Part 1

HELIODORA _And Other Poems_

Heliodora _And Other Poems by_ H. D.

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME AND LONDON

Acknowledgment for the permission to reprint certain poems is due to: _Nation_, _Sphere_, _Egoist_ (London); _Bookman_, _Poetry_, _Double Dealer_ (New York, Chicago, New Orleans); _Transatlantic_, _Gargoyle_ (Paris); _The Imagist Anthologies_ and the _Miscellany of American Poetry_ (1922).

_Note_

The poem Lais has in italics a translation of the Plato epigram in the Greek Anthology. Heliodora has in italics the two Meleager epigrams from the Anthology. In Nossis is the translation of the opening lines of the Garland of Meleager and the poem of Nossis herself in the Greek Anthology. The four Sappho fragments are re-worked freely. The Odyssey is a translation of the opening of the first book. The Ion is a translation of the latter part of the first long choros of the Ion of Euripides.

_Contents_

PAGE

WASH OF COLD RIVER 11

HOLY SATYR 13

LAIS 15

HELIODORA 18

HELEN 24

NOSSIS 25

CENTAUR SONG 29

OREAD 31

THE POOL 32

THETIS 33

AT ITHACA 39

WE TWO 42

FRAGMENT THIRTY-SIX 44

FLUTE SONG 48

AFTER TROY 49

CASSANDRA 51

EPIGRAMS 55

FRAGMENT FORTY 57

TOWARD THE PIRÆUS 61

MOONRISE 67

AT ELEUSIS 68

FRAGMENT FORTY-ONE 70

TELESILA 76

FRAGMENT SIXTY-EIGHT 81

LETHE 85

SITALKAS 86

HERMONAX 87

ORION DEAD 89

CHARIOTEER 91

THE LOOK-OUT 102

ODYSSEY 108

HYACINTH 116

ION 124

_Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow-ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers, clear, with delicate shell- like leaf enclosing frozen lily-leaf, camellia texture, colder than a rose;_

_wind-flower that keeps the breath of the north-wind-- these and none other;_

_intimate thoughts and kind reach out to share the treasure of my mind, intimate hands and dear draw garden-ward and sea-ward all the sheer rapture that I would take to mould a clear and frigid statue;_

_rare, of pure texture, beautiful space and line, marble to grace your inaccessible shrine._

_Holy Satyr_

Most holy Satyr, like a goat, with horns and hooves to match thy coat of russet brown, I make leaf-circlets and a crown of honey-flowers for thy throat; where the amber petals drip to ivory, I cut and slip each stiffened petal in the rift of carven petal; honey horn has wed the bright virgin petal of the white flower cluster: lip to lip let them whisper, let them lilt, quivering.

Most holy Satyr, like a goat, hear this our song, accept our leaves, love-offering, return our hymn, like echo fling a sweet song, answering note for note.

_Lais_

Let her who walks in Paphos take the glass, let Paphos take the mirror and the work of frosted fruit, gold apples set with silver apple-leaf, white leaf of silver wrought with vein of gilt.

Let Paphos lift the mirror, let her look into the polished centre of the disk.

Let Paphos take the mirror; did she press flowerlet of flame-flower to the lustrous white of the white forehead? did the dark veins beat a deeper purple than the wine-deep tint of the dark flower?

Did she deck black hair one evening, with the winter-white flower of the winter-berry, did she look (reft of her lover) at a face gone white under the chaplet of white virgin-breath?

Lais, exultant, tyrannizing Greece, Lais who kept her lovers in the porch, lover on lover waiting, (but to creep where the robe brushed the threshold where still sleeps Lais,) so she creeps, Lais, to lay her mirror at the feet of her who reigns in Paphos.

Lais has left her mirror for she sees no longer in its depth the Lais’ self that laughed exultant tyrannizing Greece.

Lais has left her mirror, for she weeps no longer, finding in its depth, a face, but other than dark flame and white feature of perfect marble.

_Lais has left her mirror_, (so one wrote) _to her who reigns in Paphos; Lais who laughed a tyrant over Greece, Lais who turned the lovers from the porch, that swarm for whom now Lais has no use; Lais is now no lover of the glass, seeing no more the face as once it was, wishing to see that face and finding this_.

_Heliodora_

He and I sought together, over the spattered table, rhymes and flowers, gifts for a name.

He said, among others, I will bring (and the phrase was just and good, but not as good as mine,) “the narcissus that loves the rain.”

We strove for a name, while the light of the lamps burnt thin and the outer dawn came in, a ghost, the last at the feast or the first, to sit within with the two that remained to quibble in flowers and verse over a girl’s name.

He said, “the rain loving,” I said, “the narcissus, drunk, drunk with the rain.”

Yet I had lost for he said, “the rose, the lover’s gift, is loved of love,” he said it, “loved of love;” I waited, even as he spoke, to see the room filled with a light, as when in winter the embers catch in a wind when a room is dank; so it would be filled, I thought, our room with a light when he said (and he said it first,) “the rose, the lover’s delight, is loved of love,” but the light was the same.

Then he caught, seeing the fire in my eyes, my fire, my fever, perhaps, for he leaned with the purple wine stained on his sleeve, and said this: “did you ever think a girl’s mouth caught in a kiss, is a lily that laughs?”

I had not. I saw it now as men must see it forever afterwards; no poet could write again, “the red-lily, a girl’s laugh caught in a kiss;” it was his to pour in the vat from which all poets dip and quaff, for poets are brothers in this.

So I saw the fire in his eyes, it was almost my fire, (he was younger,) I saw the face so white, my heart beat, it was almost my phrase; I said, “surprise the muses, take them by surprise; it is late, rather it is dawn-rise, those ladies sleep, the nine, our own king’s mistresses.”

A name to rhyme, flowers to bring to a name, what was one girl faint and shy, with eyes like the myrtle, (I said: “her underlids are rather like myrtle,”) to vie with the nine?

Let him take the name, he had the rhymes, “the rose, loved of love, the lily, a mouth that laughs,” he had the gift, “the scented crocus, the purple hyacinth,” what was one girl to the nine?

He said: “I will make her a wreath;” he said: “I will write it thus:

_I will bring you the lily that laughs,_ _I will twine_ _with soft narcissus, the myrtle,_ _sweet crocus, white violet,_ _the purple hyacinth, and last,_ _the rose, loved-of-love,_ _that these may drip on your hair_ _the less soft flowers,_ _may mingle sweet with the sweet_ _of Heliodora’s locks,_ _myrrh-curled._”

(He wrote myrrh-curled, I think, the first.)

I said: “they sleep, the nine,” when he shouted swift and passionate: “_that_ for the nine! above the hills the sun is about to wake, _and to-day white violets_ _shine beside white lilies_ _adrift on the mountain side;_ _to-day the narcissus opens_ _that loves the rain_.”

I watched him to the door, catching his robe as the wine-bowl crashed to the floor, spilling a few wet lees, (ah, his purple hyacinth!) I saw him out of the door, I thought: there will never be a poet in all the centuries after this, who will dare write, after my friend’s verse, “a girl’s mouth is a lily kissed.”

_Helen_

All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands.

All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills.

Greece sees unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses.

_Nossis_

I thought to hear him speak the girl might rise and make the garden silver, as the white moon breaks, “Nossis,” he cried, “a flame.”

I said: “a girl that’s dead some hundred years; a poet--what of that? for in the islands, in the haunts of Greek Ionia, Rhodes and Cyprus, girls are cheap.”

I said, to test his mood, to make him rage or laugh or sing or weep, “in Greek Ionia and in Cyprus, many girls are found with wreaths and apple-branches.”

“Only a hundred years or two or three, has she lain dead yet men forget;” he said, “I want a garden,” and I thought he wished to make a terrace on the hill, bend the stream to it, set out daffodils, plant Phrygian violets, such was his will and whim, I thought, to name and watch each flower.

His was no garden bright with Tyrian violets, his was a shelter wrought of flame and spirit, and as he flung her name against the dark, I thought the iris-flowers that lined the path must be the ghost of Nossis.

“_Who made the wreath,_ _for what man was it wrought?_ _speak, fashioned all of fruit-buds,_ _song, my loveliest,_ _say Meleager brought to Diodes_, (_a gift for that enchanting friend_) _memories with names of poets._

_He sought for Moero, lilies, and those many, red-lilies for Anyte, for Sappho, roses, with those few, he caught that breath of the sweet-scented leaf of iris, the myrrh-iris, to set beside the tablet and the wax which Love had burnt, when scarred across by Nossis._”

when she wrote:

“_I Nossis stand by this: I state that love is sweet: if you think otherwise assert what beauty or what charm_ _after the charm of love, retains its grace?_

_“Honey” you say: honey? I say “I spit honey out of my mouth: nothing is second-best after the sweet of Eros.”_

_I Nossis stand and state that he whom Love neglects has naught, no flower, no grace, who lacks that rose, her kiss._”

I thought to hear him speak the girl might rise and make the garden silver as the white moon breaks, “Nossis,” he cried, “a flame.”

_Centaur Song_

Now that the day is done, now that the night creeps soft and dims the chestnut clusters’ radiant spike of flower, O sweet, till dawn break through the branches of our orchard-garden, rest in this shelter of the osier-wood and thorn.

They fall, the apple-flowers; nor softer grace has Aphrodite in the heaven afar, nor at so fair a pace open the flower-petals as your face bends down, while, breath on breath, your mouth wanders from my mouth o’er my face.

What have I left to bring you in this place, already sweet with violets? (those you brought with swathes of earliest grass, forest and meadow balm, flung from your giant arms for us to rest upon.)

Fair are these petals broken by your feet; your horse’s hooves tread softer than a deer’s; your eyes, startled, are like the deer eyes while your heart trembles more than the deer.

O earth, O god, O forest, stream or river, what shall I bring that all the day hold back, that Dawn remember Love and rest upon her bed, and Zeus, forgetful not of Danæ or Maia,

bid the stars shine forever.

_Oread_

Whirl up, sea-- whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us, cover us with your pools of fir.

_The Pool_

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you--banded one?

_Thetis_

He had asked for immortal life in the old days and had grown old, now he had aged apace, he asked for his youth, and I, Thetis, granted him

freedom under the sea drip and welter of weeds, the drift of the fringing grass, the gift of the never-withering moss, and the flowering reed,

and most, beauty of fifty nereids, sisters of nine, I one of their least, yet great and a goddess, granted Pelius,

love under the sea, beauty, grace infinite:

So I crept, at last, a crescent, a curve of a wave, (a man would have thought, had he watched for his nets on the beach) a dolphin, a glistening fish, that burnt and caught for its light, the light of the undercrest of the lifting tide, a fish with silver for breast, with no light but the light of the sea it reflects.

Little he would have guessed, (had such a one watched by his nets,) that a goddess flung from the crest of the wave the blue of its own bright tress of hair, the blue of the painted stuff it wore for dress.

No man would have known save he, whose coming I sensed as I strung my pearl and agate and pearl, to mark the beat and the stress of the lilt of my song.

_Who dreams of a son, save one, childless, having no bright face to flatter its own, who dreams of a son?_

_Nereids under the sea, my sisters, fifty and one_, (_counting myself_) _they dream of a child of water and sea, with hair of the softest, to lie along the curve of fragile, tiny bones, yet more beautiful each than each, hair more bright and long, to rival its own._

_Nereids under the wave, who dreams of a son save I, Thetis, alone?_

_Each would have for a child, a stray self, furtive and wild, to dive and leap to the wind, to wheedle and coax_ _the stray birds bright and bland of foreign strands, to crawl and stretch on the sands, each would have for its own, a daughter for child._

_Who dreams, who sings of a son? I, Thetis, alone._

When I had finished my song, and dropped the last seed-pearl, and flung the necklet about my throat and found it none too bright, not bright enough nor pale enough, not like the moon that creeps beneath the sea, between the lift of crest and crest, had tried it on and found it not quite fair enough to fill the night of my blue folds of bluest dress with moon for light, I cast the beads aside and leapt, myself all blue with no bright gloss of pearls for crescent light;

but one alert, all blue and wet, I flung myself, an arrow’s flight, straight upward through the blue of night that was my palace wall, and crept to where I saw the mark of feet, a rare foot-fall:

Achilles’ sandal on the beach, could one mistake? perhaps a lover or a nymph, lost from the tangled fern and brake, that lines the upper shelf of land, perhaps a goddess or a nymph might so mistake Achilles’ footprint for the trace of a bright god alert to track the panther where he slinks for thirst across the sand;

perhaps a goddess or a nymph, might think a god had crossed the track of weed and drift, had broken here this stem of reed, had turned this sea-shell to the light:

So she must stoop, this goddess girl, or nymph, with crest of blossoming wood about her hair for cap or crown, must stoop and kneel and bending down, must kiss the print of such a one.

Not I, the mother, Thetis self, I stretched and lay, a river’s slim dark length, a rivulet where it leaves the wood, and meets the sea, I lay along the burning sand, a river’s blue.

_At Ithaca_

Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens and the sea takes on that desperate tone of dark that wives put on when all their love is done.

Over and back, the tangled thread falls slack, over and up and on; over and all is sewn; now while I bind the end, I wish some fiery friend would sweep impetuously these fingers from the loom.

My weary thoughts play traitor to my soul, just as the toil is over; swift while the woof is whole, turn now my spirit, swift, and tear the pattern there, the flowers so deftly wrought, the border of sea-blue, the sea-blue coast of home.

The web was over-fair, that web of pictures there, enchantments that I thought he had, that I had lost; weaving his happiness within the stitching frame, weaving his fire and fame, I thought my work was done, I prayed that only one of those that I had spurned, might stoop and conquer this long waiting with a kiss.

But each time that I see my work so beautifully inwoven and would keep the picture and the whole, Athene steels my soul, slanting across my brain, I see as shafts of rain his chariot and his shafts, I see the arrows fall, I see my lord who moves like Hector, lord of love, I see him matched with fair bright rivals and I see those lesser rivals flee.

_We Two_

We two are left: I with small grace reveal distaste and bitterness; you with small patience take my hands; though effortless, you scald their weight as a bowl, lined with embers, wherein droop great petals of white rose, forced by the heat too soon to break.

We two are left: as a blank wall, the world, earth and the men who talk, saying their space of life is good and gracious, with eyes blank as that blank surface their ignorance mistakes for final shelter and a resting-place.

We two remain: yet by what miracle, searching within the tangles of my brain, I ask again, have we two met within this maze of dædal paths in-wound mid grievous stone, where once I stood alone?

_Fragment Thirty-six_

I know not what to do: my mind is divided.

SAPPHO

I know not what to do, my mind is reft: is song’s gift best? is love’s gift loveliest? I know not what to do, now sleep has pressed weight on your eyelids.

Shall I break your rest, devouring, eager? is love’s gift best? nay, song’s the loveliest: yet were you lost, what rapture could I take from song? what song were left?

I know not what to do: to turn and slake the rage that burns, with my breath burn and trouble your cool breath? so shall I turn and take snow in my arms? (is love’s gift best?) yet flake on flake of snow were comfortless, did you lie wondering, wakened yet unawake.

Shall I turn and take comfortless snow within my arms? press lips to lips that answer not, press lips to flesh that shudders not nor breaks?

Is love’s gift best? shall I turn and slake all the wild longing? O I am eager for you! as the Pleiads shake white light in whiter water so shall I take you?

My mind is quite divided, my minds hesitate, so perfect matched, I know not what to do: each strives with each as two white wrestlers standing for a match, ready to turn and clutch yet never shake muscle nor nerve nor tendon; so my mind waits to grapple with my mind, yet I lie quiet, I would seem at rest.

I know not what to do: strain upon strain, sound surging upon sound makes my brain blind; as a wave-line may wait to fall yet (waiting for its falling) still the wind may take from off its crest, white flake on flake of foam, that rises, seeming to dart and pulse and rend the light, so my mind hesitates above the passion quivering yet to break, so my mind hesitates above my mind, listening to song’s delight.

I know not what to do: will the sound break, rending the night with rift on rift of rose and scattered light? will the sound break at last as the wave hesitant, or will the whole night pass and I lie listening awake?

_Flute Song_

Little scavenger away, touch not the door, beat not the portal down, cross not the sill, silent until my song, bright and shrill, breathes out its lay.

Little scavenger avaunt, tempt me with jeer and taunt, yet you will wait to-day; for it were surely ill to mock and shout and revel; it were more fit to tell with flutes and calathes, your mother’s praise.

_After Troy_

We flung against their gods, invincible, clear hate; we fought; frantic, we flung the last imperious, desperate shaft

and lost: we knew the loss before they ever guessed fortune had tossed to them her favour and her whim; but how were we depressed? we lost yet as we pressed our spearsmen on their best, we knew their line invincible because there fell on them no shiverings of the white enchanteress, radiant Aphrodite’s spell: