FOURTH CHORUS
Moon-Blossom.
In the grey of morning
When the stars were paling,
Nireus sailing,
Saw land ahead.
An island shining
With city towers,
Where bells were ringing
And men singing.
Rose-Flower.
As Nireus stepped ashore there
He stood staring,
For all men there
Were the dead of the war:
The Greeks and Trojans,
Beautiful and swift,
Killed in the trampled tamarisks
Beneath Troy town.
Moon-Blossom.
Stars were in their hair,
Their brows were crowned with violets,
They stepped like stags,
Comrade with comrade.
They had forgotten
The mud and death,
The heat and flies
Of the plain of Troy.
Rose-Flower.
There among them
Came a prince in scarlet,
With his hands stretched
In welcoming.
It was Paris, his friend,
Paris whom he killed
In the midnight raid
Beneath Troy wall.
Moon-Blossom.
Paris cried,
“Nireus, my comrade,
Nireus, my belovèd,
My friend of old!
Here we have forgiven
What my young man’s folly bred,
We feast as friends
In the violet fields.”
Rose-Flower.
Then he led Nireus
To the hall of feasting.
There they feasted
In the violet fields.
Three summer days and nights,
It seemed, they feasted,
Each summer day and night
Was ten years long.
Together.
Paris and the heroes
Cried to Nireus,
“We loved Helen,
When we were men.
Now we love her still
And we see her lonely,
Old, and haunted
By her lovers dead.
“Take to Helen
Gifts from her lovers,
In her old age find her
And give her these:
Beauty and peace
And our forgiveness,
And all our thanks
For what she was.”
Moon-Blossom.
As they ceased speaking
They faded from him,
The island faded,
Nireus was at sea.
He and his men
Were all grown old,
Thirty years
Had fallen on them.
Together.
As old men failing
They came to Sparta;
All unavailing
Their coming was.
Helen was gone
And none knew whither,
To search for peace
Or to find release.
Over the seas
In lands and islands
Nireus sought her,
But could not find.
For the gods retire
When men desire,
Though it burn like fire
And make men blind.