Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon

by Algernon Swinburne

  His helmet as a windy and wintering moon

  Seen through blown cloud and plume-like drift, when ships

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  Drive, and men strive with all the sea, and oars

  Break, and the beaks dip under, drinking death;

  Yet was he then but a span long, and moaned

  With inarticulate mouth inseparate words,

  And with blind lips and fingers wrung my breast

  Hard, and thrust out with foolish hands and feet,

  Murmuring; but those grey women with bound hair

  Who fright the gods frighted not him; he laughed

  Seeing them, and pushed out hands to feel and haul

  Distaff and thread, intangible; but they

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  Passed, and I hid the brand, and in my heart

  Laughed likewise, having all my will of heaven.

  But now I know not if to left or right

  The gods have drawn us hither; for again

  I dreamt, and saw the black brand burst on fire

  As a branch bursts in flower, and saw the flame

  Fade flower-wise, and Death came and with dry lips

  Blew the charred ash into my breast; and Love

  Trampled the ember and crushed it with swift feet.

  This I have also at heart; that not for me,

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  Not for me only or son of mine, O girls,

  The gods have wrought life, and desire of life,

  Heart’s love and heart’s division; but for all

  There shines one sun and one wind blows till night.

  And when night comes the wind sinks and the sun,

  And there is no light after, and no storm,

  But sleep and much forgetfulness of things.

  In such wise I gat knowledge of the gods

  Years hence, and heard high sayings of one most wise,

  Eurythemis my mother, who beheld

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  With eyes alive and spake with lips of these

  As one on earth disfleshed and disallied

  From breath or blood corruptible; such gifts

  Time gave her, and an equal soul to these

  And equal face to all things; thus she said.

  But whatsoever intolerable or glad

  The swift hours weave and unweave, I go hence

  Full of mine own soul, perfect of myself,

  Toward mine and me sufficient; and what chance

  The gods cast lots for and shake out on us,

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  That shall we take, and that much bear withal.

  And now, before these gather to the hunt,

  I will go arm my son and bring him forth,

  Lest love or some man’s anger work him harm.

  CHORUS

  Before the beginning of years

  There came to the making of man

  Time, with a gift of tears;

  Grief, with a glass that ran;

  Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

  Summer, with flowers that fell;

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  Remembrance fallen from heaven,

  And madness risen from hell;

  Strength without hands to smite;

  Love that endures for a breath:

  Night, the shadow of light,

  And life, the shadow of death.

  And the high gods took in hand

  Fire, and the falling of tears,

  And a measure of sliding sand

  From under the feet of the years;

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  And froth and drift of the sea;

  And dust of the labouring earth;

  And bodies of things to be

  In the houses of death and of birth;

  And wrought with weeping and laughter,

  And fashioned with loathing and love,

  With life before and after

  And death beneath and above,

  For a day and a night and a morrow,

  That his strength might endure for a span

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  With travail and heavy sorrow,

  The holy spirit of man.

  From the winds of the north and the south

  They gathered as unto strife;

  They breathed upon his mouth,

  They filled his body with life;

  Eyesight and speech they wrought

  For the veils of the soul therein,

  A time for labour and thought,

  A time to serve and to sin;

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  They gave him light in his ways,

  And love, and a space for delight,

  And beauty and length of days,

  And night, and sleep in the night.

  His speech is a burning fire;

  With his lips he travaileth;

  In his heart is a blind desire,

  In his eyes foreknowledge of death;

  He weaves, and is clothed with derision;

  Sows, and he shall not reap;

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  His life is a watch or a vision

  Between a sleep and a sleep.

  MELEAGER

  O sweet new heaven and air without a star,

  Fair day, be fair and welcome, as to men

  With deeds to do and praise to pluck from thee.

  Come forth a child, born with clear sound and light,

  With laughter and swift limbs and prosperous looks;

  That this great hunt with heroes for the hounds

  May leave thee memorable and us well sped.

  ALTHÆA

  Son, first I praise thy prayer, then bid thee speed;

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  But the gods hear men’s hands before their lips,

  And heed beyond all crying and sacrifice

  Light of things done and noise of labouring men.

  But thou, being armed and perfect for the deed,

  Abide; for like rain-flakes in a wind they grow,

  The men thy fellows, and the choice of the world,

  Bound to root out the tuskèd plague, and leave

  Thanks and safe days and peace in Calydon.

  MELEAGER

  For the whole city and all the low-lying land

  Flames, and the soft air sounds with them that come;

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  The gods give all these fruit of all their works.

  ALTHÆA

  Set thine eye thither and fix thy spirit and say

  Whom there thou knowest; for sharp mixed shadow and wind

  Blown up between the morning and the mist,

  With steam of steeds and flash of bridle or wheel,

  And fire, and parcels of the broken dawn,

  And dust divided by hard light, and spears

  That shine and shift as the edge of wild beasts’ eyes,

  Smite upon mine; so fiery their blind edge

  Burns, and bright points break up and baffle day.

  MELEAGER

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  The first, for many I know not, being far off,

  Peleus the Larissæan, couched with whom

  Sleeps the white sea-bred wife and silver-shod,

  Fair as fled foam, a goddess; and their son

  Most swift and splendid of men’s children born,

  Most like a god, full of the future fame.

  ALTHÆA

  Who are these shining like one sundered star?

  MELEAGER

  Thy sister’s sons, a double flower of men.

  ALTHÆA

  O sweetest kin to me in all the world,

  O twin-born blood of Leda, gracious heads

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  Like kindled lights in untempestuous heaven,

  Fair flower-like stars on the iron foam of fight,

  With what glad heart and kindliness of soul,

  Even to the staining of both eyes with tears

  And kindling of warm eyelids with desire,

  A great way off I greet you, and rejoice

  Seeing you so fair, and moulded like as gods.

  Far off ye come, and least in
years of these,

  But lordliest, but worth love to look upon.

  MELEAGER

  Even such (for sailing hither I saw far hence,

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  And where Eurotas hollows his moist rock

  Nigh Sparta with a strenuous-hearted stream)

  Even such I saw their sisters; one swan-white,

  The little Helen, and less fair than she

  Fair Clytæmnestra, grave as pasturing fawns

  Who feed and fear some arrow; but at whiles,

  As one smitten with love or wrung with joy,

  She laughs and lightens with her eyes, and then

  Weeps; whereat Helen, having laughed, weeps too,

  And the other chides her, and she being chid speaks nought,

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  But cheeks and lips and eyelids kisses her,

  Laughing; so fare they, as in their bloomless bud

  And full of unblown life, the blood of gods.

  ALTHÆA

  Sweet days befall them and good loves and lords,

  And tender and temperate honours of the hearth,

  Peace, and a perfect life and blameless bed.

  But who shows next an eagle wrought in gold,

  That flames and beats broad wings against the sun

  And with void mouth gapes after emptier prey?

  MELEAGER

  Know by that sign the reign of Telamon

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  Between the fierce mouths of the encountering brine

  On the strait reefs of twice-washed Salamis.

  ALTHÆA

  For like one great of hand he bears himself,

  Vine-chapleted, with savours of the sea,

  Glittering as wine and moving as a wave.

  But who girt round there roughly follows him?

  MELEAGER

  Ancæus, great of hand, an iron bulk,

  Two-edged for fight as the axe against his arm,

  Who drives against the surge of stormy spears

  Full-sailed; him Cepheus follows, his twin-born,

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  Chief name next his of all Arcadian men.

  ALTHÆA

  Praise be with men abroad; chaste lives with us,

  Home-keeping days and household reverences.

  MELEAGER

  Next by the left unsandalled foot know thou

  The sail and oar of this Ætolian land,

  Thy brethren, Toxeus and the violent-souled

  Plexippus, over-swift with hand and tongue;

  For hands are fruitful, but the ignorant mouth

  Blows and corrupts their work with barren breath.

  ALTHÆA

  Speech too bears fruit, being worthy; and air blows down

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  Things poisonous, and high-seated violences,

  And with charmed words and songs have men put out

  Wild evil, and the fire of tyrannies.

  MELEAGER

  Yea, all things have they, save the gods and love.

  ALTHÆA

  Love thou the law and cleave to things ordained.

  MELEAGER

  Law lives upon their lips whom these applaud.

  ALTHÆA

  How sayest thou these? what god applauds new things?

  MELEAGER

  Zeus, who hath fear and custom under foot.

  ALTHÆA

  But loves not laws thrown down and lives awry.

  MELEAGER

  Yet is not less himself than his own law.

  ALTHÆA

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  Nor shifts and shuffles old things up and down.

  MELEAGER

  But what he will remoulds and discreates.

  ALTHÆA

  Much, but not this, that each thing live its life.

  MELEAGER

  Nor only live, but lighten and lift up higher.

  ALTHÆA

  Pride breaks itself, and too much gained is gone.

  MELEAGER

  Things gained are gone, but great things done endure.

  ALTHÆA

  Child, if a man serve law through all his life

  And with his whole heart worship, him all gods

  Praise; but who loves it only with his lips,

  And not in heart and deed desiring it

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  Hides a perverse will with obsequious words,

  Him heaven infatuates and his twin-born fate

  Tracks, and gains on him, scenting sins far off,

  And the swift hounds of violent death devour.

  Be man at one with equal-minded gods,

  So shall he prosper; not through laws torn up,

  Violated rule and a new face of things.

  A woman armed makes war upon herself,

  Unwomanlike, and treads down use and wont

  And the sweet common honour that she hath,

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  Love, and the cry of children, and the hand

  Trothplight and mutual mouth of marriages.

  This doth she, being unloved; whom if one love,

  Not fire nor iron and the wide-mouthed wars

  Are deadlier than her lips or braided hair.

  For of the one comes poison, and a curse

  Falls from the other and burns the lives of men.

  But thou, son, be not filled with evil dreams,

  Nor with desire of these things; for with time

  Blind love burns out; but if one feed it full

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  Till some discolouring stain dyes all his life,

  He shall keep nothing praiseworthy, nor die

  The sweet wise death of old men honourable,

  Who have lived out all the length of all their years

  Blameless, and seen well-pleased the face of gods,

  And without shame and without fear have wrought

  Things memorable, and while their days held out

  In sight of all men and the sun’s great light

  Have gat them glory and given of their own praise

  To the earth that bare them and the day that bred,

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  Home friends and far-off hospitalities,

  And filled with gracious and memorial fame

  Lands loved of summer or washed by violent seas,

  Towns populous and many unfooted ways,

  And alien lips and native with their own.

  But when white age and venerable death

  Mow down the strength and life within their limbs,

  Drain out the blood and darken their clear eyes,

  Immortal honour is on them, having past

  Through splendid life and death desirable

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  To the clear seat and remote throne of souls,

  Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of west,

  Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea

  Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow

  There shows not her white wings and windy feet,