Complete Works of Aldous Huxley

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Complete Works of Aldous Huxley Page 432

by Aldous Huxley


  And at the fish that, aimlessly agape,

  Hung midway up their heaven of flawless glass,

  Like angels waiting for eternity to pass.

  Leda drew breath and plunged; her gasping cry

  Splashed up; the water circled brokenly

  Out from that pearly shudder of dipped limbs;

  The glittering pool laughed up its flowery brims,

  And everything, save the poor fish, rejoiced:

  Their idiot contemplation of the Moist,

  The Cold, the Watery, was in a trice

  Ended when Leda broke their crystal paradise.

  Jove in his high Olympian chamber lay

  Hugely supine, striving to charm away

  In sleep the long, intolerable noon.

  But heedless Morpheus still withheld his boon,

  And Jove upon his silk-pavilioned bed

  Tossed wrathful and awake. His fevered head

  Swarmed with a thousand fancies, which forecast

  Delights to be, or savoured pleasures past.

  Closing his eyes, he saw his eagle swift,

  Headlong as his own thunder, stoop and lift

  On pinions upward labouring the prize

  Of beauty ravished for the envious skies.

  He saw again that bright, adulterous pair,

  Trapped by the limping husband unaware,

  Fast in each other’s arms, and faster in the snare —

  And laughed remembering. Sometimes his thought

  Went wandering over the earth and sought

  Familiar places — temples by the sea,

  Cities and islands; here a sacred tree

  And there a cavern of shy nymphs.

  He rolled

  About his bed, in many a rich fold

  Crumpling his Babylonian coverlet,

  And yawned and stretched. The smell of his own sweat

  Brought back to mind his Libyan desert-fane

  Of mottled granite, with its endless train

  Of pilgrim camels, reeking towards the sky

  Ammonian incense to his hornèd deity;

  The while their masters worshipped, offering

  Huge teeth of ivory, while some would bring

  Their Ethiop wives — sleek wineskins of black silk,

  Jellied and huge from drinking asses’ milk

  Through years of tropical idleness, to pray

  For offspring (whom he ever sent away

  With prayers unanswered, lest their ebon race

  Might breed and blacken the earth’s comely face).

  Noon pressed on him a hotter, heavier weight.

  O Love in Idleness! how celibate

  He felt! Libido like a nemesis

  Scourged him with itching memories of bliss.

  The satin of imagined skin was sleek

  And supply warm against his lips and cheek,

  And deep within soft hair’s dishevelled dusk

  His eyelids fluttered; like a flowery musk

  The scent of a young body seemed to float

  Faintly about him, close and yet remote —

  For perfume and the essence of music dwell

  In other worlds among the asphodel

  Of unembodied life. Then all had flown;

  His dream had melted. In his bed, alone,

  Jove sweating lay and moaned, and longed in vain

  To still the pulses of his burning pain.

  In sheer despair at last he leapt from bed,

  Opened the window and thrust forth his head

  Into Olympian ether. One fierce frown

  Rifted the clouds, and he was looking down

  Into a gulf of azure calm; the rack

  Seethed round about, tempestuously black;

  But the god’s eye could hold its angry thunders back.

  There lay the world, down through the chasméd blue,

  Stretched out from edge to edge unto his view;

  And in the midst, bright as a summer’s day

  At breathless noon, the Mediterranean lay;

  And Ocean round the world’s dim fringes tossed

  His glaucous waves in mist and distance lost;

  And Pontus and the livid Caspian Sea

  Stirred in their nightmare sleep uneasily.

  And ‘twixt the seas rolled the wide fertile land,

  Dappled with green and tracts of tawny sand,

  And rich, dark fallows and fields of flowers aglow

  And the white, changeless silences of snow;

  While here and there towns, like a living eye

  Unclosed on earth’s blind face, towards the sky

  Glanced their bright conscious beauty. Yet the sight

  Of his fair earth gave him but small delight

  Now in his restlessness: its beauty could

  Do nought to quench the fever in his blood.

  Desire lends sharpness to his searching eyes;

  Over the world his focused passion flies

  Quicker than chasing sunlight on a day

  Of storm and golden April. Far away

  He sees the tranquil rivers of the East,

  Mirrors of many a strange barbaric feast,

  Where un-Hellenic dancing-girls contort

  Their yellow limbs, and gibbering masks make sport

  Under the moons of many-coloured light

  That swing their lantern-fruitage in the night

  Of overarching trees. To him it seems

  An alien world, peopled by insane dreams.

  But these are nothing to the monstrous shapes —

  Not men so much as bastardy of apes —

  That meet his eyes in Africa. Between

  Leaves of grey fungoid pulp and poisonous green,

  White eyes from black and browless faces stare.

  Dryads with star-flowers in their woolly hair

  Dance to the flaccid clapping of their own

  Black dangling dugs through forests overgrown,

  Platted with writhing creepers. Horrified,

  He sees them how they leap and dance, or glide,

  Glimpse after black glimpse of a satin skin,

  Among unthinkable flowers, to pause and grin

  Out through a trellis of suppurating lips,

  Of mottled tentacles barbed at the tips

  And bloated hands and wattles and red lobes

  Of pendulous gristle and enormous probes

  Of pink and slashed and tasselled flesh . . .

  He turns

  Northward his sickened sight. The desert burns

  All life away. Here in the forkéd shade

  Of twin-humped towering dromedaries laid,

  A few gaunt folk are sleeping: fierce they seem

  Even in sleep, and restless as they dream.

  He would be fearful of a desert bride

  As of a brown asp at his sleeping side,

  Fearful of her white teeth and cunning arts.

  Further, yet further, to the ultimate parts

  Of the wide earth he looks, where Britons go

  Painted among their swamps, and through the snow

  Huge hairy snuffling beasts pursue their prey —

  Fierce men, as hairy and as huge as they.

  Bewildered furrows deepen the Thunderer’s scowl;

  This world so vast, so variously foul —

  Who can have made its ugliness? In what

  Revolting fancy were the Forms begot

  Of all these monsters? What strange deity —

  So barbarously not a Greek! — was he

  Who could mismake such beings in his own

  Distorted image. Nay, the Greeks alone

  Were men; in Greece alone were bodies fair,

  Minds comely. In that all-but-island there,

  Cleaving the blue sea with its promontories,

  Lies the world’s hope, the seed of all the glories

  That are to be; there, too, must surely live

  She who alone can medicinably give

&
nbsp; Ease with her beauty to the Thunderer’s pain.

  Downwards he bends his fiery eyes again,

  Glaring on Hellas. Like a beam of light,

  His intent glances touch the mountain height

  With passing flame and probe the valleys deep,

  Rift the dense forest and the age-old sleep

  Of vaulted antres on whose pebbly floor

  Gallop the loud-hoofed Centaurs; and the roar

  Of more than human shouting underground

  Pulses in living palpable waves of sound

  From wall to wall, until it rumbles out

  Into the air; and at that hollow shout

  That seems an utterance of the whole vast hill,

  The shepherds cease their laughter and are still.

  Cities asleep under the noonday sky

  Stir at the passage of his burning eye;

  And in their huts the startled peasants blink

  At the swift flash that bursts through every chink

  Of wattled walls, hearkening in fearful wonder

  Through lengthened seconds for the crash of thunder —

  Which follows not: they are the more afraid.

  Jove seeks amain. Many a country maid,

  Whose sandalled feet pass down familiar ways

  Among the olives, but whose spirit strays

  Through lovelier lands of fancy, suddenly

  Starts broad awake out of her dream to see

  A light that is not of the sun, a light

  Darted by living eyes, consciously bright;

  She sees and feels it like a subtle flame

  Mantling her limbs with fear and maiden shame

  And strange desire. Longing and terrified,

  She hides her face, like a new-wedded bride

  Who feels rough hands that seize and hold her fast;

  And swooning falls. The terrible light has passed;

  She wakes; the sun still shines, the olive trees

  Tremble to whispering silver in the breeze

  And all is as it was, save she alone

  In whose dazed eyes this deathless light has shone:

  For never, never from this day forth will she

  In earth’s poor passion find felicity,

  Or love of mortal man. A god’s desire

  Has seared her soul; nought but the same strong fire

  Can kindle the dead ash to life again,

  And all her years will be a lonely pain.

  Many a thousand had he looked upon,

  Thousands of mortals, young and old; but none —

  Virgin, or young ephebus, or the flower

  Of womanhood culled in its full-blown hour —

  Could please the Thunderer’s sight or touch his mind;

  The longed-for loveliness was yet to find.

  Had beauty fled, and was there nothing fair

  Under the moon? The fury of despair

  Raged in the breast of heaven’s Almighty Lord;

  He gnashed his foamy teeth and rolled and roared

  In bull-like agony. Then a great calm

  Descended on him: cool and healing balm

  Touched his immortal fury. He had spied

  Young Leda where she stood, poised on the river-side.

  Even as she broke the river’s smooth expanse,

  Leda was conscious of that hungry glance,

  And knew it for an eye of fearful power

  That did so hot and thunderously lour,

  She knew not whence, on her frail nakedness.

  Jove’s heart held but one thought: he must possess

  That perfect form or die — possess or die.

  Unheeded prayers and supplications fly,

  Thick as a flock of birds, about his ears,

  And smoke of incense rises; but he hears

  Nought but the soft falls of that melody

  Which is the speech of Leda; he can see

  Nought but that almost spiritual grace

  Which is her body, and that heavenly face

  Where gay, sweet thoughts shine through, and eyes are bright

  With purity and the soul’s inward light.

  Have her he must: the teasel-fingered burr

  Sticks not so fast in a wild beast’s tangled fur

  As that insistent longing in the soul

  Of mighty Jove. Gods, men, earth, heaven, the whole

  Vast universe was blotted from his thought

  And nought remained but Leda’s laughter, nought

  But Leda’s eyes. Magnified by his lust,

  She was the whole world now; have her he must, he must . . .

  His spirit worked; how should he gain his end

  With most deliciousness? What better friend,

  What counsellor more subtle could he find

  Than lovely Aphrodite, ever kind

  To hapless lovers, ever cunning, too,

  In all the tortuous ways of love to do

  And plan the best? To Paphos then! His will

  And act were one; and straight, invisible,

  He stood in Paphos, breathing the languid air

  By Aphrodite’s couch. O heavenly fair

  She was, and smooth and marvellously young!

  On Tyrian silk she lay, and purple hung

  About her bed in folds of fluted light

  And shadow, dark as wine. Two doves, more white

  Even than the white hand on the purple lying

  Like a pale flower wearily dropped, were flying

  With wings that made an odoriferous stir,

  Dropping faint dews of bakkaris and myrrh,

  Musk and the soul of sweet flowers cunningly

  Ravished from transient petals as they die.

  Two stripling cupids on her either hand

  Stood near with winnowing plumes and gently fanned

  Her hot, love-fevered cheeks and eyelids burning.

  Another, crouched at the bed’s foot, was turning

  A mass of scattered parchments — vows or plaints

  Or glad triumphant thanks which Venus’ saints,

  Martyrs and heroes, on her altars strewed

  With bitterest tears or gifts of gratitude.

  From the pile heaped at Aphrodite’s feet

  The boy would take a leaf, and in his sweet,

  Clear voice would read what mortal tongues can tell

  In stammering verse of those ineffable

  Pleasures and pains of love, heaven and uttermost hell.

  Jove hidden stood and heard him read these lines

  Of votive thanks —

  Cypris, this little silver lamp to thee

  I dedicate.

  It was my fellow-watcher, shared with me

  Those swift, short hours, when raised above my fate

  In Sphenura’s white arms I drank

  Of immortality.

  “A pretty lamp, and I will have it placed

  Beside the narrow bed of some too chaste

  Sister of virgin Artemis, to be

  A night-long witness of her cruelty.

  Read me another, boy,” and Venus bent

  Her ear to listen to this short lament.

  Cypris, Cypris, I am betrayed!

  Under the same wide mantle laid

  I found them, faithless, shameless pair!

  Making love with tangled hair.

  “Alas,” the goddess cried, “nor god, nor man,

  Nor medicinable balm, nor magic can

  Cast out the demon jealousy, whose breath

  Withers the rose of life, save only time and death.”

  Another sheet he took and read again.

  Farewell to love, and hail the long, slow pain

  Of memory that backward turns to joy.

  O I have danced enough and enough sung;

  My feet shall be still now and my voice mute;

  Thine are these withered wreaths, this Lydian flute,

  Cypris; I once was young.

  And piêtous Aphrodite wept to thin
k

  How fadingly upon death’s very brink

  Beauty and love take hands for one short kiss —

  And then the wreaths are dust, the bright-eyed bliss

  Perished, and the flute still. “Read on, read on.”

  But ere the page could start, a lightning shone

  Suddenly through the room, and they were ‘ware

  Of some great terrible presence looming there.

  And it took shape — huge limbs, whose every line

  A symbol was of power and strength divine,

  And it was Jove.

  “Daughter, I come,” said he,

  “For counsel in a case that touches me

  Close, to the very life.” And he straightway

  Told her of all his restlessness that day

  And of his sight of Leda, and how great

  Was his desire. And so in close debate

  Sat the two gods, planning their rape; while she,

  Who was to be their victim, joyously

  Laughed like a child in the sudden breathless chill

  And splashed and swam, forgetting every ill

  And every fear and all, save only this:

  That she was young, and it was perfect bliss

  To be alive where suns so goldenly shine,

  And bees go drunk with fragrant honey-wine,

  And the cicadas sing from morn till night,

  And rivers run so cool and pure and bright . . .

  Stretched all her length, arms under head, she lay

  In the deep grass, while the sun kissed away

  The drops that sleeked her skin. Slender and fine

  As those old images of the gods that shine

  With smooth-worn silver, polished through the years

  By the touching lips of countless worshippers,

  Her body was; and the sun’s golden heat

  Clothed her in softest flame from head to feet

  And was her mantle, that she scarcely knew

  The conscious sense of nakedness. The blue,

  Far hills and the faint fringes of the sky

  Shimmered and pulsed in the heat uneasily,

  And hidden in the grass, cicadas shrill

  Dizzied the air with ceaseless noise, until

  A listener might wonder if they cried

  In his own head or in the world outside.

  Sometimes she shut her eyelids, and wrapped round

  In a red darkness, with the muffled sound

  And throb of blood beating within her brain,

  Savoured intensely to the verge of pain

  Her own young life, hoarded it up behind

  Her shuttered lids, until, too long confined,

  It burst them open and her prisoned soul

  Flew forth and took possession of the whole

  Exquisite world about her and was made

  A part of it. Meanwhile her maidens played,

  Singing an ancient song of death and birth,

  Seed-time and harvest, old as the grey earth,

 

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