Chapter 2
Ah kingly kiss-- no more regret nor old deep memories to mar the bliss; where the low sedge is thick, the gold day-lily outspreads and rests beneath soft fluttering of red swan wings and the warm quivering of the red swan's breast.
HIPPOLYTUS TEMPORIZES
I worship the greatest first-- (it were sweet, the couch, the brighter ripple of cloth over the dipped fleece; the thought: her bones under the flesh are white as sand which along a beach covers but keeps the print of the crescent shapes beneath: I thought: between cloth and fleece, so her body lies.)
I worship first, the great-- (ah, sweet, your eyes-- what God, invoked in Crete, gave them the gift to part as the Sidonian myrtle-flower suddenly, wide and swart, then swiftly, the eye-lids having provoked our hearts-- as suddenly beat and close.)
I worship the feet, flawless, that haunt the hills-- (ah, sweet, dare I think, beneath fetter of golden clasp, of the rhythm, the fall and rise of yours, carven, slight beneath straps of gold that keep their slender beauty caught, like wings and bodies of trapped birds.)
I worship the greatest first-- (suddenly into my brain-- the flash of sun on the snow, the fringe of light and the drift, the crest and the hill-shadow-- ah, surely now I forget, ah splendour, my goddess turns: or was it the sudden heat, beneath quivering of molten flesh, of veins, purple as violets?)
CUCKOO SONG
Ah, bird, our love is never spent with your clear note, nor satiate our soul; not song, not wail, not hurt, but just a call summons us with its simple top-note and soft fall;
not to some rarer heaven of lilies over-tall, nor tuberose set against some sun-lit wall, but to a gracious cedar-palace hall;
not marble set with purple hung with roses and tall sweet lilies--such as the nightingale would summon for us with her wail-- (surely only unhappiness could thrill such a rich madrigal!) not she, the nightingale can fill our souls with such a wistful joy as this:
nor, bird, so sweet was ever a swallow note-- not hers, so perfect with the wing of lazuli and bright breast-- nor yet the oriole filling with melody from her fiery throat some island-orchard in a purple sea.
Ah dear, ah gentle bird, you spread warm length of crimson wool and tinted woven stuff for us to rest upon, nor numb with ecstasy nor drown with death:
only you soothe, make still the throbbing of our brain: so through her forest trees, when all her hope was gone and all her pain, Calypso heard your call-- across the gathering drift of burning cedar-wood, across the low-set bed of wandering parsley and violet, when all her hope was dead.
THE ISLANDS
I
What are the islands to me, what is Greece, what is Rhodes, Samos, Chios, what is Paros facing west, what is Crete?
What is Samothrace, rising like a ship, what is Imbros rending the storm-waves with its breast?
What is Naxos, Paros, Milos, what the circle about Lycia, what, the Cyclades' white necklace?
What is Greece-- Sparta, rising like a rock, Thebes, Athens, what is Corinth?
What is Euboia with its island violets, what is Euboia, spread with grass, set with swift shoals, what is Crete?
What are the islands to me, what is Greece?
II
What can love of land give to me that you have not-- what do the tall Spartans know, and gentler Attic folk?
What has Sparta and her women more than this?
What are the islands to me if you are lost-- what is Naxos, Tinos, Andros, and Delos, the clasp of the white necklace?
III
What can love of land give to me that you have not, what can love of strife break in me that you have not?
Though Sparta enter Athens, Thebes wrack Sparta, each changes as water, salt, rising to wreak terror and fall back.
IV
"What has love of land given to you that I have not?"
I have questioned Tyrians where they sat on the black ships, weighted with rich stuffs, I have asked the Greeks from the white ships, and Greeks from ships whose hulks lay on the wet sand, scarlet with great beaks. I have asked bright Tyrians and tall Greeks-- "what has love of land given you?" And they answered--"peace."
V
But beauty is set apart, beauty is cast by the sea, a barren rock, beauty is set about with wrecks of ships, upon our coast, death keeps the shallows--death waits clutching toward us from the deeps.
Beauty is set apart; the winds that slash its beach, swirl the coarse sand upward toward the rocks.
Beauty is set apart from the islands and from Greece.
VI
In my garden the winds have beaten the ripe lilies; in my garden, the salt has wilted the first flakes of young narcissus, and the lesser hyacinth, and the salt has crept under the leaves of the white hyacinth.
In my garden even the wind-flowers lie flat, broken by the wind at last.
VII
What are the islands to me if you are lost, what is Paros to me if your eyes draw back, what is Milos if you take fright of beauty, terrible, torturous, isolated, a barren rock?
What is Rhodes, Crete, what is Paros facing west, what, white Imbros?
What are the islands to me if you hesitate, what is Greece if you draw back from the terror and cold splendour of song and its bleak sacrifice?
AT BAIA
I should have thought in a dream you would have brought some lovely, perilous thing, orchids piled in a great sheath, as who would say (in a dream) I send you this, who left the blue veins of your throat unkissed.
Why was it that your hands (that never took mine) your hands that I could see drift over the orchid heads so carefully, your hands, so fragile, sure to lift so gently, the fragile flower stuff-- ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream) the very form, the very scent, not heavy, not sensuous, but perilous--perilous-- of orchids, piled in a great sheath, and folded underneath on a bright scroll some word:
Flower sent to flower; for white hands, the lesser white, less lovely of flower leaf,
or
Lover to lover, no kiss, no touch, but forever and ever this.
SEA HEROES
Crash on crash of the sea, straining to wreck men, sea-boards, continents, raging against the world, furious, stay at last, for against your fury and your mad fight, the line of heroes stands, god-like:
Akroneos, Oknolos, Elatreus, helm-of-boat, loosener-of-helm, dweller-by-sea, Nauteus, sea-man, Prumneos, stern-of-ship, Agchialos, sea-girt, Elatreus, oar-shaft: lover-of-the-sea, lover-of-the-sea-ebb, lover-of-the-swift-sea, Ponteus, Proreus, Ooos: Anabesneos, one caught between wave-shock and wave-shock: Eurualos, broad sea-wrack, like Ares, man's death, and Naubolides, best in shape, of all first in size: Phaekous, seas' thunderbolt-- ah, crash on crash of great names-- man-tamer, man's-help, perfect Laodamos: and last the sons of great Alkinoos, Laodamos, Halios and god-like Clytomeos.
Of all nations, of all cities, of all continents, she is favoured among the rest, for she gives men as great as the sea, valorous to the fight, to battle against the elements and evil: greater even than the sea, they live beyond wrack and death of cities, and each god-like name spoken is as a shrine in a godless place.
But to name you, we reverent are breathless, weak with pain and old loss, and exile and despair-- our hearts break but to speak your name, Oknaleos-- and may we but call you in the feverish wrack of our storm-strewn beach, Eretmeos, and our hurt is quiet and our hearts tamed, as the sea may yet be tamed, and we vow to float great ships, named for each hero, and oar-blades, cut out of mountain-trees as such men might have shaped: Eretmeos and the sea is swept, baffled by the lordly shape, Akroneos has pines for his ship's keel; to love, to mate the sea? Ah there is Ponteos, the very deeps roar, hailing you dear-- they clamour to Ponteos, and to Proeos leap, swift to kiss, to curl, to creep, lover to mistress.
What wave, what love, what foam, for Ooos who moves swift as the sea? Ah stay, my heart, the weight of lovers, of loneliness drowns me, alas that their very names so press to break my heart with heart-sick weariness, what would they be, the very gods, rearing their mighty length beside the unharvested sea?
"NOT HONEY"
Not honey, not the plunder of the bee from meadow or sand-flower or mountain bush; from winter-flower or shoot born of the later heat: not honey, not the sweet stain on the lips and teeth: not honey, not the deep plunge of soft belly and the clinging of the gold-edged pollen-dusted feet.
Not so-- though rapture blind my eyes, and hunger crisp dark and inert my mouth, not honey, not the south, not the tall stalk of red twin-lilies, nor light branch of fruit tree caught in flexible light branch.
Not honey, not the south; ah flower of purple iris, flower of white, or of the iris, withering the grass-- for fleck of the sun's fire, gathers such heat and power, that shadow-print is light, cast through the petals of the yellow iris flower.
Not iris--old desire--old passion-- old forgetfulness--old pain-- not this, nor any flower, but if you turn again, seek strength of arm and throat, touch as the god; neglect the lyre-note; knowing that you shall feel, about the frame, no trembling of the string but heat, more passionate of bone and the white shell and fiery tempered steel.
EVADNE
I first tasted under Apollo's lips love and love sweetness, I Evadne; my hair is made of crisp violets or hyacinth which the wind combs back across some rock shelf; I Evadne was mate of the god of light.
His hair was crisp to my mouth as the flower of the crocus, across my cheek, cool as the silver cress on Erotos bank; between my chin and throat his mouth slipped over and over.
Still between my arm and shoulder, I feel the brush of his hair, and my hands keep the gold they took as they wandered over and over that great arm-full of yellow flowers.
SONG
You are as gold as the half-ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through the half-opened flowers of the great flower tufts thick on the black limbs of an Illyrian apple bough.
Can honey distill such fragrance as your bright hair-- for your face is as fair as rain, yet as rain that lies clear on white honey-comb, lends radiance to the white wax, so your hair on your brow casts light for a shadow.
WHY HAVE YOU SOUGHT
Why have you sought the Greeks, Eros, when such delight was yours in the far depth of sky: there you could note bright ivory take colour where she bent her face, and watch fair gold shed gold on radiant surface of porch and pillar: and ivory and bright gold, polished and lustrous grow faint beside that wondrous flesh and print of her foot-hold: Love, why do you tempt the Grecian porticoes?
Here men are bent with thought and women waste fair moments gathering lint and pricking coloured stuffs to mar their breasts, while she, adored, wastes not her fingers, worn of fire and sword, wastes not her touch on linen and fine thread, wastes not her head in thought and pondering, Love, why have you sought the horde of spearsmen, why the tent Achilles pitched beside the river-ford?
THE WHOLE WHITE WORLD
The whole white world is ours, and the world, purple with rose-bays, bays, bush on bush, group, thicket, hedge and tree, dark islands in a sea of grey-green olive or wild white-olive, cut with the sudden cypress shafts, in clusters, two or three, or with one slender, single cypress-tree.
Slid from the hill, as crumbling snow-peaks slide, citron on citron fill the valley, and delight waits till our spirits tire of forest, grove and bush and purple flower of the laurel-tree.
Yet not one wearies, joined is each to each in happiness complete with bush and flower: ours is the wind-breath at the hot noon-hour, ours is the bee's soft belly and the blush of the rose-petal, lifted, of the flower.
PHAEDRA
Think, O my soul, of the red sand of Crete; think of the earth; the heat burnt fissures like the great backs of the temple serpents; think of the world you knew; as the tide crept, the land burned with a lizard-blue where the dark sea met the sand.
Think, O my soul-- what power has struck you blind-- is there no desert-root, no forest-berry pine-pitch or knot of fir known that can help the soul caught in a force, a power, passionless, not its own?
So I scatter, so implore Gods of Crete, summoned before with slighter craft; ah, hear my prayer:
Grant to my soul the body that it wore, trained to your thought, that kept and held your power, as the petal of black poppy, the opiate of the flower.
For art undreamt in Crete, strange art and dire, in counter-charm prevents my charm limits my power: pine-cone I heap, grant answer to my prayer.
No more, my soul-- as the black cup, sullen and dark with fire, burns till beside it, noon's bright heat is withered, filled with dust-- and into that noon-heat grown drab and stale, suddenly wind and thunder and swift rain, till the scarlet flower is wrecked in the slash of the white hail.
The poppy that my heart was, formed to blind all mortals, made to strike and gather hearts like flame upon an altar, fades and shrinks, a red leaf drenched and torn in the cold rain.
SHE CONTRASTS WITH HERSELF HIPPOLYTA
Can flame beget white steel-- ah no, it could not take within my reins its shelter; steel must seek steel, or hate make out of joy a whet-stone for a sword; sword against flint, Theseus sought Hippolyta; she yielded not nor broke, sword upon stone, from the clash leapt a spark, Hippolytus, born of hate.
What did she think when all her strength was twisted for his bearing; did it break, even within her sheltered heart, a song, some whispered note, distant and faint as this:
_Love that I bear within my breast how is my armour melted how my heart: as an oak-tree that keeps beneath the snow, the young bark fresh till the spring cast from off its shoulders the white snow so does my armour melt._
_Love that I bear within my heart, O speak; tell how beneath the serpent-spotted shell, the cygnets wait, how the soft owl opens and flicks with pride, eye-lids of great bird-eyes, when underneath its breast the owlets shrink and turn._
You have the power, (then did she say) Artemis, benignity to grant forgiveness that I gave no quarter to an enemy who cast his armour on the forest-moss, and took, unmatched in an uneven contest, Hippolyta who relented not, returned and sought no kiss.
Then did she pray: Artemis, grant that no flower be grafted alien on a broken stalk, no dark flame-laurel on the stricken crest of a wild mountain-poplar; grant in my thought, I never yield but wait, entreating cold white river, mountain-pool and salt: let all my veins be ice, until they break (strength of white beach, rock of mountain land, forever to you, Artemis, dedicate) from out my reins, those small, cold hands.
SHE REBUKES HIPPOLYTA
Was she so chaste?
Swift and a broken rock clatters across the steep shelf of the mountain slope, sudden and swift and breaks as it clatters down into the hollow breach of the dried water-course: far and away (through fire I see it, and smoke of the dead, withered stalks of the wild cistus-brush) Hippolyta, frail and wild, galloping up the slope between great boulder and rock and group and cluster of rock.
Was she so chaste, (I see it, sharp, this vision, and each fleck on the horse's flanks of foam, and bridle and bit, silver, and the straps, wrought with their perfect art, and the sun, striking athwart the silver-work, and the neck, strained forward, ears alert, and the head of a girl flung back and her throat.)
Was she so chaste-- (Ah, burn my fire, I ask out of the smoke-ringed darkness enclosing the flaming disk of my vision) I ask for a voice to answer: was she chaste?
Who can say-- the broken ridge of the hills was the line of a lover's shoulder, his arm-turn, the path to the hills, the sudden leap and swift thunder of mountain boulders, his laugh.
She was mad-- as no priest, no lover's cult could grant madness; the wine that entered her throat with the touch of the mountain rocks was white, intoxicant: she, the chaste, was betrayed by the glint of light on the hills, the granite splinter of rocks, the touch of the stone where heat melts toward the shadow-side of the rocks.
EGYPT
(TO E. A. POE)
Egypt had cheated us, for Egypt took through guile and craft our treasure and our hope, Egypt had maimed us, offered dream for life, an opiate for a kiss, and death for both.
White poison flower we loved and the black spike of an ungarnered bush-- (a spice--or without taste-- we wondered--then we asked others to take and sip and watched their death) Egypt we loved, though hate should have withheld our touch.
Egypt had given us knowledge, and we took, blindly, through want of heart, what Egypt brought; knowing all poison, what was that or this, more or less perilous, than this or that.
We pray you, Egypt, by what perverse fate, has poison brought with knowledge, given us this-- not days of trance, shadow, fore-doom of death, but passionate grave thought, belief enhanced, ritual returned and magic;
Even in the uttermost black pit of the forbidden knowledge, wisdom's glance, the grey eyes following in the mid-most desert-- great shaft of rose, fire shed across our path, upon the face grown grey, a light, Hellas re-born from death.
HELIOS
_Helios makes all things right:-- night brands and chokes as if destruction broke over furze and stone and crop of myrtle-shoot and field-wort, destroyed with flakes of iron, the bracken-stems, where tender roots were sown, blight, chaff and waste of darkness to choke and drown._
_A curious god to find, yet in the end faithful; bitter, the Kyprian's feet-- ah flecks of whited clay, great hero, vaunted lord-- ah petal, dust and wind-fall on the ground--queen awaiting queen._
_Better the weight, they tell, the helmet's beaten shell, Athene's riven steel, caught over the white skull, Athene sets to heal the few who merit it._
_Yet even then, what help, should he not turn and note the height of forehead and the mark of conquest, draw near and try the helmet; to left--reset the crown Athene weighted down, or break with a light touch mayhap the steel set to protect; to slay or heal._
_A treacherous god, they say, yet who would wait to test justice or worth or right, when through a fetid night is wafted faint and nearer-- then straight as point of steel to one who courts swift death, scent of Hesperidean orange-spray._
PRAYER
White, O white face-- from disenchanted days wither alike dark rose and fiery bays: no gift within our hands, nor strength to praise, only defeat and silence; though we lift hands, disenchanted, of small strength, nor raise branch of the laurel or the light of torch, but fold the garment on the riven locks, yet hear, all-merciful, and touch the fore-head, dim, unlit of pride and thought, Mistress--be near! Give back the glamour to our will, the thought; give back the tool, the chisel; once we wrought things not unworthy, sandal and steel-clasp; silver and steel, the coat with white leaf-pattern at the arm and throat: silver and metal, hammered for the ridge of shield and helmet-rim; white silver with the dark hammered in, belt, staff and magic spear-shaft with the gilt spark at the point and hilt.
_Printed in England at the Pelican Press, 2 Carmelite Street, London, E.C._
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Notes | | | | Page 42: though amended to through ("through fire I see | | it, ...") | | | | Hyphenation has generally been standardized. However, when a | | word appears hyphenated and unhyphenated an equal number of | | times, both versions have been retained (forehead/ | | fore-head). | +--------------------------------------------------------------+