Part 10

Here the snake across your path Stretches in his golden bath: Mossy-footed squirrels leap Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep: Yaffles on a chuckle skim Low to laugh from branches dim: Up the pine, where sits the star, Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. Each has business of his own; But should you distrust a tone, Then beware. Shudder all the haunted roods, All the eyeballs under hoods Shroud you in their glare. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

III

Open hither, open hence, Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, Where the strawberry runs red, With white star-flower overhead; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Heels to terror on the mould. These, the woods of Westermain, Are as others to behold, Rich of wreathing sun and rain; Foliage lustreful around Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins, Shelter eager minikins, Myriads, free to peck and pipe: Would you better? would you worse? You with them may gather ripe Pleasures flowing not from purse. Quick and far as Colour flies Taking the delighted eyes, You of any well that springs May unfold the heaven of things; Have it homely and within, And thereof its likeness win, Will you so in soul’s desire: This do sages grant t’ the lyre. This is being bird and more, More than glad musician this; Granaries you will have a store Past the world of woe and bliss; Sharing still its bliss and woe; Harnessed to its hungers, no. On the throne Success usurps, You shall seat the joy you feel Where a race of water chirps, Twisting hues of flourished steel: Or where light is caught in hoop Up a clearing’s leafy rise, Where the crossing deerherds troop Classic splendours, knightly dyes. Or, where old-eyed oxen chew Speculation with the cud, Read their pool of vision through, Back to hours when mind was mud; Nigh the knot, which did untwine Timelessly to drowsy suns; Seeing Earth a slimy spine, Heaven a space for winging tons. Farther, deeper, may you read, Have you sight for things afield, Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed, Cloaked, but in the peep revealed; Showing a kind face and sweet: Look you with the soul you see’t. Glory narrowing to grace, Grace to glory magnified, Following that will you embrace Close in arms or aëry wide. Banished is the white Foam-born Not from here, nor under ban Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn, Pipings of the reedy Pan. Loved of Earth of old they were, Loving did interpret her; And the sterner worship bars None whom Song has made her stars. You have seen the huntress moon Radiantly facing dawn, Dusky meads between them strewn Glimmering like downy awn: Argent Westward glows the hunt, East the blush about to climb; One another fair they front, Transient, yet outshine the time; Even as dewlight off the rose In the mind a jewel sows. Thus opposing grandeurs live Here if Beauty be their dower: Doth she of her spirit give, Fleetingness will spare her flower. This is in the tune we play, Which no spring of strength would quell; In subduing does not slay; Guides the channel, guards the well: Tempered holds the young blood-heat, Yet through measured grave accord, Hears the heart of wildness beat Like a centaur’s hoof on sward. Drink the sense the notes infuse, You a larger self will find: Sweetest fellowship ensues With the creatures of your kind. Ay, and Love, if Love it be Flaming over I and ME, Love meet they who do not shove Cravings in the van of Love. Courtly dames are here to woo, Knowing love if it be true. Reverence the blossom-shoot Fervently, they are the fruit. Mark them stepping, hear them talk, Goddess, is no myth inane, You will say of those who walk In the woods of Westermain. Waters that from throat and thigh Dart the sun his arrows back; Leaves that on a woodland sigh Chat of secret things no lack; Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, Bare or veiled they move sincere; Not by slavish terrors tripped Being anew in nature dipped, Growths of what they step on, these; With the roots the grace of trees. Casket-breasts they give, nor hide, For a tyrant’s flattered pride, Mind, which nourished not by light, Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite: Whereof are strange tales to tell; Some in blood writ, tombed in bell. Here the ancient battle ends, Joining two astonished friends, Who the kiss can give and take With more warmth than in that world Where the tiger claws the snake, Snake her tiger clasps infurled, And the issue of their fight People lands in snarling plight. Here her splendid beast she leads Silken-leashed and decked with weeds Wild as he, but breathing faint Sweetness of unfelt constraint. Love, the great volcano, flings Fires of lower Earth to sky; Love, the sole permitted, sings Sovereignly of ME and I. Bowers he has of sacred shade, Spaces of superb parade, Voiceful . . . But bring you a note Wrangling, howsoe’er remote, Discords out of discord spin Round and round derisive din: Sudden will a pallor pant Chill at screeches miscreant; Owls or spectres, thick they flee; Nightmare upon horror broods; Hooded laughter, monkish glee, Gaps the vital air. Enter these enchanted woods You who dare.

You must love the light so well That no darkness will seem fell. Love it so you could accost Fellowly a livid ghost. Whish! the phantom wisps away, Owns him smoke to cocks of day. In your breast the light must burn Fed of you, like corn in quern Ever plumping while the wheel Speeds the mill and drains the meal. Light to light sees little strange, Only features heavenly new; Then you touch the nerve of Change, Then of Earth you have the clue; Then her two-sexed meanings melt Through you, wed the thought and felt. Sameness locks no scurfy pond Here for Custom, crazy-fond: Change is on the wing to bud Rose in brain from rose in blood. Wisdom throbbing shall you see Central in complexity; From her pasture ’mid the beasts Rise to her ethereal feasts, Not, though lightnings track your wit Starward, scorning them you quit: For be sure the bravest wing Preens it in our common spring, Thence along the vault to soar, You with others, gathering more, Glad of more, till you reject Your proud title of elect, Perilous even here while few Roam the arched greenwood with you. Heed that snare. Muffled by his cavern-cowl Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl, Who was lord ere light you drank, And lest blood of knightly rank Stream, let not your fair princess Stray: he holds the leagues in stress, Watches keenly there. Oft has he been riven; slain Is no force in Westermain. Wait, and we shall forge him curbs, Put his fangs to uses, tame, Teach him, quick as cunning herbs, How to cure him sick and lame. Much restricted, much enringed, Much he frets, the hooked and winged, Never known to spare. ’Tis enough: the name of Sage Hits no thing in nature, nought; Man the least, save when grave Age From yon Dragon guards his thought. Eye him when you hearken dumb To what words from Wisdom come. When she says how few are by Listening to her, eye his eye. Self, his name declare. Him shall Change, transforming late, Wonderously renovate. Hug himself the creature may: What he hugs is loathed decay. Crying, slip thy scales, and slough! Change will strip his armour off; Make of him who was all maw, Inly only thrilling-shrewd, Such a servant as none saw Through his days of dragonhood. Days when growling o’er his bone, Sharpened he for mine and thine; Sensitive within alone; Scaly as the bark of pine. Change, the strongest son of Life, Has the Spirit here to wife. Lo, their young of vivid breed, Bear the lights that onward speed, Threading thickets, mounting glades, Up the verdurous colonnades, Round the fluttered curves, and down, Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown, Whither, in her central space, Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase. Fount unresting, Lure divine! There meet all: too late look most. Fire in water hued as wine, Springs amid a shadowy host, Circled: one close-headed mob, Breathless, scanning divers heaps, Where a Heart begins to throb, Where it ceases, slow, with leaps. And ’tis very strange, ’tis said, How you spy in each of them Semblance of that Dragon red, As the oak in bracken-stem. And, ’tis said, how each and each: Which commences, which subsides: First my Dragon! doth beseech Her who food for all provides. And she answers with no sign; Utters neither yea nor nay; Fires the water hued as wine; Kneads another spark in clay. Terror is about her hid; Silence of the thunders locked; Lightnings lining the shut lid; Fixity on quaking rocked. Lo, you look at Flow and Drought Interflashed and interwrought: Ended is begun, begun Ended, quick as torrents run. Young Impulsion spouts to sink; Luridness and lustre link; ’Tis your come and go of breath; Mirrored pants the Life, the Death; Each of either reaped and sown: Rosiest rosy wanes to crone. See you so? your senses drift; ’Tis a shuttle weaving swift. Look with spirit past the sense, Spirit shines in permanence. That is She, the view of whom Is the dust within the tomb, Is the inner blush above, Look to loathe, or look to love; Think her Lump, or know her Flame; Dread her scourge, or read her aim; Shoot your hungers from their nerve; Or, in her example, serve. Some have found her sitting grave; Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat, Hurling dust of fool and knave In a hissing smithy’s jet. More it were not well to speak; Burn to see, you need but seek. Once beheld she gives the key Airing every doorway, she. Little can you stop or steer Ere of her you are the seër. On the surface she will witch, Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze Under, and the soul is rich Past computing, past amaze. Then is courage that endures Even her awful tremble yours. Then, the reflex of that Fount Spied below, will Reason mount Lordly and a quenchless force, Lighting Pain to its mad source, Scaring Fear till Fear escapes, Shot through all its phantom shapes. Then your spirit will perceive Fleshly seed of fleshly sins; Where the passions interweave, How the serpent tangle spins Of the sense of Earth misprised, Brainlessly unrecognized; She being Spirit in her clods, Footway to the God of Gods. Then for you are pleasures pure, Sureties as the stars are sure: Not the wanton beckoning flags Which, of flattery and delight, Wax to the grim Habit-Hags Riding souls of men to night: Pleasures that through blood run sane, Quickening spirit from the brain. Each of each in sequent birth, Blood and brain and spirit, three, (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth), Join for true felicity. Are they parted, then expect Some one sailing will be wrecked: Separate hunting are they sped, Scan the morsel coveted. Earth that Triad is: she hides Joy from him who that divides; Showers it when the three are one Glassing her in union. Earth your haven, Earth your helm, You command a double realm; Labouring here to pay your debt, Till your little sun shall set; Leaving her the future task: Loving her too well to ask. Eglantine that climbs the yew, She her darkest wreathes for those Knowing her the Ever-new, And themselves the kin o’ the rose. Life, the chisel, axe and sword, Wield who have her depths explored: Life, the dream, shall be their robe Large as air about the globe; Life, the question, hear its cry Echoed with concordant Why; Life, the small self-dragon ramped, Thrill for service to be stamped. Ay, and over every height Life for them shall wave a wand: That, the last, where sits affright, Homely shows the stream beyond. Love the light and be its lynx, You will track her and attain; Read her as no cruel Sphinx In the woods of Westermain, Daily fresh the woods are ranged; Glooms which otherwhere appal, Sounded: here, their worths exchanged Urban joins with pastoral: Little lost, save what may drop Husk-like, and the mind preserves. Natural overgrowths they lop, Yet from nature neither swerves, Trained or savage: for this cause: Of our Earth they ply the laws, Have in Earth their feeding root, Mind of man and bent of brute. Hear that song; both wild and ruled. Hear it: is it wail or mirth? Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled? None, and all: it springs of Earth. O but hear it! ’tis the mind; Mind that with deep Earth unites, Round the solid trunk to wind Rings of clasping parasites. Music have you there to feed Simplest and most soaring need. Free to wind, and in desire Winding, they to her attached Feel the trunk a spring of fire, And ascend to heights unmatched, Whence the tidal world is viewed As a sea of windy wheat, Momently black, barren, rude; Golden-brown, for harvest meet, Dragon-reaped from folly-sown; Bride-like to the sickle-blade: Quick it varies, while the moan, Moan of a sad creature strayed, Chiefly is its voice. So flesh Conjures tempest-flails to thresh Good from worthless. Some clear lamps Light it; more of dead marsh-damps. Monster is it still, and blind, Fit but to be led by Pain. Glance we at the paths behind, Fruitful sight has Westermain. There we laboured, and in turn Forward our blown lamps discern, As you see on the dark deep Far the loftier billows leap, Foam for beacon bear. Hither, hither, if you will, Drink instruction, or instil, Run the woods like vernal sap, Crying, hail to luminousness! But have care. In yourself may lurk the trap: On conditions they caress. Here you meet the light invoked Here is never secret cloaked. Doubt you with the monster’s fry All his orbit may exclude; Are you of the stiff, the dry, Cursing the not understood; Grasp you with the monster’s claws; Govern with his truncheon-saws; Hate, the shadow of a grain; You are lost in Westermain: Earthward swoops a vulture sun, Nighted upon carrion: Straightway venom wine-cups shout Toasts to One whose eyes are out: Flowers along the reeling floor Drip henbane and hellebore: Beauty, of her tresses shorn, Shrieks as nature’s maniac: Hideousness on hoof and horn Tumbles, yapping in her track: Haggard Wisdom, stately once, Leers fantastical and trips: Allegory drums the sconce, Impiousness nibblenips. Imp that dances, imp that flits, Imp o’ the demon-growing girl, Maddest! whirl with imp o’ the pits Round you, and with them you whirl Fast where pours the fountain-rout Out of Him whose eyes are out: Multitudes on multitudes, Drenched in wallowing devilry: And you ask where you may be, In what reek of a lair Given to bones and ogre-broods: And they yell you Where. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN

LAST night returning from my twilight walk I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk He reached me flowers as from a withered bough: O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

Death said, I gather, and pursued his way. Another stood by me, a shape in stone, Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay, And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: O Life, how naked and how hard when known!

III

Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I. Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, Joined notes of Death and Life till night’s decline Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES

HE who has looked upon Earth Deeper than flower and fruit, Losing some hue of his mirth, As the tree striking rock at the root, Unto him shall the marvellous tale Of Callistes more humanly come With the touch on his breast than a hail From the markets that hum.

Now the youth footed swift to the dawn. ’Twas the season when wintertide, In the higher rock-hollows updrawn, Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied, By light throwing shallow shade, Between the beam and the gloom, Sicilian Enna, whose Maid Such aspect wears in her bloom Underneath since the Charioteer Of Darkness whirled her away, On a reaped afternoon of the year, Nigh the poppy-droop of Day. O and naked of her, all dust, The majestic Mother and Nurse, Ringing cries to the God, the Just, Curled the land with the blight of her curse: Recollected of this glad isle Still quaking. But now more fair, And momently fraying the while The veil of the shadows there, Soft Enna that prostrate grief Sang through, and revealed round the vines, Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf, The wheat-blades tripping in lines, A hue unillumined by sun Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts: All the penetrable dun Of the morn ere she mounts.

III

Nor had saffron and sapphire and red Waved aloft to their sisters below, When gaped by the rock-channel head Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow, Reverberant over the plain: A sound oft fearfully swung For the coming of wrathful rain: And forth, like the dragon-tongue Of a fire beaten flat by the gale, But more as the smoke to behold, A chariot burst. Then a wail Quivered high of the love that would fold Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart, Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed, And the team of the chariot swart Reared in marble, the six, dismayed, Like hoofs that by night plashing sea Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave: For, lo, the Great Mother, She! And Callistes gazed, he gave His eyeballs up to the sight: The embrace of the Twain, of whom To men are their day, their night, Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb: Our Lady of the Sheaves And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet Of Enna: he saw through leaves The Mother and Daughter meet. They stood by the chariot-wheel, Embraced, very tall, most like Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel Down their shivering columns and strike Head to head, crossing throats: and apart, For the feast of the look, they drew, Which Darkness no longer could thwart; And they broke together anew, Exulting to tears, flower and bud. But the mate of the Rayless was grave: She smiled like Sleep on its flood, That washes of all we crave: Like the trance of eyes awake And the spirit enshrouded, she cast The wan underworld on the lake. They were so, and they passed.

He tells it, who knew the law Upon mortals: he stood alive Declaring that this he saw: He could see, and survive.

Now the youth was not ware of the beams With the grasses intertwined, For each thing seen, as in dreams, Came stepping to rear through his mind, Till it struck his remembered prayer To be witness of this which had flown Like a smoke melted thinner than air, That the vacancy doth disown. And viewing a maiden, he thought It might now be morn, and afar Within him the memory wrought Of a something that slipped from the car When those, the august, moved by: Perchance a scarf, and perchance This maiden. She did not fly, Nor started at his advance: She looked, as when infinite thirst Pants pausing to bless the springs, Refreshed, unsated. Then first He trembled with awe of the things He had seen; and he did transfer, Divining and doubting in turn, His reverence unto her; Nor asked what he crouched to learn: The whence of her, whither, and why Her presence there, and her name, Her parentage: under which sky Her birth, and how hither she came, So young, a virgin, alone, Unfriended, having no fear, As Oreads have; no moan, Like the lost upon earth; no tear; Not a sign of the torch in the blood, Though her stature had reached the height When mantles a tender rud In maids that of youths have sight, If maids of our seed they be: For he said: A glad vision art thou! And she answered him: Thou to me! As men utter a vow.

Then said she, quick as the cries Of the rainy cranes: Light! light! And Helios rose in her eyes, That were full as the dew-balls bright, Relucent to him as dews Unshaded. Breathing, she sent Her voice to the God of the Muse, And along the vale it went, Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill: Sweet, but no young maid’s throat: The echo beyond the hill Ran falling on half the note: And under the shaken ground Where the Hundred-headed groans By the roots of great Aetna bound, As of him were hollow tones Of wondering roared: a tale Repeated to sunless halls. But now off the face of the vale Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls Of the lake’s rock-head were gold, And the breast of the lake, that swell Of the crestless long wave rolled To shore-bubble, pebble and shell. A morning of radiant lids O’er the dance of the earth opened wide: The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: There was milk, honey, music to make: Up their branches the little birds billed: Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake. O shining in sunlight, chief After water and water’s caress, Was the young bronze-orange leaf, That clung to the tree as a tress, Shooting lucid tendrils to wed With the vine-hook tree or pole, Like Arachne launched out on her thread. Then the maiden her dusky stole In the span of the black-starred zone, Gathered up for her footing fleet. As one that had toil of her own She followed the lines of wheat Tripping straight through the fields, green blades, To the groves of olive grey, Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray In a night, like the snow-packed storm: Pear, apple, almond, plum: Not wintry now: pushing, warm! And she touched them with finger and thumb, As the vine-hook closes: she smiled, Recounting again and again, Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child, With the meaning known to men. For hours in the track of the plough And the pruning-knife she stepped, And of how the seed works, and of how Yields the soil, she seemed adept. Then she murmured that name of the dearth, The Beneficent, Hers, who bade Our husbandmen sow for the birth Of the grain making earth full glad. She murmured that Other’s: the dirge Of life-light: for whose dark lap Our locks are clipped on the verge Of the realm where runs no sap. She said: We have looked on both! And her eyes had a wavering beam Of various lights, like the froth Of the storm-swollen ravine stream In flame of the bolt. What links Were these which had made him her friend? He eyed her, as one who drinks, And would drink to the end.

VII

Now the meadows with crocus besprent, And the asphodel woodsides she left, And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft That tutors the torrent-brook, Delaying its forceful spleen With many a wind and crook Through rock to the broad ravine. By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes, And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid, And the sun-loving lizards and snakes On the cleft’s barren ledges, that slid Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all, At a snap of twig or bark In the track of the foreign foot-fall, She climbed to the pineforest dark, Overbrowing an emerald chine Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath, Running poplar and cypress to pine, The lake-banks are seen, and beneath, Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms, The citadel watching the bay, The bay with the town in its arms, The town shining white as the spray Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock, Where the rock stars the girdle of sea, White-ringed, as the midday flock, Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree. That hour of the piercing shaft Transfixes bough-shadows, confused In veins of fire, and she laughed, With her quiet mouth amused To see the whole flock, adroop, Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one, Imperceptibly filling the loop Of its shade at a slant of sun. The pipes under pent of the crag, Where the goatherds in piping recline, Have whimsical stops, burst and flag Uncorrected as outstretched swine: For the fingers are slack and unsure, And the wind issues querulous:—thorns And snakes!—but she listened demure, Comparing day’s music with morn’s. Of the gentle spirit that slips From the bark of the tree she discoursed, And of her of the wells, whose lips Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced. And much of the sacred loon, The frolic, the Goatfoot God, For stories of indolent noon In the pineforest’s odorous nod, She questioned, not knowing: he can Be waspish, irascible, rude, He is oftener friendly to man, And ever to beasts and their brood. For the which did she love him well, She said, and his pipes of the reed, His twitched lips puffing to tell In music his tears and his need, Against the sharp catch of his hurt. Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak, Nor spake as the schools, to divert, But fondly, perceiving him weak Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear, A holiness, horn and heel. All this she had learnt in her ear From Callistes, and taught him to feel. Yea, the solemn divinity flushed Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast, And the steeps where the cataract rushed, And the wilds where the forest is priest, Were his temple to clothe him in awe, While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she read The haunts of the beak and the claw As plain as the land of bread, But Cities and martial States, Whither soon the youth veered his theme, Were impervious barrier-gates To her: and that ship, a trireme, Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance, Though he dwelt on the message it bore Of sceptre and sword and lance To the bee-swarms black on the shore, Which were audible almost, So black they were. It befel That he called up the warrior host Of the Song pouring hydromel In thunder, the wide-winged Song. And he named with his boyish pride The heroes, the noble throng Past Acheron now, foul tide! With his joy of the godlike band And the verse divine, he named The chiefs pressing hot on the strand, Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed. The fleetfoot and ireful; the King; Him, the prompter in stratagem, Many-shifted and masterful: Sing, O Muse! But she cried: Not of them She breathed as if breath had failed, And her eyes, while she bade him desist, Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed, As you see the grey river-mist Hold shapes on the yonder bank. A moment her body waned, The light of her sprang and sank: Then she looked at the sun, she regained Clear feature, and she breathed deep. She wore the wan smile he had seen, As the flow of the river of Sleep, On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen. In sunlight she craved to bask, Saying: Life! And who was she? who? Of what issue? He dared not ask, For that partly he knew.

VIII

A noise of the hollow ground Turned the eye to the ear in debate: Not the soft overflowing of sound Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight, Barely swayed to some whispers remote, Some swarming whispers above: Not the pines with the faint airs afloat, Hush-hushing the nested dove: It was not the pines, or the rout Oft heard from mid-forest in chase, But the long muffled roar of a shout Subterranean. Sharp grew her face. She rose, yet not moved by affright; ’Twas rather good haste to use Her holiday of delight In the beams of the God of the Muse. And the steeps of the forest she crossed, On its dry red sheddings and cones Up the paths by roots green-mossed, Spotted amber, and old mossed stones. Then out where the brook-torrent starts To her leap, and from bend to curve A hurrying elbow darts For the instant-glancing swerve, Decisive, with violent will In the action formed, like hers, The maiden’s, ascending; and still Ascending, the bud of the furze, The broom, and all blue-berried shoots Of stubborn and prickly kind, The juniper flat on its roots, The dwarf rhododaphne, behind She left, and the mountain sheep Far behind, goat, herbage and flower. The island was hers, and the deep, All heaven, a golden hour. Then with wonderful voice, that rang Through air as the swan’s nigh death, Of the glory of Light she sang, She sang of the rapture of Breath. Nor ever, says he who heard, Heard Earth in her boundaries broad, From bosom of singer or bird A sweetness thus rich of the God Whose harmonies always are sane. She sang of furrow and seed, The burial, birth of the grain, The growth, and the showers that feed, And the green blades waxing mature For the husbandman’s armful brown. O, the song in its burden ran pure, And burden to song was a crown. Callistes, a singer, skilled In the gift he could measure and praise, By a rival’s art was thrilled, Though she sang but a Song of Days, Where the husbandman’s toil and strife Little varies to strife and toil: But the milky kernel of life, With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil The song did give him to eat: Gave the first rapt vision of Good, And the fresh young sense of Sweet The grace of the battle for food, With the issue Earth cannot refuse When men to their labour are sworn. ’Twas a song of the God of the Muse To the forehead of Morn.

Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled: Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack: The fishing-boat heavenward sailed, Bent abeam, with a whitened track, Surprised, fast hauling the net, As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook. She said: Is it night? O not yet! With a travail of thoughts in her look. The mountain heaved up to its peak: Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl; Of bird or of branch rose the shriek. Night? but never so fell a scowl Wore night, nor the sky since then When ocean ran swallowing shore, And the Gods looked down for men. Broke tempest with that stern roar Never yet, save when black on the whirl Rode wrath of a sovereign Power. Then the youth and the shuddering girl, Dim as shades in the angry shower, Joined hands and descended a maze Of the paths that were racing alive Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways, Incessant, with sound of a hive. The height was a fountain-urn Pouring streams, and the whole solid height Leaped, chasing at every turn The pair in one spirit of flight To the folding pineforest. Yet here, Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt, The stillness bred spectral fear Of the awfulness ranging without, And imminent. Downward they fled, From under the haunted roof, To the valley aquake with the tread Of an iron-resounding hoof, As of legions of thunderful horse Broken loose and in line tramping hard. For the rage of a hungry force Roamed blind of its mark over sward: They saw it rush dense in the cloak Of its travelling swathe of steam; All the vale through a thin thread-smoke Was thrown back to distance extreme: And dull the full breast of it blinked, Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er, Diminished, in strangeness distinct, Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar: An Enna of fields beyond sun, Out of light, in a lurid web; And the traversing fury spun Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb; As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn, Retire, and in ravenous greed, Inveterate, swell its return. Up and down, as if wringing from speed Sights that made the unsighted appear, Delude and dissolve, on it scoured. Lo, a sea upon land held career Through the plain of the vale half-devoured. Callistes of home and escape Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech. She gazed at the Void of shape, She put her white hand to his reach, Saying: Now have we looked on the Three. And divided from day, from night, From air that is breath, stood she, Like the vale, out of light.

Then again in disorderly words He muttered of home, and was mute, With the heart of the cowering birds Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot. He gave her some redness that streamed Through her limbs in a flitting glow. The sigh of our life she seemed, The bliss of it clothing in woe. Frailer than flower when the round Of the sickle encircles it: strong To tell of the things profound, Our inmost uttering song, Unspoken. So stood she awhile In the gloom of the terror afield, And the silence about her smile Said more than of tongue is revealed. I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been: It said: and not joylessly shone The remembrance of light through the screen Of a face that seemed shadow and stone. She led the youth trembling, appalled, To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called, And the hurricane blackness had eyes. It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt. Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side Would have clasped her and dared a revolt Sacrilegious as ever defied High Olympus, but vainly for strength His compassionate heart shook a frame Stricken rigid to ice all its length. On amain the black traveller came. Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm, Clove the fountaining lake with a plough, And the lord of the steeds was in form He, the God of implacable brow, Darkness: he: he in person: he raged Through the wave like a boar of the wilds From the hunters and hounds disengaged, And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s. Horror melted in anguish to hear. Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path Of the terrible Charioteer, With the foam and torn features of wrath, Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet; And the steeds clove it, rushing at land Like the teeth of the famished at meat. Then he swept out his hand.

This, no more, doth Callistes recall: He saw, ere he dropped in swoon, On the maiden the chariot fall, As a thundercloud swings on the moon. Forth, free of the deluge, one cry From the vanishing gallop rose clear: And: Skiágeneia! the sky Rang; Skiágeneia! the sphere. And she left him therewith, to rejoice, Repine, yearn, and know not his aim, The life of their day in her voice, Left her life in her name.

XII

Now the valley in ruin of fields And fair meadowland, showing at eve Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields After battle, bade men believe That no other than wrathfullest God Had been loose on her beautiful breast, Where the flowery grass was clod, Wheat and vine as a trailing nest. The valley, discreet in grief, Disclosed but the open truth, And Enna had hope of the sheaf: There was none for the desolate youth Devoted to mourn and to crave. Of the secret he had divined Of his friend of a day would he rave: How for light of our earth she pined: For the olive, the vine and the wheat, Burning through with inherited fire: And when Mother went Mother to meet, She was prompted by simple desire In the day-destined car to have place At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen, And be drawn to the dear earth’s face. She was fire for the blue and the green Of our earth, dark fire; athirst As a seed of her bosom for dawn, White air that had robed and nursed Her mother. Now was she gone With the Silent, the God without tear, Like a bud peeping out of its sheath To be sundered and stamped with the sere. And Callistes to her beneath, As she to our beams, extinct, Strained arms: he was shade of her shade. In division so were they linked. But the song which had betrayed Her flight to the cavernous ear For its own keenly wakeful: that song Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer Of the husbandman’s heart made strong Through droughts and deluging rains With his faith in the Great Mother’s love: O the joy of the breath she sustains, And the lyre of the light above, And the first rapt vision of Good, And the fresh young sense of Sweet: That song the youth ever pursued In the track of her footing fleet. For men to be profited much By her day upon earth did he sing: Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch On the blossoms of tender Spring, Immortal: and how in her soul She is with them, and tearless abides, Folding grain of a love for one goal In patience, past flowing of tides. And if unto him she was tears, He wept not: he wasted within: Seeming sane in the song, to his peers, Only crazed where the cravings begin. Our Lady of Gifts prized he less Than her issue in darkness: the dim Lost Skiágencia’s caress Of our earth made it richest for him. And for that was a curse on him raised, And he withered rathe, dry to his prime, Though the bounteous Giver be praised Through the island with rites of old time Exceedingly fervent, and reaped Veneration for teachings devout, Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped And the wine-presses ruddily spout, And the olive and apple are juice At a touch light as hers lost below. Whatsoever to men is of use Sprang his worship of them who bestow, In a measure of songs unexcelled: But that soul loving earth and the sun From her home of the shadows he held For his beacon where beam there is none: And to join her, or have her brought back, In his frenzy the singer would call, Till he followed where never was track, On the path trod of all.

THE LARK ASCENDING

HE rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, All intervolved and spreading wide, Like water-dimples down a tide Where ripple ripple overcurls And eddy into eddy whirls; A press of hurried notes that run So fleet they scarce are more than one, Yet changeingly the trills repeat And linger ringing while they fleet, Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear To her beyond the handmaid ear, Who sits beside our inner springs, Too often dry for this he brings, Which seems the very jet of earth At sight of sun, her music’s mirth, As up he wings the spiral stair, A song of light, and pierces air With fountain ardour, fountain play, To reach the shining tops of day, And drink in everything discerned An ecstasy to music turned, Impelled by what his happy bill Disperses; drinking, showering still, Unthinking save that he may give His voice the outlet, there to live Renewed in endless notes of glee, So thirsty of his voice is he, For all to hear and all to know That he is joy, awake, aglow; The tumult of the heart to hear Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, And know the pleasure sprinkled bright By simple singing of delight; Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained Without a break, without a fall, Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, Perennial, quavering up the chord Like myriad dews of sunny sward That trembling into fulness shine, And sparkle dropping argentine; Such wooing as the ear receives From zephyr caught in choric leaves Of aspens when their chattering net Is flushed to white with shivers wet; And such the water-spirit’s chime On mountain heights in morning’s prime, Too freshly sweet to seem excess, Too animate to need a stress; But wider over many heads The starry voice ascending spreads, Awakening, as it waxes thin, The best in us to him akin; And every face to watch him raised, Puts on the light of children praised; So rich our human pleasure ripes When sweetness on sincereness pipes, Though nought be promised from the seas, But only a soft-ruffling breeze Sweep glittering on a still content, Serenity in ravishment For singing till his heaven fills, ’Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes: The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine, He is, the hills, the human line, The meadows green, the fallows brown, The dreams of labour in the town; He sings the sap, the quickened veins; The wedding song of sun and rains He is, the dance of children, thanks Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, And eye of violets while they breathe; All these the circling song will wreathe, And you shall hear the herb and tree, The better heart of men shall see, Shall feel celestially, as long As you crave nothing save the song.