Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse

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Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse Page 4

by Edith Wharton

But yearned to pour his blood into her veins

  And buy her back with unimagined pains.

  To whom the Shepherd of the Shadows said:

  "Yea, many thus would bargain for their dead;

  But when they hear my fatal gateway clang

  Life quivers in them with a last sweet pang.

  They see the smoke of home above the trees,

  The cordage whistles on the harbour breeze;

  The beaten path that wanders to the shore

  Grows dear because they shall not tread it more,

  The dog that drowsing on their threshold lies

  Looks at them with their childhood in his eyes,

  And in the sunset's melancholy fall

  They read a sunrise that shall give them all."

  "Not thus am I," the Harper smiled his scorn.

  "I see no path but those her feet have worn;

  My roof-tree is the shadow of her hair,

  And the light breaking through her long despair

  The only sunrise that mine eyelids crave;

  For doubly dead without me in the grave

  Is she who, if my feet had gone before,

  Had found life dark as death's abhorred shore."

  The gate clanged on him, and he went his way

  Amid the alien millions, mute and grey,

  Swept like a cold mist down an unlit strand,

  Where nameless wreckage gluts the stealthy sand,

  Drift of the cockle-shells of hope and faith

  Wherein they foundered on the rock of death.

  So came he to the image that he sought

  (Less living than her semblance in his thought),

  Who, at the summons of his thrilling notes,

  Drew back to life as a drowned creature floats

  Back to the surface; yet no less is dead.

  And cold fear smote him till she spoke and said:

  "Art thou then come to lay thy lips on mine,

  And pour thy life's libation out like wine?

  Shall I, through thee, revisit earth again,

  Traverse the shining sea, the fruitful plain,

  Behold the house we dwelt in, lay my head

  Upon the happy pillows of our bed,

  And feel in dreams the pressure of thine arms

  Kindle these pulses that no memory warms?

  Nay: give me for a space upon thy breast

  Death's shadowy substitute for rapture--rest;

  Then join again the joyous living throng,

  And give me life, but give it in thy song;

  For only they that die themselves may give

  Life to the dead: and I would have thee live."

  Fear seized him closer than her arms; but he

  Answered: "Not so--for thou shalt come with me!

  I sought thee not that we should part again,

  But that fresh joy should bud from the old pain;

  And the gods, if grudgingly their gifts they make,

  Yield all to them that without asking take."

  "The gods," she said, "(so runs life's ancient lore)

  Yield all man takes, but always claim their score.

  The iron wings of the Eumenides

  When heard far off seem but a summer breeze;

  But me thou'lt have alive on earth again

  Only by paying here my meed of pain.

  Then lay on my cold lips the tender ghost

  Of the dear kiss that used to warm them most,

  Take from my frozen hands thy hands of fire,

  And of my heart-strings make thee a new lyre,

  That in thy music men may find my voice,

  And something of me still on earth rejoice."

  Shuddering he heard her, but with close-flung arm

  Swept her resisting through the ghostly swarm.

  "Swift, hide thee 'neath my cloak, that we may glide

  Past the dim warder as the gate swings wide."

  He whirled her with him, lighter than a leaf

  Unwittingly whirled onward by a brief

  Autumnal eddy; but when the fatal door

  Suddenly yielded him to life once more,

  And issuing to the all-consoling skies

  He turned to seek the sunlight in her eyes,

  He clutched at emptiness--she was not there;

  And the dim warder answered to his prayer:

  "Only once have I seen the wonder wrought.

  But when Alcestis thus her master sought,

  Living she sought him not, nor dreamed that fate

  For any subterfuge would swing my gate.

  Loving, she gave herself to livid death,

  Joyous she bought his respite with her breath,

  Came, not embodied, but a tenuous shade,

  In whom her rapture a great radiance made.

  For never saw I ghost upon this shore

  Shine with such living ecstasy before,

  Nor heard an exile from the light above

  Hail me with smiles: Thou art not Death but Love!

  "But when the gods, frustrated, this beheld,

  How, living still, among the dead she dwelled,

  Because she lived in him whose life she won,

  And her blood beat in his beneath the sun,

  They reasoned: 'When the bitter Stygian wave

  The sweetness of love's kisses cannot lave,

  When the pale flood of Lethe washes not

  From mortal mind one high immortal thought,

  Akin to us the earthly creature grows,

  Since nature suffers only what it knows.

  If she whom we to this grey desert banned

  Still dreams she treads with him the sunlit land

  That for his sake she left without a tear,

  Set wide the gates--her being is not here.'

  "So ruled the gods; but thou, that sought'st to give

  Thy life for love, yet for thyself wouldst live.

  They know not for their kin; but back to earth

  Give, pitying, one that is of mortal birth."

  Humbled the Harper heard, and turned away,

  Mounting alone to the empoverished day;

  Yet, as he left the Stygian shades behind,

  He heard the cordage on the harbour wind,

  Saw the blue smoke above the homestead trees,

  And in his hidden heart was glad of these.

  AN AUTUMN SUNSET

  I

  LEAGUERED in fire

  The wild black promontories of the coast extend

  Their savage silhouettes;

  The sun in universal carnage sets,

  And, halting higher,

  The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,

  Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,

  That, balked, yet stands at bay.

  Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day

  In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,

  A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine

  Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,

  And in her hand swings high o'erhead,

  Above the waste of war,

  The silver torch-light of the evening star

  Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.

  II

  Lagooned in gold,

  Seem not those jetty promontories rather

  The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,

  Uncomforted of morn,

  Where old oblivions gather,

  The melancholy unconsoling fold

  Of all things that go utterly to death

  And mix no more, no more

  With life's perpetually awakening breath?

  Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,

  Over such sailless seas,

  To walk with hope's slain importunities

  In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not

  All things be there forgot,

  Save the sea's golden barrier and the black

  Close-crouching promontories?

  Dead
to all shames, forgotten of all glories,

  Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade,

  A spectre self-destroyed,

  So purged of all remembrance and sucked back

  Into the primal void,

  That should we on that shore phantasmal meet

  I should not know the coming of your feet?

  MOONRISE OVER TYRINGHAM

  NOW the high holocaust of hours is done,

  And all the west empurpled with their death,

  How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun,

  How little while the dusk remembereth!

  Though some there were, proud hours that marched in mail,

  And took the morning on auspicious crest,

  Crying to fortune "Back, for I prevail!"--

  Yet now they lie disfeatured with the rest;

  And some that stole so soft on destiny

  Methought they had surprised her to a smile;

  But these fled frozen when she turned to see,

  And moaned and muttered through my heart awhile.

  But now the day is emptied of them all,

  And night absorbs their life-blood at a draught;

  And so my life lies, as the gods let fall

  An empty cup from which their lips have quaffed.

  Yet see--night is not . . . by translucent ways,

  Up the grey void of autumn afternoon

  Steals a mild crescent, charioted in haze,

  And all the air is merciful as June.

  The lake is a forgotten streak of day

  That trembles through the hemlocks' darkling bars,

  And still, my heart, still some divine delay

  Upon the threshold holds the earliest stars.

  O pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feet

  Haunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind,

  Art thou a watcher stealing to entreat

  Prayer and sepulture for thy fallen kind?

  Poor plaintive waif of a predestined race,

  Their ruin gapes for thee. Why linger here?

  Go hence in silence. Veil thine orphaned face,

  Lest I should look on it and call it dear.

  For if I love thee thou wilt sooner die;

  Some sudden ruin will plunge upon thy head,

  Midnight will fall from the revengeful sky

  And hurl thee down among thy shuddering dead.

  Avert thine eyes. Lapse softly from my sight,

  Call not my name, nor heed if thine I crave,

  So shalt thou sink through mitigated night

  And bathe thee in the all-effacing wave.

  But upward still thy perilous footsteps fare

  Along a high-hung heaven drenched in light,

  Dilating on a tide of crystal air

  That floods the dark hills to their utmost height.

  Strange hour, is this thy waning face that leans

  Out of mid-heaven and makes my soul its glass?

  What victory is imaged there? What means

  Thy tarrying smile? Oh, veil thy lips and pass.

  Nay . . . pause and let me name thee! For I see,

  O with what flooding ecstasy of light,

  Strange hour that wilt not loose thy hold on me,

  Thou'rt not day's latest, but the first of night!

  And after thee the gold-foot stars come thick,

  >From hand to hand they toss the flying fire,

  Till all the zenith with their dance is quick

  About the wheeling music of the Lyre.

  Dread hour that lead'st the immemorial round,

  With lifted torch revealing one by one

  The thronging splendours that the day held bound,

  And how each blue abyss enshrines its sun--

  Be thou the image of a thought that fares

  Forth from itself, and flings its ray ahead,

  Leaping the barriers of ephemeral cares,

  To where our lives are but the ages' tread,

  And let this year be, not the last of youth,

  But first--like thee!--of some new train of hours,

  If more remote from hope, yet nearer truth,

  And kin to the unpetitionable powers.

  ALL SOULS

  I

  A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead,

  And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.

  Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,

  Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,

  But forth of the gate and down the road,

  Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.

  For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,

  When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

  II

  Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:

  It is only their call that comes on the breeze;

  Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:

  It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;

  Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:

  It is only the touch of their hands that grope--

  For the year's on the turn and it's All Souls' night,

  When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

  III

  And where should a man bring his sweet to woo

  But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?

  Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,

  The empty hands that their fellows miss,

  Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,

  Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?

  For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,

  When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

  IV

  And now they rise and walk in the cold,

  Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.

  Let them see us and hear us, and say: "Ah, thus

  In the prime of the year it went with us!"

  Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,

  Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!

  For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,

  When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.

  V

  Till they say, as they hear us--poor dead, poor dead!--

  "Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed--

  Just a thrill of the old remembered pains

  To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,

  A touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,

  As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart--

  For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,

  When the dead can hear and the dead have sight."

  VI

  And where should the living feel alive

  But here in this wan white humming hive,

  As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,

  And one by one they creep back to the fold?

  And where should a man hold his mate and say:

  "One more, one more, ere we go their way"?

  For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,

  When the living can learn by the churchyard light.

  VII

  And how should we break faith who have seen

  Those dead lips plight with the mist between,

  And how forget, who have seen how soon

  They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?

  How scorn, how hate, how strive, wee too,

  Who must do so soon as those others do?

  For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day,

  And behold, with the light the dead are away. . .

  ALL SAINTS

  ALL so grave and shining see they come

  From the blissful ranks of the forgiven,

  Though so distant wheels the nearest crystal dome,

  And the spheres are seven.

  Are you in such haste to come to earth,

  Shining ones, the Wonder on your brow,

  To the low poor places of your birth,

  A
nd the day that must be darkness now?

  Does the heart still crave the spot it yearned on

  In the grey and mortal years,

  The pure flame the smoky hearth it burned on,

  The clear eye its tears?

  Was there, in the narrow range of living,

  After all the wider scope?

  In the old old rapture of forgiving,

  In the long long flight of hope?

  Come you, from free sweep across the spaces,

  To the irksome bounds of mortal law,

  From the all-embracing Vision, to some face's

  Look that never saw?

  Never we, imprisoned here, had sought you,

  Lured you with the ancient bait of pain,

  Down the silver current of the light-years brought you

  To the beaten round again--

  Is it you, perchance, who ache to strain us

  Dumbly to the dim transfigured breast,

  Or with tragic gesture would detain us

  From the age-long search for rest?

  Is the labour then more glorious than the laurel,

  The learning than the conquered thought?

  Is the meed of men the righteous quarrel,

  Not the justice wrought?

  Long ago we guessed it, faithful ghosts,

  Proudly chose the present for our scene,

  And sent out indomitable hosts

  Day by day to widen our demesne.

  Sit you by our hearth-stone, lone immortals,

  Share again the bitter wine of life!

  Well we know, beyond the peaceful portals

  There is nothing better than our strife,

  Nought more thrilling than the cry that calls us,

  Spent and stumbling, to the conflict vain,

  After each disaster that befalls us

  Nerves us for a sterner strain.

  And, when flood or foeman shakes the sleeper

  In his moment's lapse from pain,

  Bids us fold our tents, and flee our kin, and deeper

  Drive into the wilderness again.

  THE OLD POLE STAR

  BEFORE the clepsydra had bound the days

  Man tethered Change to his fixed star, and said:

  "The elder races, that long since are dead,

  Marched by that light; it swerves not from its base

  Though all the worlds about it wax and fade."

  When Egypt saw it, fast in reeling spheres,

  Her Pyramids shaft-centred on its ray

  She reared and said: "Long as this star holds sway

 

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