Hephaestus, Persephone at Enna, and Sappho in Leucadia

by Arthur Stringer

HEPHAESTUS

(Hephaestus, finding that his wife Aphrodite is loved by his brother Ares, voluntarily surrenders the goddess to this younger brother, whom, it is said, Aphrodite herself preferred.)

Take her, O Ares! As Demeter mourned

Through many-fountained Enna, I shall grieve

Forlorn a time, and then, it may be, learn,

Some still autumnal twilight by the sea

Golden with sunlight, to remember not!

As the dark pine forgoes the pilgrim thrush

I, sad of heart, yet unimpassioned, yield

To you this surging bosom soft with dreams,

This body fashioned of Aegean foam

And languorous moonlight. But I give you not

The eluding soul that in her broods and sleeps,

And ne’er was mine of old, nor can be yours.

It was not born of sea and moon with her,

And though it nests within her, no weak hand

Of hers shall cage it as it comes and goes,

Sorrows and wakens, sleeps, and sings again.

And so I give you but the hollow lute,

The lute alone, and not the voices low

That sang of old to some forgotten touch.

The lamp I give, but not the glimmering flame

Some alien fire must light, some alien dusk

Enisle, ere it illume your land and sea.

The shell I give you, Ares, not the song

Of murmuring winds and waves once haunting it;

The cage, but not love’s wings that come and go.

I give you them, light brother, as the earth

Gives up the dew, the mountain-side the mist!

Farewell sad face, that gleamed so like a flower

Through Paphian groves to me of old—farewell!

Some Fate beyond our dark-robed Three ordained

This love should wear the mortal rose and not

Our timeless amaranth. ’Twas writ of old, and lay

Not once with us. As we ourselves have known,

And well your sad Dodonian mother found,

From deep to deep the sails of destined love

Are blown and tossed by tides no god controls;

And at the bud of our too golden life

Eats this small canker of mortality!

I loved her once, O Ares—

I loved her once as waters love the wind;

I sought her once as rivers seek the sea;

And her deep eyes, so dream-besieged, made dawn

And midnight one. Flesh of my flesh she was,

And we together knew dark days and glad.

Then fell the change;—some hand unknown to us

Shook one white petal from the perfect flower,

And all the world grew old. Ah, who shall say

When Summer dies, or when is blown the rose?

Who, who shall know just when the quiet star

Out of the golden West is born again?

Or when the gloaming saddens into night?

’Twas writ, in truth, of old; the tide of love

Has met its turn, the long horizon lures

The homing bird, the harbour calls the sail.

Home, home to your glad heart she goes, while I

Fare on alone, and only broken dreams

Abide with me! And yet, when you shall tread

Lightly your sunlit hills with her and breathe

Life’s keener air, all but too exquisite,

Or look through purpling twilight on the world,

Think not my heart has followed nevermore

Those glimmering feet that walked once thus with me,

Nor dream my passion by your passion paled.

But lower than the god the temple stands;

As deeper is the sea than any wave,

Sweeter the summer than its asphodel,

So love far stronger than this woman is.

She from the untiring ocean took her birth,

And from torn wave and foam her first faint breath;

Child of unrest and change, still through her sweeps

Her natal sea’s tumultuous waywardness!

And losing her, lo, one thin drifting cloud

Curls idly from the altar in that grove

Where burn the fires that know not change or death!

Yet she shall move the strange desires of men;

For in her lie dim glories that she dreams

Not of, and on her ever broods a light

Her Cyprian eyes ne’er saw; and evermore

Round her pale face shall pleading faces press;

Round her shall mortal passion beat and ebb.

Years hence, as waves on islands burst in foam,

Madly shall lives on her strange beauty break.

When she is yours and in ambrosial glooms

You secretly would chain her kiss by kiss,

Though close you hold her in your hungering arms,

And with voluptuous pantings you and she

Mingle, and seem the insentient moment one,

Yet will your groping soul but lean to her

Across the dusk, as hill to lonely hill,

And in your warmest raptures you shall learn

There is a citadel surrenders not

To any captor of the outer walls;

In sorrow you shall learn there is a light

Illumines not, a chamber it were best

To leave untrod.

O Ares, dread the word

That silences this timorous nightingale,

The touch that wakens strings too frail for hands;

For, giving her, I gain what you shall lose;

Forsaking her, I hold her closer still.

The sea shall take a deeper sound; the stars

Stranger and more mysterious henceforth

Shall seem, the darkening sky-line of the West

For me, the solitary dreamer, now shall hold

Voices and faces that I knew not of.

More, henceforth, shall all music mean to me,

And she, through lonely musings, ever seem

As beautiful as are the dead. But you—

You in your hand shall guard the gathered rose,

Shall hold the riven veil, the loosened chord!

So love your hour, bright god, ere it is lost,

A swan that sings its broken life away.

In that brief hour, ’tis writ, you shall hear breathe

Songs blown from some enchanted island home,

Then mourn for evermore life’s silent throats,—

Aye, seek and find the altar when its fires

Are ashes, and the worship vain regret!

A mystic law more strong than all delight

Or pain shall each delicious rapture chill,

Exacting sternly for each ecstasy;

And when her voice enwraps you and in arms

Luxurious your softest languor comes,

Faintly torn wings shall flutter for the sun,

Madly old dreams shall struggle toward the light,

And, drugged with opiate passion, you shall know

Dark days and shadowy moods when she may seem

To some dusk underworld enchaining you.

Yet I shall know her as she was of old,

Fashioned of moonlight and Aegean foam;

Some visionary gleam, some glory strange

Shall day by day engolden her lost face.

The slow attrition of the years shall wear

No tenderest charm away, and she shall live

A lonely star, a gust of music sweet,

A voice upon the Deep, a mystery!

But in the night, I know, the lonely wind

Shall sigh of her, the restless ocean moan

Her name with immemorial murmurings,

And the sad golden summer moon shall mourn

With me, and through the gloom of rustling leaves

The shaken throats of nightingales shall bring

Her low voice back, the incense of the fields

Recall too well the odour of her hair.

But lo, the heart doth bury all its dead,

As mother Earth her unremembered leaves;

So the sad hour shall pass, and with the dawn

Serene I shall look down where hills and seas

Throb through their dome of brooding hyaline

And see from Athens gold to Indus gray

New worlds awaiting me, and gladly go,—

Go down among the toilers of the earth

And seek the rest, the deeper peace that comes

Of vast endeavour and the dust of strife.

There my calm soul shall know itself, and watch

The golden-sandalled Seasons come and go,

Still god-like in its tasks of little things;

And, woven not with grandeurs and red wars,

Wanting somewhat in gold and vermeil, shall

The Fates work out my life’s thin tapestry,

As sorrow brings me wisdom, and the pang

Of solitude, O Ares, keeps me strong!

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