stroke but instant death were pang too small!
Knowest thou not, light-hearted trespasser,
This mystic vale, void of all heat and stir,
And the surrounding mountains’ snow-wrapt state,
Till now from impure tread inviolate,
Unto the sovran Gods is consecrate?
These are the meads that bear no earthly print
And lawns that never took polluting dint,
And this the pool at whose unsullied brink
No creature of the forest dares to drink,
Concealed with fragrant mint and flowering bent,
Where none but Daughters of high Zeus frequent,
Since the Great Mother’s self this shut recess
Curtained apart with the green loveliness.
Thy foolish eyes shall sin no more; this worst
Offence shall be their latest, though their first:
Nor shalt thou boast untouched of scathe to have seen
In naked might the City-Guarding Queen!
Go, wander through the world, blindly forlorn,
Alike to thee henceforward night and morn.”

Now in her earliest flush of wounded pride,
Or ere she spake, the Goddess to her side,
Quivering with anger as she pressed the herb,
Had plucked her clanging shield; the quick reverb
Roused the astonied youth, whose apathy,
Seeing her purpose, changed to agony.
As if to turn that Gorgon shield she makes,
That direful beauteous head, those twisting snakes;
Her dreadful will Athena twice assays
And twice Teiresias’ visage fronts her gaze.
His piteous stricken eyes her wrath disarm;
She is contented with a lesser harm.
For even to Gods are mortal graces fair,
And who could turn to stone such beauty rare?
Or who that ever marked such loveliness
Could wish with scathe to harass or distress?
She sees his form more stately contour hath
Than even the straightest reed about her bath;
His knotted muscles, nurtured in the chase,
Stand out beneath his shining strength of face,
Not coarse and large, but lithe and tough in full
As are the willow-wands about a pool.
And who that saw him aye could help revere
The crowning dignity which even in fear
Sat like a star upon the youth, and shed
A far-seen halo round about his head?

Her nymphs could not, but at his manly pain
Their Queen’s incensèd cruelty dared restrain;
They clutched the shield and, not to be denied,
That visage from Teiresias held aside,
The while with glittering arms they hapt each limb
Of that Blest Form that made all armour dim.
So, hesitating still in her intent,
Athena’s anger found in words a vent.
But whoso gives in speech a way to rage
Doth in the means the initial fault assuage;
And, as the lava, to the outer air
Escaping, cools in quiet valleys there,
Athena’s wrath, in phrases wasted, ended
With laxer penalty than she intended,
Albeit how pregnant of despair for him
Whose eyes are waxing gradually dim
Even as she speaks, till at the dreadful close
A nymph towards him pitifully goes
And, leading him through mossy paths unseen,
Deserts him darkling in the forest green;
Where finding him and learning his sad tale,
His comrades hurry from that dangerous vale.

Such is the story’s naked truth, which I
Heard from the Muse, the Muse that cannot lie,
Who knows no legends but the burdens sung
At mountain altars when the world was young,
What time for marriage of Olympus’ King
The Maids of Parnass stood in tuneful ring.
Moreover, this again she also gave,
Confirming it by Styx’s sacred wave,
Saying that, although he had this piteous lack,
Elsewhere the Gods dealt compensation back;
And Phoebus bore such love for him, the flame
Wherewith he burnt for Hyacinth became
Like some weak rush to the devouring blaze
Wherein a holy phoenix ends her days,
When of that rushing pomp red clouds adrift
To distant skies their fiery witness lift.
And Zeus, the Lord of all dread mysteries,
Laid bare the unravelled future to his eyes
And wrapt him round with such surpassing kindness,
The lesser Gods, an ’twere not for his blindness,
Had cast their envious wiles about his path
And overwhelmed him in their cunning wrath.
To him (and unto later two, perchance,
The lords of thunder-lurking countenance,
Maeonides and Milton) it befell
As to that bard whose lyre, as legends tell,
Was broken in one string, so that the tone
Had lacked full harmony, had not there flown
A blithe cicada from the thicket by,
Who filled the pause up with melodious cry.
So Universal Pan and Nature’s whole
Composed the circle of his broken soul
And to his maimèd faculties struck off
A general note, which, spite of scorn and scoff,
Rang through the din of that rebellious time,
Above the unceasing noise of war and crime,
Of falling thrones and rising kingdoms new,
Rash men who rendered not the Gods their due,
But, proud in knowledge and released from awe,
Raised clamorous lips against the heavenly law,
Flung off the unseen and spiritual yoke, and drove
All sacred presences from stream and grove,
Levelling the altar-stone and secret fane
And temple’s pinnacles with earth again,
Till even the crested hills, that saw the sun
Out of his eastern chamber rise and run
From earliest flood of dawn till day was done,
And watched the moon, amid subservient lights,
A quivered huntress, climb the marble heights
Of utmost heaven, were robbed of quietude,
Left bare and of all rightful reverence nude.
Wherefor the Gods, in anger and disdain,
Withdrew the peaceful blessings of their reign,
And rendered unto all that atheist crew
Fit penalty and compensation due.
Men cried: “The ancient faiths are void and dead.
There are no Gods”; and even as they said
The universe was left---worst lack of all
The ills that could a peopled world befall---
Without a guiding hand, an unseen awe,
A potency beyond all natural law,
Of might to keep restrained within their courses
The whirl and play of elemental forces.
And as a ship, released and rudderless,
Helpless amid the roaring wilderness
Of hungry waves that seek to gulf and whelm
The vessel that wants a pilot at its helm,
Likewise the earth, enwrapt in Godless gloom,
Deserted, derelict, swept on to doom.
Havoc and tempest occupied the main,
The ribbed and rocky hills were rent in twain
By riving earthquake, with strange fire and thunder
The vengeful heavens brake forth and scarred the lands thereunder.
While from the burning bowels of earth, that lie
A million fathoms down, towards the sky
Volcanic tumours belched and burst and hurled
Even to the flaming limits of the world
Their smoking breath, by boiling winds that thrust
Into the very heaven of heavens their dust,
And on the earth’s complexion, once so fair,
Reeking eruptions sprang up everywhere.
Only in Thebes the Gods found reverence still
And eager hearts attendant on their will,
Where Cadmus sought in quiet ease to serve
Nor ever from their least behest would swerve;
Teiresias the holy and the blind
Knelt in the glow which filled his inner mind;
While Pentheus underneath his righteous law
Kept the unsteady multitude in awe,
And, driving evil beasts and men away,
Both king and father, ’neath his kindly sway
Gathered the peaceful city, built of old
To that constraining melody, which rolled
Beneath admiring heavens, propitious made,
And drew the flocking tenants of the glade.
So as, an hour ere racking storms arise,
The sleek wave slumbers under quiet skies,
With halcyons thronged that dip and dive thereunder,
Or as an hour ere earthquake rives asunder
The bastioned rocks and wrenches hills apart,
The wrangling peoples, dreadless, crowd the mart,
Recall the past, recount the present care,
And to their homes the villagers repair,
While the bright west upon the tranquil land
Sheds blessing like a God’s outstretched hand---
Ev’n so did peaceful Thebes securely lie
When conquering Iacchus came thereby.

The Third Sestiad

Say, Muse, for thou hast known and thou canst tell
In order how each monstrous woe befell,
Say moved by what the king, so happy late,
Drew on his head the iron frowns of Fate,
Against the boisterous deity rebelled
And rites of honour from his name withheld.

Say, then, to Pentheus while, in dangerous play,
He in Cithaeron’s dingles held at bay
The bull or stopped the ounce in fiery chase
Came tidings of a youth of ruddy face
Like to a God’s (for such indeed was he),
Claiming his birth from martyred Semele,
Alleging Zeus for sire, the King of all;
A witch whose crafty magic held in thrall
The women, drawn astray from loom and comb
Through windy coverts of the hills to roam,
A troop outrageous, keeping in delight
Their festival of freedom on the height,
Setting the slopes ablaze with piney brand,
Bearing the brandished thyrse in maddened hand,
Glad worshippers and followers of the God
And saucy wielders of the narthex-rod.

With hasty anger to the city sped
The king, and found it even as rumour said:
The women to Cithaeron’s fastness fled,
Their lords bewildered in the market-square
With visage wan and filled with boding care.
Right to their midmost hubbub Pentheus went
Nor needed to enquire of their lament,
Since, marking in their street the towering state
Of him their ruler and protector great,
With angry clamour to the monarch ran
The folk, and all their woeful plaint began,
Of homes to sudden desolation brought
And terror by the Thracian stranger wrought.
But worse remained; and yet a deeper shame
Befell the king when to his halls he came,
For there, in cloak of dappled fawnskin clad
And bearing eyes the boisterous God made glad,
Lifting the javelin and the fir-topped rod,
Blithe in the dionysiac measure trod
Teiresias and Cadmus; Pentheus knew
The revellers, and his anger fiercer grew;
With impious hands he seized the sacred vest
And thus Apollo’s mystic seer addressed:

“Blind, doting fool! Yet knave far more than fool,
Thyself at once the teacher and the school,
Whatever folly in this realm of mine
Claims holy sanction and a source divine,
Reading in falling leaf and flying bird
A God’s high utterance and prophetic word,
From wind and wave and cloud by lightning riven
Gathering an oracle and portent given,
The very will and signature of heaven!
Thine is this sin, for which thou shalt, be sure,
Maugre white hairs, fit penalty endure,
Such sorrow as shall make no man desire
Henceforth to vaunt a prophet’s robe and fire.
Now not for all Apollo’s crooked lies
(Or such as in his name thou dost devise,
With slanting speech and superstitious skill
Feigning delivery forth of Loxias’ will)
Shalt thou escape the guilt and vengeance just
Whose gathered weight shall smite thee to the dust.
This folly’s growth by seed of thine was sown;
Its ripened harvest, too, shall be thine own.”
But Cadmus thus: “This blasphemy restrain,
Nor tempt with impious lip and boasting vain
The Gods, to us in Semele allied,
In Semele, the Cloud-Compeller’s bride,
Mother to young Iacchus, whom we bring
A kinsman’s loyalty.”

Whereat the king:
“Mother to young Iacchus! ay, she fell,
Frail as the most part are; and thou hast well,
Crowning thy craft with one more he in this,
Ascribed to Zeus the deed so wrought amiss,
And well with fond and fabling tales dost cover
The crime of Semele with mortal lover.
Whence rightly Zeus the wrathful levin sped
Against the impious claimant of his bed.
What young Iacchus this? and whence to thee
This knowledge of his precious deity?”

Whom Cadmus thus: “At falling of the night
The east grew lustrous, and a mystic light,
Far-seen through Thebes, dwelt on the smouldering house,
Now tomb of Semele the Thunderer’s spouse,
Mother of Lord Iacchus, and our child,
Whose loveliness Olympus’ King beguiled,
Leaving his azure realm and star-girt throne,
Masked as a hind, to wealth and power unknown,
In these low halls to meet his love alone.
’Tis true! for yet that pomp of yesterdusk,
A burning glory in my body’s husk,
Inflames and all my heart with zeal inspires.
I saw the light, I saw the brooding fires,
And, ere the uprise of the riding moon
Heaven’s towering ways with glittering shafts had strewn,
Where swift Ismenus leads his flocking tide
The wonderful Iacchus I espied.
I marked him in the twilight where he stood,
A proffered goblet, carven ivy-wood,
Twined with like berries, in his supple hand;
His flying locks were at the wind’s command,
And in and out his tresses, like a snake
That rustles through a yellow-blossomed brake,
Convolved in many a rich and sinuous fold
Ran the green vineleaves, mingling with the gold.
I took the cup which bore, inlaid and chased,
The silver legend of Iacchus traced,
Fair Semele, in simple pomp arrayed
Nor drawing love by any baser aid
Than native loveliness, in russet clad,
Whose utter beauty made beholders glad.
And he whose cunning hand the vessel cut
And on its curvature the figures put
Did by his master-craft so well devise
That, stealing to the maid in modest wise,
In rustic garb and with a downcast mien,
The Shepherd of the wandering rack was seen.
This for one side; the other did present
The blinding light, the straining firmament,
The labouring air, with leaping fires distressed,
The bursting cloud, with thunder in its breast,
And Zeus, unveiled in dreadful deity,
Apparent to the dying Semele.
This when I saw, the God who bore the cup
Its magic potion to my lips held up;
I drank, and straightway, of my lord aware,
Knelt on the conscious turf and worshipped there,
Knowing the young Iacchus where he trod
Beside his native springs, an obvious God.”

Thus far he spake; and at the burning word
Teiresias, in darkness as he heard,
Kindling within and lifting to the light
Illustred eyes, with sudden grief made bright,
Wailed to his comrade, through his scalding tears:
“Would that some God might take away the years,
And grant me now to be as ere I met
With climbing foot, from lustral revel wet,
Over her cheeks unwonted anger spread,
Her whom Erectheus’ sons, with loving dread,
Own for their chaste and city-keeping Queen,
Wise Maid of Zeus, whose grief that I had seen
Robbed of my sight and took the sun from me
For stumbling on her naked deity!
Would that as in the days when free I moved
With brows rejoicing in the sun they loved,
And eyes whose keen responsive glow repaid
The light they borrowed by the light they made,
I might stand up, erect, unbent, and strong!
That I might gain the sight for which I long!
This royal stranger from the hills of Thrace,
Iacchus with the dear deceitful face,
Iacchus with the sweet alluring grace,
Which, potent far beyond Thessalian art,
Has drawn thee, though unwilling, to his part,
And won the folk of all this Theban town
To don the fawn-cloak and the ivy-crown!
Yet I, too, something know and something, too,
Have seen, though clouds shut off all outward view,
And in the midnight of the spirit gained
A vision not to be by speech profaned.
Away with grief! the dionysiac cry
Uplift, and toss the thyrse and javelin high!
Now let the sacred ivy-leaf entwine
With gracious-berried yew and gleaming pine!
Dear comrade of my heart, thy hand in mine!
Come, beat the Iacchic measure! Who would dare
Sorrow, when Bromius bids to banish care?”

Then the two seniors, linking arms about,
Made mimic action of the Iacchic rout,
Now in grave measure, now in livelier mood;
Loud laughed the king, and, laughing, thus pursued:
“Lo now! what laughter in my soul ye wake,
Though little moved to laughter for your sake,
Nay, rather stirred to anger and red ire
And whatso act the occasion may require.
Ho! Theban warriors, ancient dragón-seed,
Heroic shepherds, spearmen prompt at need,
See now these reverend fathers of the folk
Skipping like colts before they know the yoke
Or forest-fawns that brush at break of day,
With lightsome fetlock, on their timorous way!
Ay, ye dance well! and Phoebus’ peddling priest,
Blind though he be, now capers not the least.
Sure, never from the Delian Master came
These hateful trappings, stars of sensual shame,
Nor did the Rector of the Muses’ Hill
In midnight vigil teach thee such a skill!
Beat, beat the drum! and wake to tremulous life
The scream-lipped reed and shepherd’s oaten fife!
Rouse ye, my people! Lo! the sight now given
Of Cadmus, friend and confidant of Heaven,
And gray Teiresias, dowered with wisest eld
And erst Apollo’s chosen prophet held,
Setting their hoary dignities aside,
Shaking a wand aloft in silly pride,
A dappled cloak about their shoulders flung,
With paltry leaves and scarlet berries hung,
Footing a frantic morrice and a dance
Fantastic as the airy leap and glance
Of autumn leaves, a wrinkled yellow horde
Jumping before the scourging wind, their lord!”

Thus far the king, with bitter words and gay;
But now his speech resumes its sterner way;
The laughter dies from his unwilling mood,
To violent accents changed and threatening rude:
“Mark thou, who dost prophetic office claim,
Self-chosen minister, with Phoebus’ name
Veiling thy dark deceits and slippery lies
And aimless traffic with the shifting skies,
With proclamations forged of Loxias’ will
Thy dread prophetic place profaning still!
Thine oracles shall cease; thy branchy seats
Among towered firs and rocky-fringed retreats,
From whence thy slaves the flight of birds descry
For thee to frame thy juggling speech thereby,
I’ll have hewn down and with iron forks uptorn.
The sacred mead which never scythe has shorn
(Whence culled those chaplets on thy forehead worn),
Where in bright waves about the prattling rill
Apollo’s acre uncut flowers fulfil,
Rockrose and amaranth, crocus, poppies red,
Sweet fescue-grass, that is the shepherd’s bed,
Fritillary, whose trembling bells declare
The winds of spring at play in Kore’s hair,
The purple pasqueflower, and the plant which yet
Bears on its brows Adonis’ memory set
And his dark hap still graven on its heart,
From whence at whiles like tears the blood-drops start---
This meadow straight I’ll have deflowered and mown
And all its garlands to the breezes thrown.
Nor shall the laurel, set beside thy door,
Provide thee fillets for thy forehead more;
It shall be hewn and stripped.”

He spake, and ceased;
But at the close Apollo’s mystic priest,
Teiresias, whom once a God did blind,
Teiresias, to whom the Gods were kind,
What to all other ken was veiled and dim
Cleansing of cloud and mystery for him,
Thus with sad lip and admonition stern
Gave utterance to the monarch in return:
“Think not, rash fool, presumptuous, overbold,
’Tis ours to palter with the Gods of old,
Or ours to scorn ancestral rites, of eld
Coeval with our race and sacred held
Ages ere Cadmus, driven by Fate to roam
An exile, left his Tyrian coast and home
Sidonian, and this Theban city reared,
Justly by Gods and men alike revered,
And justly by Hellene and by barbarian feared;
A city great of old, a city known
Of kindly Deities the pious throne,
Now first repulsing, madly unaware,
A god whose veins a kindred ichor bear!
Now, ere too late, draw back! and know how weak
All human reasoning, though a seer should speak,
And though his words, beyond all mortal lore,
Dowered with a wisdom as of God, should soar,
To overthrow the faith our sires believed,
The faith our grandsires from their sires received.”

“Hear now,” cried Cadmus, “words of one so wise
And so beloved in King Apollo’s eyes,
Nor dare the Smiter from Afar provoke
By speech against the dearest of our folk!
Nor stir up Zeus---for Zeus hath part in this---
To avenge the words so foully spoke amiss,
Utterance which wrongs the Bromian God and her,
The well-beloved of the Thunderer,
Our Semele. Nay, more; and hear me now:
Suppose she be no spouse of Zeus, as thou
Declar’st, indeed a woman frail, whose kin
Laid on Olympus’ Lord her mortal sin,
Let the tale live and tributary be
To our vast worship; call him Deity,
Ay, give the Thracian stranger all his claim,
Since fame to him no less to us is fame.
Call thou him God! It were a noble cheat,
Fraud which we needs must praise, a rare deceit,
If she, the Theban maid, our kin and thine,
Be thought the mother of a child divine.”

So spake he, glozing; but with wrath more dread
King Pentheus burned within, and fiercely said:
“Old dotard fool, spell not to me thy lies
Who for my rightful worship otherwise,
Ay, as befits a king, can well devise.
Hear then my plan, and say if to my state
This will not bring a lustre yet more great,
Exceeding glory, deep renown indeed.
First from our lulls my folk shall captive lead
Our silly fugitives, in chains to atone,
Each in her darkened cell immured alone,
Their foul revolt. And as for him whose art
Clouded their minds and drew them to his part

And by perplexing wiles and magic wrought
Even wise-hearted Cadmus to his thought
(For so all held him wise ere years that blind
Darkened with creeping films that honoured mind),
If ’neath this roof he comes I’ll lay to rest
The beatings of that thyrse, with ivy drest,
Quiet those tossing locks, so fairly spread,
And sever from its trunk that beauteous head.
Then, if thou wilt, thy glorious lie proclaim
Of Semele and thus augment my fame;
Since, if to be the kin of God be great,
Men surely will account of far more weight
To have slain a God, a deed beyond compare!”

So spake his folly, blindly unaware
That even then within his body ran
Red madness and a God’s high wrath began
To strike a frenzy through his blood and lure
Unto a doom most terrible and sure.
Fierce in requital, ever rich in hate
Are the dread Gods to those who scorn their state,
Forgetting not; and, though they linger long,
Yet at the last are tyrannous and strong,
Swift to smite down and mighty in their stroke
To those whose sins their righteous grief provoke.
Slowly they come, but at the last they rise
With flame of pent-up anger in their eyes,
Majestic in offended strength, and just
To chasten human folly to the dust.
With printless step that leaves nor track nor trace,
Viewless arrival, swift unhurrying pace,
The impious and unholy they pursue
And the proud madness which refused their due.
Then, when upon their vengeance-quest they burn,
Unto what friend or altar shall he turn
Who at proud pitch of late felicity
Made impious boast that it would never be
That his full sail, the sheltering headland past,
By the icy talons of the ambushed blast
Shredded and torn, should leave the stripped and straining mast,
The riding bark, by gripping tempest riven,
Whelmed under hostile waves and shoreward driven,
While he, the master of this woe, in vain
To Deities who elsewhere notice deign
Lifts frenzied prayer too late, thrust out and spurned,
His impious insolence on his head returned,
And in the choking whirlpool disappears,
With mocking laughter in his dying ears.
Fond wretch! he falls, nor in his falling knows
From whence are sent the throng of strangling woes,
Each fiercer on the other’s heel, which seize
And drag the accursed quarry to his knees.

So from the impious victim of the God
Teiresias and Cadmus turned and trod
The mountward path, and ere the shut of day
Through dewy dingles took their joyful way,
Through fragrant forest, fringed with crackling fern,
Where climbing pines beset the stealing burn,
With hastening foot and eager vision raised
To yoke and scar where yet the sunset blazed,
Eager for darkness and the winds that sweep
The sounding summits while the cities sleep,
For mountain revel and the high gracious air,
By lustral rite and worship to prepare
Against the time when Bromius should proceed
Hillward and all his shouting followers lead.

But the doomed king in Thebes with many a snare
Wove webs for his own life, and unaware,
Thinking to trap a God, himself instead
Caught with his toil and to destruction led.

The Fourth Sestiad

To Thebae, whence the King, in frantic mood,
With murderous threat and windy clamour rude,
Sent to the hills, bidding his folk lead thence
By dint of sword and harsh armipotence
The wild-heart Maenads, tidings sure befell
Of Bromius, in a way that none could tell
Made prisoner in Orchomenean plains---
News of a captive God, a God in chains!

Forthwith the King commanded to his face
This perilous stranger from the hills of Thrace,
And straightway, hid in human lineament,
Disguised as man, Iacchus they present,
Iacchus with his gleaming shoulders graced
By ruddy ringlets drooping to his waist,
Shaken in coils about his comely shape,
Like harvest-bunches of the glowing grape;
Whom thus the King, with wonder struck and dread,
Finding him beautiful as rumour said:
“Ay, thou art fair! and Fame, that spake thee well,
Did but the fringe of thy perfections tell,
Foiled, since it could but cite in thy compare
The nurtured children of Hellenic air.
Not lovelier was the youthful Ganymede,
Of Hellas erst the brightest son decreed,
When by the Delphic oracle was given
Report which won the scrutiny of Heaven.
Not lovelier he whom Kypris vainly wept;
Or Hylas, whom the Naiads as he slept
With thievish craft and jealous zeal conveyed;
Or he that drew the nightly-sceptred Maid,
When from the darkened welkin’s eddying chase
She glimpsed on Latmus’ crest his sleeping face---
Endymion, from his sheep and fronded bed
Rapt to be Shepherd of the Skies instead.
Foul was Narcissus at the water’s side,
When, vainly amorous of himself, he died;
Nor Hyacinth, though bearing locks like thine
And known associate with a friend divine,
More richly by Eurotas won his love
Than by Ismenus thou wouldst Phoebus move.
Ay, thou art fair! most beautiful of face,
Invested with a woman-witching grace!
Over thy cheek, and warm with fanned desires,
Mantles the ruddy glow that Love inspires,
Fresh as the light which in the East is born
When, rosy-fingered, from her mate the Morn,
The early-nurtured, springs and, flushed and keen,
Speeds the cool airs along the awakening green.
Snowy that skin, nor have the sun’s hot rays
Withered its hue; but from the mid-noon blaze,
Where timely boughs a gracious shelter spread,
Wooing the Cyprian with thy lovelihead,
Carefully hast thou nursed it in the shade,
While flattering breezes round thy forehead played.
Thy ruddy locks, not coarse as athletes’ are
From harsh arbitrament of mimic war,
Continual wrestle, strangling grip and thrust
Amid the seething clouds of beaten dust,
But, soft and fair as Aphrodite’s own,
Back from bright brows o’er glistering shoulders thrown,
Fall as a flood of gleaming sunset falls
On tingling peak and the high western walls.
But truce to flattery! Tell thy race and name
And of the things concerning thee which Fame
Bruits---and calls thee knave in deed and word,
Whose errand’s fruit has been a city stirred
And peaceful folk by some vile magic drawn
From loom and comb to thyrse and dappled fawn.
Of these and of thy part therein confess!
Speak true and fair; for, if thy tongue transgress,
Look not by lesser pang than death to atone
Thy crimes with us, so monstrous and so known.”

He ceased, with eager visage forward bent
And all upon his captive’s speech intent;
But the young God, for in his heart began
Mirth for the cunning folly of the man,
Smiling and calm, and mocking threats so vain,
Stood, scorning answer; till the King again:
“Art thou of Thrace? For rumour names thee thence.”

Now first unto this royal insolence
The God deigned speech: “From Thrace I came indeed,
But claim for birthplace Thebae, since the seed
Of Semele, as none knows more than thou.”

“Ay, Semele,” quoth Pentheus. “Whence and how
None knows; and of her paramour, thy sire,
Verily none, I think, would care enquire.
Doubtless Zeus slew him too.”

The Thunderer’s son,
Wroth at this wrong to his dear Mother done,
Spake, though refraining anger for awhile
And weaving nets of doom with subtle guile,
As hunters for a hare: “Know then, proud King,
What lineage and what dignity I bring,
Owning for sire the Master of the Skies,
At whose approach the Olympian Synod rise---
Who sways the cloud-rack and the teeming wind
And thunder, in its secret place confined---
Lord of the gathered rain, whose scarlet bow
Flaunts its proud scarf o’er steaming fields below.
Here is my native city, whence my name
Fit worship first and rightful, rich acclaim
Should win from reverent folk, who know their God
Son of a Theban maid, their streets who trod
Ere Zeus, constrained by love to leave his throne,
Came down and mixed his lineage with her own.
Thou, wronging Semele, dost speak amiss
Of me her son, and Zeus her lord, in this,
And shalt full weight, be sure, of wrath sustain,
Such vengeance as the Gods for sin ordain,
Stern anguish here, and after death, for fame,
Endless eternity of utter shame.
God am I, and the son of God, who bear
The sacred vineleaves bound about my hair
With clustered berries of the gleaming yew,
Ivy, and poppy-garlands dark of hue.
Mine are the cloak of fawn and panther-vest,
And mine the thyrse, which has for nodding crest
Sharp needles of the pine that darkly tells
Within what gloom the Awful Mother dwells.
From Asia and proud Bactria, far inland,
To where towered cities fringe the Ionic strand,
Through bitter Media, fortunate Araby,
Lydia with planted footstep in the sea,
Girt with my retinue of ounce and pard
And Maenads wilder yet, who followed hard,
Mad for the God they worshipped, glad to come
In wake of timbrel and the Mysian drum
(Gift of the Mother Rhea) and swift to tread
Whatever path the holy narthex led,
Hither with these and in such wise have I
Hastened, here too to lift the Iacchic cry,
To beat the Iacchic drum, the cloak of fawn
To don, with ivy round the forehead drawn,
Here too the dance to establish and the rites,
Mysterious, dread, wherein our soul delights.”

Whereat the King: “Ay, plant your folly here!
Hither your rites, to Aphrodite dear,
Fantastic mischief, deeds by midnight done,
Which rightly must the lamp of daylight shun,
Let them be brought! And that licentious crowd,
Swart Asian women, Lydians brazen-browed,
Ay, let them flood our Thebae and bring in
Each practice foul, each strange new Orient sin!
Surely, ’tis but for this we keep our state,
That sin may daily wax and grow more great
And prosperous crime become accumulate!
We bear the sword, but bear the sword in vain,
Since loving aye to wink at each new stain,
Quick to connive and loth to strike at wrong,
In action feeble though in precept strong.
Doubtless ye heard of this, and therefore came,
Knowing this town fit theatre of shame,
Knowing that here, where none would bear them hate,
Folly and vice might wed and propagate!
But out upon me! Guardian of this realm,
The steersman-pilot, set beside the helm,
I wrong the Gods and spurn their trust sublime
With mocking words that palter thus with crime!
Mark then our inmost mood and stern intent,
Whereof expect to know the due event
When from the hills we bring our women down
(Filched by thy monstrous rape from out this town,
Vain fugitives, who sin from lack of thought,
By each new lure of peering folly caught).

Then, when thy part in this is sifted well
And all that rumouring tongues against thee tell
Of rites licentious, deeds which even to speak
Drives the fierce blood in anger to the cheek,
Thou and thy Lydian followers, Asian horde,
Virgins unvirgin, meet for such a lord,
Shalt with hot pangs requite the grief and shame
Which to our Thebae with thy coming came.”

Then, while with bitter mirth he laughed within
To mark how madness consummated sin
And how on heel of impious speech and word
Strode Folly, swiftly to destruction stirred,
The Child of Zeus and Semele they led,
The fillets stripped from off his sacred head,
Stark cords upon his wrist, with chains each limb
Festooned, that did scant honour unto him!
The fire was his nativity, he came
With noise of falling towers and heavens aflame,
And of his birth the Cloud-Compeller’s bride,
Lightning-delivered, in her glory died.
Thereafter lay he in the Thunderer’s thighs,
Three months concealed from jealous Hera’s eyes,
And next, the rugged clefts of Crete amid,
The Curetes and Sacred Mother hid,
Till to full strength the infant godhead grown
Through Earth’s wide kingdoms made his worship known,
And over Asia like a victor passed,
Within his native city shamed at last!
Here first, in plight that wronged his high desert,
To durance dragged, with mocking escort girt,
The tyrant’s minions, glad to chide and chafe
This fallen greatness, since they deemed it safe.
Fools! for they thought in fetters frail to find
Power to their need, a God thereby to bind---
Thought in the darkness of a cell to chain
A light whereof the universe was fain,
Which must, since all things would accessors be,
Bending their mights to set this Master free,
Knitting the whole world’s arms to work its will
And its life-giving liberty fulfil,
By virtue of allied omnipotence
And innate power effect its passage thence,
Emerging from constraint, triumphant found,
The paltry fetters snapped wherewith ’twas bound!

The Fifth Sestiad

Therefore within the darkness of the cell
They left the young Iacchus, fettered well
And locked with iron grate and oaken door;
Then of their captive to the monarch bore
This tidings, that within stone walls immured
He lay, by clamp and rivet strong secured.
When lo! a marvel! Scarce the words were spoke,
Ere into midmost of their parley broke
The young Iacchus! As the piney steeps
Tremble when o’er their crests the tempest sweeps,
So trembled those before the Stranger’s frown;
A wind of anguish beat their spirits down.
He came far other than he came at first,
Not chained and corded in his limbs as erst,
But unconstrained and beautiful he trod,
Most manifest in liberty, a God!
And heedless of the guards, who backward fell,
Slaves of an awe beyond all speech to tell,
Shrinking before the haughty Thracian’s tread
With blanching visage and averted head.

All careless of the frightened minions strode,
And sought the chamber where the King abode,
Iacchus; and before the monarch’s face
Took up unfearful and unchallenged place.
Whereat the King, with frown of stern amaze,
While dread and anger struggled in his gaze:
“How, and by whom, enlargèd, when we late
Dismissed, to chains and durance destinate,
Comest thou thus before us, ill-advised
To flaunt a freedom so unauthorised?
Say first who freed?”

“Myself,” then answer made
The God. “Myself---no need of others’ aid;
Since, when I would, the paltry wisps that bound
With ease I snapped, nor let nor hindrance found
In grate and door which, though of ponderous weight,
Unto a God are knacks of idle state,
Gauds to no purpose, fetters frail and vain
As cobwebs to the rushing hurricane.”

And, as he spake, against the King he sped
A cloud invisible, which on him shed
A subtle poison, seizing on the brain
And driving sudden madness through each vein,
So that the King, beyond control of sense
And drifting to a frenzied impotence,
The rudder of the soul resigned and lost
And the frail barque by chasing tempest tossed,
Knew not the deeds he did, but helpless went,
By young Iacchus lured to punishment,
Led passive to his doom, because the mind,
Dimmed in its eyes, was ignorant and blind.

And on the converse of this royal pair
Burst in a herdsman from the hills, who bare
Tidings of bale for Pentheus, tidings dire
Of ravaged fields, of homes devoured with fire,
Of frantic Maenads, lifted torch aloft,
Striking with ruin cot and stead and croft,
The folk in flight, like fawns when pards pursue,
Before Iacchus’ dreadful retinue;
The women, late immured with mortised stone,
From durance fled, at large by means unknown,
All craft for their recapture vainly plied.
Ranging with flame along the country side,
Frighting to run the troops against them sent
Towards Cithaeron’s dingles as they went,
Slaying the herds, and sending up in smoke
The thatchèd homesteads of the farmer-folk;

And now, where clamouring winds, with whistle shrill,
Were found fit pipers for their madcap will,
Joined in the dance and all forbidden rites,
Knit in fantastic revel upon the heights.
Thereat the King: “By whose neglect at first
Came it about that these their prison burst?
Know my Boeotarchs this?”

“My lord, right well.
Be sure, they know the whole. But, truth to tell,
No women these, though bearing woman’s form,
But fierce and swift to attack as are the swarm
Of lynxes couched that in Cithaeron hide,
And slippery as the eels that glance and glide
Within Copais.”

Rose the King in ire,
His brain with gathering madness set afire,
And spake: “Since folly reigns throughout the state
And holds with sin---where acts should speak---debate,
Since imbeciles, where once Boeotarchs ruled,
By every juggling licence are befooled,
Ourselves will furnish what the occasion needs
And view in person these unhallowed deeds;
Will seek Cithaeron, find the hidden glade
Where now they revel; and, without all aid,
Ourselves alone, nor lifting violent hand,
Back to our town by force of mere command
Will bring our women. Straightway will we don
Armour, and drive this needful action on.
Come, give me, that for every hurtling stress
I go prepared, hither my knightly dress,
My helm and panoply of woven mail.
And also, lest our untried footsteps fail,
Unknowing of their haunt, to track the way
To where these frenzied at their upland play,
Setting all law aside, in flaunting sin
Wrong the calm mountains with demoniac din,
Search out and bring me one with vision keen,
Whose toil and traffic with the hills has been,
Some shepherd whose accustomed eyes know well
Each rugged path that streaks the brake-clad fell,
Whose skill through bogs and coverts well can guide,
And bring to where these wanton ones abide.”

“Nay,” spake the young Iacchus, swift to snare
His silly prey, as hunters with a hare,
“What need of such, since I will guide, who know
Each crooked path whereby thou needs must go,
Who well the trysting-place and glen can find
Where now my Maenads (while the laughing wind
Tosses their locks, wherethrough the sunlight strays)
Weave on the mountain-crest their measured maze,
Or, zoned and girdled with the living snakes
(While heavenly way the vast procession takes
Of joyful stars), put step in nightly dance
Beneath the moon’s unwithered countenance?
Would I not serve thy will? Can I not lend
Sufficient aid for thy desirèd end?
Use me, then, thus.”

And Pentheus, reft of thought,
A blindfold victim, to the altar brought,
’Twixt stone and pyre, too mad to know and dread,
Gave answer swift: “The words are wisely said.
Thou shalt be guide, and we together go.
For who, as thou hast said, so well can know
Whence we can clearly spy these deeds of sin?
Let us depart forthwith.”

“Not so,” brake in
The God, uplifting yet a further lure:
“This armoured panoply of thine, be sure,
Will, when we come, bewray thee, who thou art.
Lay by these dangerous flaunts ere we depart;
Else evil will befall.”

Bewildered spake
The King: “Nay, what concealment shall I take,
(Since ’tis unmeet a warrior lay aside
The arms that are a hero’s strength and pride,)
To cloak this martial garb and case of mine?”

“The fawncloak and the Iacchic robes divine,”
Answered the God. “And take the thyrse in hand,
The berried javelin and the piney brand;
With yew and vineleaf let thy locks be bound,
With juniper and ivy-fillets crowned.”

“Would’st make me woman?” Pentheus straight began.

“Ay. Lest they slay thee, seeing thee as man.
Haste; wrap thee in these linen robes, and toss
This dappled fawn and ivy-chains across
Thy shoulders. Speed! Refuse not, lest thou die
When by thy dress thy native self they spy.
But one thing more, and that shall be thine own
When open field we tread---a serpent-zone.”

So, as a woman garbed and bonneted,
A cloak of fawnskin o’er his shoulders spread,
Robed to his feet, a tossing thyrse in hand,
Glad for his doom, behold the monarch stand
Beside the young Iacchus, bidding lead
Towards Cithaeron’s sacred glens with speed!
“So let us on,” he urged, “since needs I must,
In thy advice, being thus unarmèd, trust.”

Then through the streets of Thebes together trod
His victim and the quiet-angered God,
While from their homes as to a marvel flock
The folk, with silent gibe and inward mock
To mark their emperor garbed in woman’s dress,
And at his side, in awful loveliness,
The stranger with the godlike mien and tread,
Fair brows and wonderful, alluring head,
The worship-worthy eyes that smote with awe
Yet snared the loyalty of all that saw,
The ruddy locks that in the morning shone
As though all heaven’s light were drawn thereon.
But, while they marvelled with a hushed surprise
To mark their monarch in so strange disguise,
The vengeance of Iacchus bound him fast
And through his veins redoubled madness passed.
Familiar scenes to his bewildered ken
Took form diverse to theirs with other men.
His raving vision Thebae twain discerned;
Twin suns upon their heavenly pathway burned;
All otherwise to sight his comrade seemed,
Iacchus as a hornèd bullock deemed!

When on the hills they trod, and up the side
Of steep Cithaeron, Pentheus and his guide
Plied rapid foot until they came where stood
Stark and aloft a bouldered brotherhood,
A cirque of granites reared of old to be
The mountain-seat of some dead deity,
Whose worship failed when on his votaries came
Red sunset, and a host of newer name
Usurped their place and for their rites abhorred
Brought in the service of a later Lord;
As once on tribes Pelasgic and the brood
Titanic swept a swarming multitude
Who bare fresh Gods and lit the altar-brand
At fires far other, lifting fervent hand
To Zeus and all the starry meinie held
Olympus-dwellers, Gods whose might excelled
Old Cronos and the drowsy reign of eld.
So here deserted stood this temple great,
Whose bearded moss proclaimed its ancient date,
While lurking snake and darting lizard hid
About the roots of each gaunt pyramid.
The stretching hills with ling and bilberry-bell
Flushed purple; towered upon a neighbouring fell
A pine-tree waved, to whose bare foot a lane
Of crimson heath ran like an opened vein
And splashed with many an overflowing stain
The mount’s gray forehead.

Here beside a pool
Flagged with bright stones and fanned by breezes cool,
Fed by the falling beck, did Pentheus stay,
The wilderness of mountains every way
Opening new wonders as he looked and spake:
“We are alone; far as the eye can take,
No foot with ours is stirring. Yet I heard
Unearthly melodies, though never word
Came from this virgin music. Whence this strain,
That owns no harper? There! It breathes again!
I almost could believe some secret quire
Of Oreads woke the silver-stringèd lyre.
’Twould please Teiresias. Would the old man were here!
Doubt not that he would read its meaning clear,
Or frame, at least, some tale to serve his need.
But dost thou know from whence these notes proceed,
Or who their author?”

“Truly. Hear, and learn
Whence comes this music,” spake the God in turn;
“And know it for that hymn to whose concent
All Nature must a living share present
And every creature in the Universe
In its deep harmony a part rehearse.
’Tis given to thee to hear it, since alone
And with a soul whose might has helped thine own.
As sweetest, unawakened echoes dwell
Within the hollows of the uncorded shell,
And from the winding ways of Triton’s horn
Strange melodies and stormy ones are born,
When the skilled lip, that knows and can devise,
Its oft-approved and cunning virtue tries,
So at the hidden depth and heart of things
A hardly-conscious murmur dumbly sings.
The planets unto music are in thrall,
Nor move but thus; and at the core of all
This sleeping world are hidden springs of sound,
Which slumber as some earthquake underground,
Whose calm repose masks power to rive in twain
The knotty hills, and on the lordless main
To lay a stern control, at whose command
The waves vibrate and shudder with the land.
Nor when her organ-tempests are at peace
Does Nature’s ebb of melody surcease.
Then she invokes the charming winds to play
In gentlest lapses all a summer’s day
About her gnarlèd oaks; or she applies
Unto her lips the smooth, white conch, or tries
The pensive reed, attuned to the still hour
Wherein no raging tempest rude hath power.
’Tis at such times the enlightened spirit hears
The sleeping winds, calm leaves, and turning spheres
(Mellowed by distance), and most clearly knows
That into its own self strange music flows,
Which must bear fruit, and preciously proceed
To melody of many a noble deed.
But haste. For see! within the blazing lift
Mid-noon has passed, and clouds begin to drift,
As daring to anticipate their hour,
Up from the far horizon, where they cower
Till sundown calls them to the flushing west
To attend Day’s Monarch to his wishèd rest.
Then speed. Be sure, our goal is nigh at hand.”

So, scrambling up a scree where, starkly grand,
Tall needles towered, forlornly proud to bear
Cleft-haunting foxglove and the maidenhair,
That draped each ragged dint and weather-stain,
Though with much toil in little time the twain
Came to a cliff-shut glen, whose walls, arrayed
With climbing heath, a hanging garden made,
By nodding pines o’ershadowed, where a brook
Down emerald lawns its prattling journey took,
With giant mace and grasses lush and green
Brink-bearded, and with springing flowers between.
Here parting boughs a prospect fair disclosed;
At will along the pleasant swards disposed
The Maenads in the sunlight lay at bask
Or with their hands in many a gracious task
Employed; while some the leafy thyrse embossed
Anew with ivy for the ivy lost
(Dropped in the matin revel and snatched and torn,
Or with the smiting sunrays drooped and worn),
Others, like fillies loosened from the yoke,
Massed into twain, the morrice joined, and woke
With voice alterne the dionysiac chaunt,
Loud with ecstatic laud and holy vaunt.

Sprawled on a crest and overlooking ledge,
And straining sight beyond its broken edge,
Halted the King and God. “Here patient wait
Till I return,” Iacchus bade; and straight,
Treading before the frighted King’s amaze
Along the steadfast air’s unyielding ways,
Swift as a flash by trackless paths he flew
Down to his followers’ haunt; the Maenads knew
Their God, and round him in a frantic ring
Flocked, mad with worship of the boisterous king,
Who spake, and said: “Women who love my name,
And count as yours my glory and my fame!
See in our net this man on yonder height,
Who did with impious words our honour slight,
Scorning the cult of sacred Semele
With speech that did foul wrong to her and me!
With loss of sense and lack of inward heed
(Else had he never donned a woman’s weed)
I smote him first, and through his city brought,
A mock and marvel! See this mad one caught!
I grant him now a prey, a quarry sure,
At your just hands his righteous doom to endure.”

He ceased; and from applaud and hoarse acclaim
Returned, and to his victim-comrade came,
Alighting there. With hand above his brow
Shading his restless eyes, the Monarch, now
Intoxicate with folly, thus addressed:
“My mother do I see; and of the rest,
Though distance sets a mist before my eyes,
Ino, Autonoe, I recognise.
Would I might see them well!”

“Then take my hand,”
Iacchus answered, and with the command
Plucked from the height and to the meadow bore.
But Pentheus: “I should better see and more,
If on some bank or tree’s tall eminence,
Clearly to view their deeds of horror thence.”
Whereat a wonder, for the Stranger bent
A towering ash, till to the earth it leant,
And set the King thereon, and let it rise
Back to its wonted station in the skies,
But gently, slowly, lest the Monarch fall.
Now of a truth could Pentheus see them all,
The Maenads gathered there to open view,
Yet wished he could not---for they saw him too,
And, eager to bring down the impious man,
Wild to his perch the holy maidens ran.
Then with a shout beyond a mortal tongue
Cithaeron rang, and, though the day was young,
Wide through the west and over heaven there spread
A track of flame, and every peak grew red,
As though with sudden sunset made ablaze,
And splendour fell on all the forest-ways,
Each dingle with a wondrous radiance lit
And every pool whereby the halcyons flit.
And by a path of dreadful, strange ascent
Into the heaven of heavens Iacchus went,
Charioted by the columned fire which sprang
Beneath his feet; and from the welkin rang
A voice which said: “Behold the prey I bring!
Him who was late our foe, the impious King
Who mocked at me, and you, and our delights,
Our orgies scorned, and loathed our lovèd rites!
Deal as you will, blest Maids, with vengeance fit
Visit, refraining not one part of it!”

And on the words an awful silence fell,
Such silence as the Mysian seers know well
When on Mount Ida’s topmost solitudes
Above dark pines a darker Presence broods
And muttered thunders speak the Mother near,
When fails the mystic hymn from reverent fear,
Stilled is the timbrel, and the boxwood drum,
And every three-peaked Corybant is dumb.
So on Cithaeron such a hush divine
Fell over beetling crag and blackening pine,
While yet the dreadful light, far in the sky,
Burning the heavens, proclaimed Iacchus nigh.
Thence rang a second shout, that all might know
A present deity in that red glow,
Calling his followers on. And at the sound
Springing from crag to crag with fevered bound,
Leaping with crashing stones the torrent’s bed,
Mad with the God, the frenzied Maenads sped
To where, high in the glorious lift espied,
With piteous voice their cowering quarry cried,
How vainly! for the thread of doom was spun
And all the tale of impious folly done,
The King to penalty of hideous fate
Abandoned by the God he sought too late.
Now, lest the victim’s mother know, and save
From foul despite the trembling life she gave,
Against the Queen and all her maddened train
A blinding cloud, which seared and shut the brain,
Iacchus sent---and on their quarry flew,
Wild with redoubled fury, all that crew.
Some, clambering high, a vantage-place possessed
Upon a rock whose steep and slippery crest
To frontward of the creaking ash-tree towered;
And thence a hail of heavy javelins showered,
Sharp thyrsi, jagged flints, and hurtling stone,
And crashing granite. All in vain were thrown,
And Pentheus’ height their eager anger still
Baffled, a mark beyond their utmost skill.
They smote him not. His mother rose, and she
Cried to the host: “Put shoulder to the tree!
Tear from its anchored root, and then with ease
The skulking beast that rides thereon we’ll seize.”
For, so the God had blinded her, her child
A lion-cub or climbing panther wild
She deemed. And now a rushing thousand raced
And with fierce tugs the straining ash displaced,
Swirled out its roots, and from his refuge flung
The whimpering wretch that to the branches clung.
First of the God-intoxicated rout
Agave pressed. The King, with dreadful shout,
Cried, “Mother! see thy child! I am thine own!”
Plucking his bonnet off. But, cruel grown,
Those eyes did with no recognition greet,
But, planting on his quivering flank her feet,
His right hand with her hands Agave gripped,
Then, hurling back her weight, his shoulder ripped;
Autonoe the other shoulder tore;
A bleeding foot, still-sandalled, Ino bore.
Not one without some spoil of him she held
A lion-cub and gloried having quelled,
Not one without some bloody trophy went,
Some flesh from the dismembered Monarch rent,
Such power was in them from the God, to break
Socket and bone, and limb from limb to take.

Then, with the ghastly relics of the man,
The joyful Maids for Thebes their march began.

The Sixth Sestiad

Now must the Muse, with faltering tones that fail,
Take up the finish of her piteous tale.
Now has she told of mortal insolence
And the dire penalty that followed thence,
How a God’s wrath the pride that mocked his will
Did with a dreadful penalty fulfil.
King Pentheus slain, she must in order tell
Of whatso deeds upon his death befell.

The Maenads, while Agave led them on,
Lifting the head of her beloved son
All blood-bedabbled but with face set white
And from the terror of the last affright
Frozen in death, with starting eyes that yet
Blazed with a fear the corpse could not forget,
Now in swift tramp, to shouts of fierce acclaim,
On to the seven-gated city came.
The warders challenged; and the Maenads all
Answered in turn the folk upon the wall.

First spake the Queen; and like a rushing wind
Her followers echoed as they marched behind.
Then with swift speech the crowding folk replied,
And met the Maidens in their onward stride.
“O Theban men, who love Iacchus well!”

“Nay, who art thou that callest? Speak, and tell.”

“I, I, Agave. Lo, what bleeding prey,
Our new-got spoil, our quarry slain this day,
From mountain brake and uplands shagged we bear!”

“I see! I see! and in thy triumph share.
But say, and make my joy with knowledge crowned,
How took ye him?”

“Untrammelled and unbound,
Without a net, nor snared in any toil,
With our own hands we slew and took the spoil;
We women whom ye scorn as weak and deem
Unfit to stand amid the rushing stream
Of battle, or to smite the beasts in field,
This lion killed. I had in hand no shield;
Unweaponed, without dint of sword or spear,
I smote. Behold my glorious trophy here!”

Thus with exulting chant and joyful din
Up to the gates they came, and entered in;
The fearful folk, dispersed their march before,
Not daring to reveal what prey they bore.
Even as a pomp from conquest comes with shout
And tossing banners, all that Maenad rout
To Semele’s low fane with paean sped,
And nailed upon the wall that bleeding head,
Fit sacrifice to appease the martyred Maid.

But Cadmus to the far Cithaeron glade,
Following in track of Pentheus and the God,
Plied rapid foot, and from the blood-soaked sod
Gathered the relics of the King, though few,
For burial honour and interment due;
Then from the glen of slaughter to the town,
Bearing his mournful burthen, journeyed down.
Before the gates the frenzied mob he met
And, in the frontward of their meinie set,
Agave, who with triumph pressed to greet,
Elate and proud, and forced to turn his feet
To where the gory head he loved and knew,
Nailed to his daughter’s temple, came in view.
Here, pausing with bared brow and hidden face,
Weeping he stood, and silent for a space,
Then spake: “Know’st thou the trophy here devote?”

“Assuredly. ’Twas my hand the lion smote,
Unarmed, by force of strength and cunning deft,
And, woman though I be, of life bereft.”

“What lion this?” said Cadmus. “Look again!
And see what prey thy luckless hands have slain.
This is thy son, who drew from thee his breath,
Now by thy madness hurtled into death---
Thy son, by his unnatural mother torn,
And by her dripping hands exposed to scorn!”

And at his words on the bewildered Queen
Flashed the true knowledge of what woe had been;
Even as a cloud before the driving wind,
Chased by that sight, all madness left her mind.
Too late, in utter anguish she perceived
Whose head her violent hands of breath bereaved,
And deathly-white, not speaking, to the floor,
She fell---her maidens forth her body bore
With gentle haste towards her chamber-room,
And thence, since life returned not, to the tomb.

Then unto Cadmus, musing there alone,
By silent sorrow racked and inward moan,
Garbed as a God the young Iacchus came,
His wondrous tresses zoned with tonguèd flame,
And still the mystic light about him brake
Which lit Cithaeron’s dingles; and he spake:
“Hear, thou of whom this earth-born race are seed,
The doom and destiny that we arede,
Hating, as well we might, since mad with wrongs,
Whatever soul to this loathed tribe belongs!
Grandson of thine was he whose impious arm
Was lifted late to work our person harm,
Whose rattling tongue blasphèmous dared attaint
Our honour, nor received from thee restraint.
Yet, since thou didst, though with imperfect faith,
Not urged by love but rather dreading scathe,
Accept our rites and with due vows present
Thy worship, light shall be thy punishment.
Thou who in morn of youth didst slay of old
The dragon couched within this rocky hold
A dragon shalt become, a hissing snake;
Thy wife with thee a brutish form shall take.
Yet hear the word which draws the sting of doom!
A thousand cycles past, then reassume,
Thou and Harmonia, human shape, and rest
For ever in the Islands of the Blest,
Islands of bliss where sun nor summer fail,
Where neither falls the driving rain nor hail,
Nor ply the white feet of the chilling snow,
Nor any boisterous-winged wind can blow,
Where comes no frost nor fire’s calamity,
But, set within the strong arms of the sea
And lapped about with swiftly-flowing tides,
Untouched of every hurt the land abides.
There are the stones, the trees, and every sight
Such as here moves beholders to delight,
With dazzling worth and with all glory crowned,
Beyond all glory that on earth is found,
Fulfilled of wonder and rare excellence.
And there the Gods are visible to sense,
With fanes and temples where they dwell indeed,
And move abroad with men in human weed,
Granting them gracious converse in the street,
As friends and kinsfolk here each other greet.
Your date fordone, and weary penance past,
Thither shall Ares carry thee at last.”

He spake; nor waited answer at the close,
But heavenward in a ruddy column rose,
A cloud of flame. Then, whilst a lightning-flash
Ripped the white sky, beyond the thunder’s crash
Rang out a dreadful noise of tumbling stone
And riving timbers, each on other thrown,
And Pentheus’ palace at the sudden stroke
Crumbled to utter ruin, and the folk,
Mad with the terrors of this doomful day,
Fell on their face afeard and prostrate lay,
Dreading the wrathful heavens which all that night
Burned, not with stars but with the reddening light
That showed the young Iacchus brooding still
Above the sinful race that vexed his will.

But to Teiresias mourning at the shrine
Of Semele, his darkened eyes with vine
Of Bromius shadowed, and the rustling bough
Of his lord Loxias bound about his brow,
In other fashion came the insulted God.
He touched the prophet with his narthex-rod:
“We know thee holy, know thee pure from blame
Though all around thee fell to deeds of shame.
Long life is thine; though generations pass
In sequence swift as is the summer grass,
Growing and fading, swift to spring again
And swift to perish, thou shalt still remain
A towering oak, erect above the low
Squat lives that like a vision come and go.
And know, when Hermes leads thee hence at last,
Still in the House of Hades shalt thou cast
A shadow from thy greatness, mighty yet
And from the Dead thy name shall worship get;
Still in those halls of sighing shalt thou hold
A prophet’s place, and keep thy staff of gold.”

So to Teiresias came, with gentle word,
The young Iacchus, and his grace conferred;
But on the impious Monarch vengeance due
Fell from the offended deity, and slew.
That his destruction, meet for such a crime,
Might stand example to each after-time.
For ever jealous of their righteous fame,
And ever swift with cruel scourge to tame
The impious insolence which spurns their yoke,
Are the high Gods, and with their dreaded stroke
For sins requite the unjust with many a blow
And chasten folly with redoubled woe.

Divider

This Brain, With Sorrow’s Dint

This brain, with sorrow’s dint
Battered and scored---
As a chalk-scrabbled board,
So, with drudge
Of anxious pain, and gray, dim thought
One smear and smudge---
Will nevermore take print
Of beauty (once that wrought
Its impress fine, clear without effort caught),
Unless that, riving sheer,
Some knife fell, scraping clean
This folly, wisdom’s blur
And scars where toil’s hard, slipping edge has been.
Then---if no streak of memory lived, no white
Of dingy thought, to mar new scriptures bright---
Then might it bear
Image of beauty’s eyes---as from a glass
Fling back the grass
Wind-shimmer-stirred,
Or flashing water, yellowing moon, quick bird,
The virgin frankness of the encrimsoned air
When March the almond-branches shakes,
Or Earth’s wild brightness when she wakes
Mid snow new-fallen, with dazed and dazzling stare.

Divider

Sleepless Night

All night upon my bed I tossed in vain,
Choked in a vapid, windless air unstirred;
The ceaseless wailing at my side I heard
Of my sick babe; an anvil in my brain
Throbbed with the thumping of the hammer, pain;
With painted moonlight smeared, the world without
Was mad with senseless birds that shriek and shout.
God grant I may not pass such nights again!

Dawn. Then the burning sun, and pitiless blast
Of noon. The hours, each fiercer than the last,
Drag on, their hands with useless effort crammed.
Neuralgia-stabbed, I think of hawthorn bowers,
Of apple-groves, of heaths when August flowers.
I wake, and swoon, and dream that I am damned.

Divider

The Badal

The badal* burst; steadily fell all day
The rain; the boys on the further bank of the river
Asked leave to go, for the water was rising fast.
The rain poured on all night; dawn showed at last
On a mist-swept, twilight world, a dusk wherethrough,
Twisting the rain in wisps, a rough wind flew,
Whirling the showers like waterspouts round and round,
And leaping upon the trees with the tiger’s bound
When he breaks the buffalo’s back---with strain and shiver
The garden moaned, as he ravaged and raved on his way.

Last, with his thousand secret arms the river
From nulla and forest-pool his tribute drew,
And Susunia† shook his dark, drenched tresses loose.
Huddled and hurrying, tumbling by hasty sluice,
The yellow, turbid flood poured in, and the bank
Crumbled, the swollen river the ricefields drank,
Islanding copse and orchard; whirlingly shot,
Great trunks went spinning; the stream like a boiling pot
Seethed and hissed, its billows a winepress trod
By the stamping, clay-plashed feet of an unseen god.

  • * Cyclonic disturbance.
  • † A mountain in Bengal.

Divider

Sravan*

On Sravan nights the rain
Roars like a river in spate;
The moving walls draw near
With rush and bound, thin out and disappear,
Then swell to a steady, pelting pour again.
Lying awake, I hear
How the spirit of Sravan walks the troubled night,
Swaying the rain-thrashed winds for his delight,
This way and that the clamorous dark dividing,
Cleaving and thrusting the storm’s black-silvery freight
Hither and thither, racing, receding, sliding---
As he walks the watery world with his demon-gait.

  • * The rainiest Indian month.

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The Wind’s Flight

In his robe of wavering, silken rain,
The Wind-God flies through the air;
And the bamboos curtsey and rustle,
With delicate, dècorous bustle
Of courtiers craning their necks for glance
Of a passing monarch’s countenance.
But the Wind-God goes, nor heeds
A shaking of grasses, a twitter of reeds,
But flies, flies, flies through the air,
In his thin-spun, shimmering robe of rain.

Divider

Chaitra* Verses

I

The Ghost of Phalgun† clatters at my door;
Opening it, I see
Bloom is dust upon the mango-tree,
All fragrance blow away
With winds of yesterday.
Dust the shredded dust receives,
Wherein life coiled a space,
Becoming sap and stamen, curve and grace.

With choking leap and restless bound,
An eddying goblin, swirling round and round
In cloak of burning wind and earth-cloud gray,
The Ghost of Phalgun dances,
Whisks and whirls and glances---
A rattle of dry leaves
Sweeps o’er the forest-floor.

  • * The first month of the Indian hot weather.
  • † The last spring-month, immediately preceding Chaitra.

II

Through the forest Chaitra striding hurls
Mohwa’s fragrant waxen whorls
To earth, and showers
The massed, ruddy flowers
Of parrot-beakèd palas; dustward thud
The simul*-bowls, which linked in fellowship
Dawn by dawn, with their sweet wine, trim rows
Of mynas, mobs of cunning, clamorous crows,
Crowding to sip.
Chaitra hears, and laughs: “Another dud!
Soon not a bowl shall burn on any bough!”
His spear of wind he twirls,
Then spins aloft; the tree, with groaning sough,
Drops its last flower, stained dark as congealed blood.

  • * The silk-cotton, whose flowers are huge crimson bowls.

Divider

Two Women

Against the knife-keen wind she ran for warmth,
Her torn, thin cloth drawn close about her head
Her huddled body twisted to the cold,
Each sinewy limb a witness to the wrongs
Of sixty buffeting years.

A clatter of hoofs
Rang on the road; an English lady came
Ruling her proud slave proudly and easily.
The season’s welcome sharpness whipped the blood
To riot in her cheeks, and in her eyes
Fanned to a flame the never-smouldering joy.
A gracious nod; and the tall waler’s strength
Had borne her onward, one with the bright form
That danced her exquisite wildness out of sight.

Spirit of Beauty, doubly manifest
In these, my blood! let not the visions go,
As went this Indian dawn, without they leave
A heart more quick to feel, an eye not blind
To glory’s steps, a braver, firmer mind!

Divider

Sarenga* Trees

Ere the heath ends, a strung-out line of sals
Step, like giants striding to the bath.
One, with rakish, feathered hat thrust back,
Slouches forward, both his hands in pocket;
Another, tall, looks down into the face
Of a prim lady-sal who peers on tiptoe;
Others bunch or bustle, lag or saunter.

Long ago, when first the woods were cut,
These were folk who laughed to watch the spoilers.
Harif turned to trees their vile procession.

  • * In Bengal.
  • † Krishna, who played his pranks in the forest.

Divider

Memory

Not your dear presence, Lady, can this morn
Cleanse from my breast the pangs wherewith ’tis weighed;
Glad is my heart, yet sorrow clouds with shade
The springing pleasure with your coming born.
Not for the things whereof the world thinks scorn
My spirit faints; though censured, undismayed
She holds her course, nor weary nor afraid
She waxes, neither flags for that forlorn.

But memory, welling whence I may not know,
Of dastard word and deed that hurt the weak,
Souls in their own behalf that might not speak,
Distresses; neither, though her God forgive,
Shall she again to peace and pardon grow,
Through all the eternal years that she must live.

Divider

This Sword of Verse

This sword of verse I bear within my hand
The years have fashioned; thus and thus I bade;
But they, for higher mandate that they had,
With patient eyes elsewhere, to my command
Not hearkened, neither wrought it as I planned,
But damascened with shining joys and clad
The hilt with gems that make the gazer glad
And plunged in hissing griefs the bitter brand.

Yet men, that dream not of the heats which made,
Chide the sure poise and beauty of the blade,
Till cold its master seems and wrapt apart.
The brightness blinds.---To you this truth appears:
No warrior wields it, but a child, whose heart
Is weak and troubled oft with causeless tears.

Divider

Harbour-Music

I

Beyond the harbour drift
And pace far out of sight
Impatient tides that lift
Against the fire-hung night---

Against the thunder-glow
Of stars that curb their hate---
(Those glimmering wastes below
Must watch and float and wait.)

There is a fierce wind stalks
Athirst and gripped to slay---
There is a dim moon walks
Loiteringly astray.

II

She wanders till the morn
Shall drive her weakness hence;
The prowling waters scorn
Her gracious impotence.

But still the impartial stars
Thrust back that raging crew,
Who may not pass their bars
Before their season due,

Who plunge and peer and roar,
And sullen wait the hour
The wind shall burst my door
And toss me to their power.

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A Perfect Bear

The Bear is much misunderstood;
Our writers do him grave injustice.
So, listen, Frank---no beast more good
And worthy of your deepest trust is.

Witness his kindness to those two
Their wicked uncle had forsaken!
I tell a story known to few---
The children wept, by night o’ertaken,

When lo, a furry, friendly form!
He gave a paw to each, then shelter;
Those tiny travellers from the storm
Ran with this uncle helterskelter.

They heard outside the hissing sleet;
They heard the forest groan and stagger;
The sky was like a tattered sheet
Ripped by the lightning’s fiery dagger.

They cried at first with fear; but he
Did with kind looks and ways restore them;
His capers filled their hearts with glee;
He set wild raspberries before them;

He brought dry bracken for their bed;
He shook down leaves of weeping willow;
He placed a glow-worm by their head;
He pulled his fur to make their pillow.

All night they slept without a stir,
Then breakfasted on wild bees’ honey;
He took them to a woodcutter,
And gave him wax to sell for money.

Was this not kind? And yet, today,
How often! Frank, the words are cruel!
“He is a perfect bear,” we say!
A perfect bear? Fair play’s a jewel!

Why, if he were a perfect bear,
He would be something so entrancing,
His very name would banish care
And we should hardly keep from dancing

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Philosophy

Bunny at burrow sits
And groweth wise thereby;
He sees the flying rooks,
And has no wish to fly.

For all the wrangling noise
Wherewith they beat the air,
It cuts no grass, nor brings
One lettuce to their lair!

And, as philosophers
Chew on their straws of talk,
So Bunny chews on his,
And masters root and stalk.

“I let those fellows brag
And call their flappings fun;
For me the world’s a field
Wherein to skip and run---

“A pantry packed with grass!
Ah, see my whiskered face!
Have you a face as calm
And wise and full of grace?”

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A Diver

Towards his hole,
Startled, he lunges,
Flirting to sight
His fleecy tail---
A snowy sail
That grips the light!
Into a grassy sea
The whole bark plunges.

Far before the wind-puffs roll
Waves whose green tops wag silently;
Drowned in their depths---and in my gulfing eyes---
Pert, timid, scampering Beauty
Securely lies.

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Cherwell Floods in May

Cuckoos, with welcoming zest,
From pollards tousled and tangled
Shouted; and hawthorns pressed
The water with boughs thick-spangled.
A snake, its yellow head
High-held, with threaded gleam
Athwart us as we sped,
Cut through the brimming stream.

Winking forget-me-nots
Swung signal from the shore
To the mayflies’ tiny yachts,
Danced on a foam-shot floor;
Thigh-deep in golden pile
Of buttercups, the kine
Munched with their grass the while
Mouthfuls of green sunshine.

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Lines Submitted by a Candidate for Election to the Left Wing in Poetry

The hedonistic avalanche
Of my umbrageous, viscid thought
Has made my brain a mottled ranch,
With fiery stars and leopards fraught.
The mizzling reel of plangent mirth
Forbids my spangled japes to settle;
I make a football of the Earth---
My boot of Popocatapetl.
The squamous whirl of hispid dreams
Blows round me as I peak and mope,
Until the Moon a bishop seems,
Swigging some dull, infernal dope.

Cloud-mitred in the skies he glares,
Intoning loud with hideous din,
And clattering down the vapid stairs
Come pantaloon and harlequin;
Wide through Arabian sands I run;
Behind me pounds in mood of frolic
A bear who takes me for a bun;
Before me wombats frisk and rollick.
Nebuchadnezzar from the grass
Rises with hoofs and tossing horns;
I am lost! Leviathan blocks the pass,
With snakes and bulls and unicorns!

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A Himalayan Legend

(Translated from the Sanskrit of Mithyāvādi Lambādhanvāchāryya, Court Poet of Raja Sthulamāthā.*)

Where rhinocerotes roam through rhododendra
Came of old a priestess who, chancing to offend Ra,
Was from Memphis banished, with bitter gibe and gesture---
Given a sack and sandals, bread and change of vesture.
“Ra the Great is angry! Ra the Great is waxy!
Hence to Chimborazo! Hence to Cotopaxi!
Hence to Kini Balu! Or, if you wish it, oh, by
All means pitch your tent amid the wastes of Gobi!”

“Nay, ’tis Hind that lures me---Hind where in the Ganges
Snooky saurians nibble the bather’s brown phalanges.
I, of Ra the priestess, will priestess be of Kali,
Singing Sanskrit slokas, pattering psalms in Pali.
Hind where mighty peaks——”

“Vamoose then! Quit your talking.
Tramp! And through Arabia Felix keep on walking.
Think of Ra’s fierce anger, and thou shalt then with great ease
Cross the torrid sands and overpass Euphrates---
Oxus---Indus---Jumna! Do not dare to tarry
Till thy weary eyes shall rest on Chumulari.
Make the wind thy sandals; yea, and shod thereunder
With the lightning’s speed, if thou wouldst ’scape the thunder!
Hurry, wretched sibyl! (for never shalt thou bend Ra)
Where rhinocerotes roam through rhododendra.”

  • * A monarch of the Lunar Dynasty, whose historicity must be considered doubtful. He is not mentioned by either Pargiter or Buehler.

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Valetta from the Sea, 1927

Where the Eyes of Christendom looked out
To spy the Turkish sails,
What legends crown the grey redoubt,
Waking heroic tales?

“Ask for McEwan’s Splendid Stout,
And Gait’s Fine Burton Ales.”

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In the Damascus-Beirut Train, 1919

Wordsworth, thou shouldest be with me at this hour,
For, as the train through Anti-Lebanon
Climbed slowly, by the track a gold speck shone
Which on inspection proved itself a flower
Of celandine; then more; a “very dower”
Of such, ere we a hundred yards have gone!
By Coele-Syria, if I should count on,
To find some thousands more I have the power.

So I remember thee---thy happy bliss
In modest beauty, simple yet sublime;
Remember too, as is made clear by this
Delightful poem, with what lazy skill
Thou didst pen sonnets, tagging rhyme with rhyme
Till thou hadst managed fourteen lines to fill.

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Skull and Stream

Beyond Damascus, where the air blew chill,
Snow-boding, and the whistling, wintry flaw
Round rock and crevice rang, a skull I saw
Facing the plain, chance-tumbled in a rill.
The sparkling water checked and curved, to fill
The shell where Reason once gave Passion law,
Then, under broken arch and fleshless jaw,
Danced out, to slip and glitter down the hill.

This white, far-gleaming dome was late a brow,
In decent semblance clad---a plaything now
For wind and stream! For laughter of human lips
In the naked fangs is ripple of water’s speech,
While the One Life strives here, in life’s eclipse,
Its old, unheeded, patient will to teach.

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“And Sitting Down, They Watched Him There”

Mid-winter; and through Anti-Lebanon
Our sick men shivered, as the train crawled on.
A desolate wind over frore tundras whistled,
Rattling and clanking the stiff willow-beds;
In the orchard-hedges mistletoe and haw
Glistened with ice; sharp, gleaming, black aiguilles
Shed their precipitate loads on the white fields.
Beyond, on loftier Lebanon were fogs
And numbing sleet; and choking storms of snow
Clotted the air; a sheeted wall shone out,
Makmal, Sannin, Khenisiyeh, and Baruk.
To southward, mightiest Hermon shut the vale.

At Rayak, halfway in the hollow heart
Of Syria, ere we climbed to Lebanon,
I saw a Turkish prisoner building dumps.
His shirt and shorts in ribbons round him hung;
His bare, frost-bitten feet winced as they splashed
The icy pools. Shaking with cold and fever,
He raced about his work, with wild, scared eyes.
Good-natured groups stood by, and watched him there.

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Prisoners of War: Damascus, 1918-1919

We kept them in the square; against the wall
A thatched roof hung, perhaps some six feet wide.
There was no inner wall; the winter’s wind
Had leave to search their ragged frames, the rain
Beat slanting inward. After the day’s work,
Armed with a blanket each, to fence the cold,
They huddled here.

Some thought the thing a shame.
But then, they were only Turkish prisoners---
Used to roughing it---everyone knew
That their own people treated them like beasts.
Besides, the War would soon be done with now.

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Commentary

These shall be thy missionaries, Peace!
These, though they may not run, shall hobble before thee.

Tremulous, agued, starved, and agony-dazed,
These by their foolishness shall save the nations.

Yea, if War ever gets his bowler hat,
The world shall owe their eloquence great thanks!

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The Two Crosses

Where the Beth-Horons break, and, wide, a plain
Opens, rich meadows, summer-deep with grain,
Are crosses, fenced with low, unmortised wall
Of hill-stones; crosses, scarcely six in all.
But two are brothers’.

Here a little wire
Shuts in two hearts that burnt with kindred fire,
And marks a space for friends whose eager feet
Ran the one course and finished in a heat;
For friends whose posts of finish here are white
Crosses, that front the sea and setting light.
Happy, who knew in life one equal pride
Of blood, whom equal love nursed side by side,
For whom their stars a common horoscope
Of joy and sorrow cast, of fear and hope,
Of common memory, and ordained at last
That in one hour and in one strife they passed,
Bursting these transitory bonds, to find
A clearer day, for twilight flung behind!
Happy, whose spirits, when the dark came on
With sudden sleep and sense of comrades gone,
With blur of earth and sky and vanishing
Of every trusted and familiar thing,
No anguish knew nor separating stroke,
But in one common dream of victory woke!

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Aujeh Meadows

(The Jaffa Aujeh---“Waters of Raqquon” of the Old Testament---was crossed by the 52nd Scots Lowland Division, on the night of December 20th, 1917.)

Midnight! a dark, slow water, deep and chilly!
(Still by our dead the trench-scarred slope we hold.)
Waters of Raqquon, let your water-lily
In valour’s praise its yellow buds unfold!
Let gladiolus its red banners flaunt,
And light of flowers o’erflood your purfled shores!
(Around those graves what deathless memories haunt---
Midnight, and wading men, and muffled oars!)

Make of their graves a garden, lest they mourn
For Lowland heaths and fields of sunlit corn!
Ay me! Not all your meadows shall atone,
Waters of Raqquon, for the meadows known!

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The Dog River Inscriptions

Panelled in rock, the bearded kings, with hands
Outstretched for menace, overlook the sea;
Still the neat script, cut on their bossèd robes,
Cries out for homage---side by side they boast,
Pul and Sesostris. The tall asphodel
Flowers from their bases down to the green flood
Of rushing Lycus; and the cyclamen
Roots in the crevices. And, higher yet,
The runnels after rain wash free from clay
Stone adze and arrowhead; the rough plateau
Was once a mart---the cave-men wrangled here;
The ass’s jawbone, set with flints for teeth
(Ages ere Samson), the proud purchaser
Flourished and bore to battle; ships of Tyre
Sailed, late, these waters, driving to their creeks
Coaster and coracle and timid hide.
Here when Egyptian, when Assyrian, came,
Time had waxed old, and nations had grown tired.

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Olive Groves: Ludd, Palestine

What berries on your glimmering boughs ye bear,
Grey Olives, like a flock in moonlight seen,
Blanching the field and casting on the air
A haze of dimness! reverie and dream---
Of Athens and the City-Guarding Queen
(The olive-tree’s inventress)---of the glow
That lit the dusk within an old man’s brain
(Remembering how through noon the nightingale
Deep in the dark of your close-plumaged boughs
Sang to Colonus’ million-crocused vale)---
Of men (my friends) who from the lagging train
(Their eyes not cleansed of the deceptive gleam
That quivers over Iraq’s desert waste)
In an April morn with sullen clouds hung low
Emerging marched to where with muffled roar
The guns were waves bursting on battle’s shore---
Of Kedron midnights when your leaves were roof
Above a blackness pierced and interspaced
Only with glow-worms’ lamps of glassy green.

Grey Olives, ’tis the man ye knew! for proof,
Look in my eyes, and see what memories rouse
At glimpse of your soft leaves and silken sheen.
No alien this---whose spirit understands
Each scent and sound of these beloved lands!

1927

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Thoughts at an O. U. D. S. Performance

“And the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.”
To me, beneath the elms of Magdalen sitting,
The old words, round their netted cage slow-flitting,
Fell pausing.

“We have cates and wines enow,
And, for the general, ale.”

“’Tis well. Do thou
Some nimble-witted fellow hire, to frame
An hour of mirth and spangles, prinked with name
Of nymph and hero---such a pretty toy
As our court-scribblers make, with Venus’ boy,
Dian and dolphins, tritons, lovers true
(But crossed by fate), Mars’ warrior-retinue,
The Amazonian lady chaste as ice---
Some delicate and intricate device
Well sorting with a nuptial ceremony.”

And Shakespeare, bidden to prepare a mask
For Essex his great patron, at his task
Pondered, and juggling, jigging patterns made,
Shuffled the stale, “quaint” counters of his trade---
Cupid all-armed, the cold moon, hearts and flowers,
Pure maidens, burning shafts, and woodbine bowers---
Till his mind wandered back to earlier skies
That domed a lad walking in paradise
Rapturous as he watched the dusk ablaze
With rocket-stars that threaded fiery ways
And then shot madly from their spheres, to awake
The moon-tranced glimmer of the sleeping lake,
Whose white fangs hissed in angry seethe around
The Silver Fysshe whose back a mermaid crowned---
A mermaid singing, as she rode the tide,
Of Gloriana great and glorified,
Of Gloriana and a gazing earth
(When Gloriana came to Kenilworth).

But . . . when the play attained a second birth,
Before vast Gloriana in her court
(Her mind relaxed from many a harsh report
And rumour) did the imperial votaress
Behind the music of sweet flattery guess
A poor man’s hopes, and send a gracious word
To enchant her praiser? Or belike she heard
Unheeding, and the poet left to shame
Of failure purchased in ignoble aim?
We know not; but the quiet words have wrought
Unwitting record of their master’s thought---
Of how a young man strove to please a queen:
Of how a boy---what time in fierce delight
He walked a field with torch and pageant bright---
Once raised his eyes, and saw the moon serene
Sail far aloof, as in time’s sky she shone.
The ambitious rockets flared, earth shook to see
And shouted forth in tinsel revelry!
But the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Divider

Poem When Awaiting Operation

“It matters to nobody but yourself.”

That was my poem. Enough,
Seeing it said all that need be said.
Yet . . . one dull questioning word ran in my head:
“Mind, feeling now distress
For momentary gasp of fighting life
And absence yielding up the inert stuff
That is this body to the cleansing knife,
How wilt thou front the great unconsciousness
Smothering up thy breath
And giving thee a prey to endless death?”

Yet shall I then, as now, take heart from this:
“I have the greatest comfort in the world---
That there is nothing else to do about it.”

The End