Classic Poem

 N O lowly offered roses at the shrine
Of Aphrodite can more richly bloom
Than these, Silenus, we have brought to grace
The rock that guards thine honoured bones

Long years
Our vines have blossomed, set, and grown to fruit;
The vintages been gathered, drunk the wine;
But thou art still the loss we must bemoan
As on that fearful day of blood and fire,
When, Dionysus driven into the sea,
And thou alone didst face the evil King
Our life-blood ran in streams, till thou wert roused,
And thy voice rang like thunder from the hills
And stayed the slaughter; when the slaughterers
Paused in their pastime, like affrighted ghosts,
As thou didst tell the King his dreadful doom
Of madness, fury, murder of his child;
And reason waking on the deed of blood.
Well couldst thou read the future; pace by pace
The Furies have fulfilled thy prophecy;
The barren country; and the people's wrath
Bursting in vengeance on the King accursed.
And when upon thee fifty points were bent,
Thy voice again in thunder stayed their hands;
Shook the black vault of heaven, brought thunders down,
Where wonderstruck, in blinding fire, we saw
Pallas Athena, spear and shield outspread,
And heard Her mighty voice
And when the gloom
Had passed away, with horror we beheld
The fifty bowmen fifty blackened heaps;
While thou wert lying as a babe asleep
Smiling on mother's lap, without a wound
From shaft or spear, or stain of thunder fire
But they had seen the Gorgon shield and turned
To hard black stones and sunk into the soil;
For no one could be found to bury them;
And some say vaguely nothing now remains;
Tho' no one knows for no one goeth nigh
 The flash that slew the fifty felled the King,
Who sidewise lay outstretched like slaughtered wolf
Then ceased the carnage; all male folk were slain;
We women taken prisoners and spared,
Because they thought us shapely, strong, and fair,
And, scorning war-slaves for their wedded wives,
They gave us freedom, and they married us
We nurse and rear the children of our lords;
And every day make ready every meal;
Fashion their garments, and keep bright the hearth
We do all women have to do for men
These are not worse than men of other lands:
Men are much like each other everywhere;
Unfeeling, hard, and coarse throughout the grain
Their thews are stouter, and our own must give;
Their wills are sterner, and we must obey.

 This is not what we thought our lives would be,
Adored Silenus, in the times agone;
When, hallowed by the forest shadowing,
We heard thy stories of heroic men
Who loved their loving maidens tenderly.
We thought the common course of woman's life
Gently united with the man's she loved;
That every meeting of their eyes bred smiles
In happy looks, and words of sweet content,
Contentment in each other winged with hope,
Sole blessing left us, our forefathers taught
A word of doubtful meaning, never clear
Hope now has left us in another sense:
We are but as we are, and must remain

 It gladdens us to know we had the care
Thy memory should receive a warrior's due
In this great rock placed where thine honoured bones
Were laid deep in the grave we filled with flowers
For, while the curse clung withering on the land,
And nothing quickened in its barren soil,
We told the people our offended Gods
Must be appeased by sacrifice and prayer.

 Five hundred strong men came with rolls and cords;
Long wooden levers, picks, and spades to dig
An even roadway and an easy slope
Whereon they urged the great rock inch by inch
It gave us joy to watch their sunburnt limbs
Brighten with sinewy effort, as the words
To move were cried. With simultaneous shout,
They clenched, and put together all their strength
In one great impulse at the close and set
The rock where now it rests.
The toilers all
Fell back, and gazing on the feat awestruck,
Knelt, holding forth their arms and praised the Gods!

We do not chatter idle words of thee,
Silenus; knowing thou wert huge and bald;
Thy lingering locks but loose, and scanty gray;
Thy smiling eyes were moist, and vague thy lips;
And thy limbs creased with fatness like a babe's
These plain defects, an easy gibe for churls,
Awoke within our hearts no pleasantry.
Whatever fair reproach might cleave to thee
We ever loved thee and thy gentle voice;
Thy gentle voice that patiently disclosed
What heretofore our eyes had never seen
Our ears had never heard:
Why sharply edged
The driven scud of heaven against the wind,
And birds their spring notes sang so lustily;
How the bees, seeking honey for themselves,
Ministered singing to the loves of flowers;
How flowers, when in their fullest beauty bright
Could lure winged riflers to the fruits' increase;
And why on one cheek alway blushes fruit.
Thou wouldst unweariedly narrate to us
The stories of the trees; and why they turned
To this incline or that; why at a slope
Whole forest flanks swerved inland from the shore
Thrifty of leaf; and why some drooping sought
Shelter from light, to root in earth again;
While others proudly, with exalted points
Trembling in sapphire, whispered to the wind.
 It did not, loved Silenus, make us love
These tales the less because male creatures scoffed,
Calling them little and of little worth.
We loved them with thee; now we love them more,
Having lost both the Teacher and his tunes.
 Our lords have arms of strength, and hold their spears
As weapons well in use; and with them we
Dread neither panther's teeth nor tusk of boar;
For deft are they with bow and arrows winged
To fell or check the hare and stag at speed;
But all their talk is ambush, capture, spoil;
Food, drink, and clothing; and the store for fires.
Our lords so little heed the joy around,
The sweetest flower asks vainly for a smile;
Unnoticed ring the woodland melodies,
And march the clouds of noon without regard.
Therefore do we on our permitted days
Heap the red roses on thy sacred rock
Our lords believe the sacrifice we bring
Will add fresh clusters and protect their vines,
And they, remembering Dryantiades' fate,
Are gruffly lenient toward the rites we pay.
 Our sweetest dreams are dreams of memory,
During the toilsome day, when lacking hope,
We wander backward in the olden time
And gather round thy feet to hear thy tales
Of Gods and Demigods, and favoured maids;
Of Goddesses who deigned to mortal love;
And dreadful monsters slain by strength divine
Children of duty and obedience,
As these of ours, brought forth in nature's course,
Babble a duller music than the babes
Of love. Kindly we use our helpless ones;
All things are kindly to their tender young;
But children they of our lords' will, not ours,
We seem not nursing our own kith and kin.
 Our fathers said the ruling Gods were just;
And haply, when our bones are laid at rest,
In the Elysian Fields our shades may meet
The lovers of our souls we never found;
When looking back, this loveless life of ours
Will be remembered as a feverish dream,
Where thine own hand was guide and comforter,
Saving us from the pitfalls of despair.
Our tears, affection, memory, all are thine
Our solace thou art now. Our sweetest hopes,
That ever beck with smiles of welcoming,
Are in some way we know not mixed with thee.