Part 19

“Though the flowers in your golden hair be bright, Your golden hair shall be waste and white On faded brows ere another May time Bring the spring, but no more delight.”

HOMERIC UNITY.

THE sacred keep of Ilion is rent By shaft and pit; foiled waters wander slow Through plains where Simois and Scamander went To war with Gods and heroes long ago. Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low In rich Mycenæ, do the Fates relent: The bones of Agamemnon are a show, And ruined is his royal monument.

The dust and awful treasures of the Dead, Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee, Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead, And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to see The crown that burns on thine immortal head Of indivisible supremacy!

IN TINTAGEL.

LUI.

AH lady, lady, leave the creeping mist, And leave the iron castle by the sea!

ELLE.

Nay, from the sea there came a ghost that kissed My lips, and so I cannot come to thee!

LUI.

Ah lady, leave the cruel landward wind That crusts the blighted flowers with bitter foam!

ELLE.

Nay, for his arms are cold and strong to bind, And I must dwell with him and make my home!

LUI.

Come, for the Spring is fair in Joyous Guard And down deep alleys sweet birds sing again.

ELLE.

But I must tarry with the winter hard, And with the bitter memory of pain, Although the Spring be fair in Joyous Guard, And in the gardens glad birds sing again!

PISIDICÊ.

The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius, who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island allied with Troy.

THE daughter of the Lesbian king Within her bower she watched the war, Far off she heard the arrows ring, The smitten harness ring afar; And, fighting from the foremost car, Saw one that smote where all must flee; More fair than the Immortals are He seemed to fair Pisidicê!

She saw, she loved him, and her heart Before Achilles, Peleus’ son, Threw all its guarded gates apart, A maiden fortress lightly won! And, ere that day of fight was done, No more of land or faith recked she, But joyed in her new life begun,— Her life of love, Pisidicê!

She took a gift into her hand, As one that had a boon to crave; She stole across the ruined land Where lay the dead without a grave, And to Achilles’ hand she gave Her gift, the secret postern’s key. “To-morrow let me be thy slave!” Moaned to her love Pisidicê.

Ere dawn the Argives’ clarion call Rang down Methymna’s burning street; They slew the sleeping warriors all, They drove the women to the fleet, Save one, that to Achilles’ feet Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he: “For her no doom but death is meet,” And there men stoned Pisidicê.

In havens of that haunted coast, Amid the myrtles of the shore, The moon sees many a maiden ghost Love’s outcast now and evermore. The silence hears the shades deplore Their hour of dear-bought love; but thee The waves lull, ’neath thine olives hoar, To dreamless rest, Pisidicê!

FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST.

RETURNING from what other seas Dost thou renew thy murmuring, Weak Tide, and hast thou aught of these To tell, the shores where float and cling My love, my hope, my memories?

Say does my lady wake to note The gold light into silver die? Or do thy waves make lullaby, While dreams of hers, like angels, float Through star-sown spaces of the sky?

Ah, would such angels came to me That dreams of mine might speak with hers, Nor wake the slumber of the sea With words as low as winds that be Awake among the gossamers!