Classic Poem

I

Height over height, the purple pine-woods clung to the rich Arcadian
mountains,
Holy-sweet as a sea of incense, under the low dark crimson skies:
Glad were the glens where Eurydice bathed, in the beauty of dawn, at the
haunted fountains
Deep in the blue hyacinthine hollows, whence all the rivers of
Arcady rise.

Long ago, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that
crowned her,
Fair and fleet as the fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at
break of day,
Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright
glory around her,
Down to the valley her light feet stole, ah, soft as the budding of
flowers in May.

Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the
dreaming meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her
golden name;
So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms
that danced with their shadows,
Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her
lover she came.

* * * *

Red were the lips that hovered above her lips in the flowery haze of the
June-day:
Red as a rose through the perfumed mist of passion that reeled before
her eyes;
Strong the smooth young sunburnt arms that folded her heart to his heart
in the noon-day,
Strong and supple with throbbing sunshine under the blinding
southern skies.

Ah, the kisses, the little murmurs, mad with pain for their
phantom fleetness,
Mad with pain for the passing of love that lives, they
dreamed--as we dream--for an hour!
Ah, the sudden tempest of passion, mad with pain, for its
over-sweetness,
As petal by petal and pang by pang their love broke out into
perfect flower.

Ah, the wonder as once he wakened, out of a dream of remembered blisses,
Couched in the meadows of dreaming blossom to feel, like the touch of
a flower on his eyes,
Cool and fresh with the fragment dews of dawn the touch of her light
swift kisses,
Shed from the shadowy rose of her face between his face and the warm
blue skies.


II

Lost in his new desire
He dreamed away the hours;
His lyre
Lay buried in the flowers:

To whom the King of Heaven,
Apollo, lord of light,
Had given
Beauty and love and might:

Might, if he would, to slay
All evil dreams and pierce
The grey
Veil of the Universe;

With Love that holds in one
Sacred and ancient bond
The sun
And all the vast beyond,

And Beauty to enthrall
The soul of man to heaven:
Yea, all
These gifts to him were given.

Yet in his dream's desire
He drowsed away the hours:
His lyre
Lay buried in the flowers.

Then in his wrath arose
Apollo, lord of light,
That shows
The wrong deed from the right;

And by what radiant laws
O'erruling human needs,
The cause
To consequence proceeds;

How balanced is the sway
He gives each mortal doom:
How day
Demands the atoning gloom:

How all good things await
The soul that pays the price
To Fate
By equal sacrifice;

And how on him that sleeps
For less than labour's sake
There creeps
Uncharmed, the Pythian snake.


III

Lulled by the wash of the feathery grasses, a sea with many a sun-swept
billow,
Heart to heart in the heart of the summer, lover by lover asleep
they lay,
Hearing only the whirring cicala that chirruped awhile at their
poppied pillow
Faint and sweet as the murmur of men that laboured in villages far
away.

Was not the menace indeed more silent? Ah, what care for labour and
sorrow?
Gods in the meadows of moly and amaranth surely might envy their deep
sweet bed
Here where the butterflies troubled the lilies of peace, and took no
thought for the morrow,
And golden-girdled bees made feast as over the lotus the soft sun
spread.

Nearer, nearer the menace glided, out of the gorgeous gloom around
them,
Out of the poppy-haunted shadows deep in the heart of the purple
brake;
Till through the hush and the heat as they lay, and their own sweet
listless dreams enwound them,--
Mailed and mottled with hues of the grape-bloom suddenly, quietly,
glided the snake.

Subtle as jealousy, supple as falsehood, diamond-headed and cruel as
pleasure,
Coil by coil he lengthened and glided, straight to the fragrant curve
of her throat:
There in the print of the last of the kisses that still glowed red from
the sweet long pressure,
Fierce as famine and swift as lightning over the glittering lyre he
smote.


IV

And over the cold white body of love and delight
Orpheus arose in the terrible storm of his grief,
With quivering up-clutched hands, deadly and white,
And his whole soul wavered and shook like a wind-swept leaf:

As a leaf that beats on a mountain, his spirit in vain
Assaulted his doom and beat on the Gates of Death:
Then prone with his arms o'er the lyre he sobbed out his pain,
And the tense chords faintly gave voice to the pulse of his breath.

And he heard it and rose, once again, with the lyre in his hand,
And smote out the cry that his white-lipped sorrow denied:
And the grief's mad ecstasy swept o'er the summer-sweet land,
And gathered the tears of all Time in the rush of its tide.

There was never a love forsaken or faith forsworn,
There was never a cry for the living or moan for the slain,
But was voiced in that great consummation of song; ay, and borne
To storm on the Gates of the land whence none cometh again.

Transcending the barriers of earth, comprehending them all
He followed the soul of his loss with the night in his eyes;
And the portals lay bare to him there; and he heard the faint call
Of his love o'er the rabble that wails by the river of sighs.

Yea, there in the mountains before him, he knew it of old,
That portal enormous of gloom, he had seen it in dreams,
When the secrets of Time and of Fate through his harmonies rolled;
And behind it he heard the dead moan by their desolate streams.

And he passed through the Gates with the light and the cloud of his
song,
Dry-shod over Lethe he passed to the chasms of hell;
And the hosts of the dead made mock at him, crying, How long
Have we dwelt in the darkness, oh fool, and shall evermore dwell?

Did our lovers not love us? the grey skulls hissed in his face;
Were our lips not red? Were these cavernous eyes not bright?
Yet us, whom the soft flesh clothed with such roseate grace,
Our lovers would loathe if we ever returned to their sight!

Oh then, through the soul of the Singer, a pity so vast
Mixed with his anguish that, smiting anew on his lyre,
He caught up the sorrows of hell in his utterance at last,
Comprehending the need of them all in his own great desire.


V

And they that were dead, in his radiant music, remembered the
dawn with its low deep crimson,
Heard the murmur of doves in the pine-wood, heard the moan of the
roaming sea,
Heard and remembered the little kisses, in woods where the last of
the moon yet swims on
Fragrant, flower-strewn April nights of young-eyed lovers in Arcady;

Saw the soft blue veils of shadow floating over the billowy grasses
Under the crisp white curling clouds that sailed and trailed through
the melting blue;
Heard once more the quarrel of lovers above them pass, as a
lark-song passes,
Light and bright, till it vanished away in an eye-bright heaven of
silvery dew.

Out of the dark, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the
petals that crowned her,
Fair and fleet as a fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break
of day;
Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright
glory around her,
On through the deserts of hell she came, and the brown air bloomed
with the light of May.

On through the deserts of hell she came; for over the fierce and frozen
meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;
So she arose from her grave in the darkness, and up through the wailing
fires and shadows,
On by chasm and cliff and cavern, out of the horrors of death she
came.

Then had she followed him, then had he won her, striking a chord that
should echo for ever,
Had he been steadfast only a little, nor paused in the great
transcendent song;
But ere they had won to the glory of day, he came to the brink of the
flaming river
And ceased, to look on his love a moment, a little moment, and
overlong.


VI

O'er Phlegethon he stood:
Below him roared and flamed
The flood
For utmost anguish named.

And lo, across the night,
The shining form he knew
With light
Swift footsteps upward drew.

Up through the desolate lands
She stole, a ghostly star,
With hands
Outstretched to him afar.

With arms outstretched, she came
In yearning majesty,
The same
Royal Eurydice.

Up through the ghastly dead
She came, with shining eyes
And red
Sweet lips of child-surprise.

Up through the wizened crowds
She stole, as steals the moon
Through clouds
Of flowery mist in June.

He gazed: he ceased to smite
The golden-chorded lyre:
Delight
Consumed his heart with fire.

Though in that deadly land
His task was but half-done,
His hand
Drooped, and the fight half-won.

He saw the breasts that glowed,
The fragrant clouds of hair:
They flowed
Around him like a snare.

O'er Phlegethon he stood,
For utmost anguish named:
The flood
Below him roared and flamed.

Out of his hand the lyre
Suddenly slipped and fell,
The fire
Acclaimed it into hell.

The night grew dark again:
There came a bitter cry
Of pain,
Oh Love, once more I die!

And lo, the earth-dawn broke,
And like a wraith she fled:
He woke
Alone: his love was dead.

He woke on earth: the day
Shone coldly: at his side
There lay
The body of his bride.


VII

Only now when the purple vintage bubbles and winks in the autumn glory,
Only now when the great white oxen drag the weight of the harvest
home,
Sunburnt labourers, under the star of the sunset, sing as an old-world
story
How two pale and thwarted lovers ever through Arcady still must roam.

Faint as the silvery mists of morning over the peaks that the
noonday parches,
On through the haunts of the gloaming musk-rose, down to the rivers
that glisten below,
Ever they wander from meadow to pinewood, under the whispering
woodbine arches,
Faint as the mists of the dews of the dusk when violets dream and
the moon-winds blow.

Though the golden lute of Orpheus gathered the splendours of
earth and heaven,
All the golden greenwood notes and all the chimes of the changing sea,
Old men over the fires of winter murmur again that he was not given
The steadfast heart divine to rule that infinite freedom of harmony.

Therefore he failed, say they; but we, that have no wisdom, can
only remember
How through the purple perfumed pinewoods white Eurydice roamed and
sung:
How through the whispering gold of the wheat, where the poppy burned
like a crimson ember,
Down to the valley in beauty she came, and under her feet the flowers
upsprung.

Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming
meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;
So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms
that danced with their shadows,
Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her
lover she came.