SEVENTH CHORUS
Rose-Flower.
Queen Helen left those women of the wood,
She clambered from her horse and stood again
Even on the very hill where Troy had stood,
Where tamarisk shrubs and broom-sprigs and wild grain
Sprouted from bronze and rib-bones of men slain.
There was the palace where her love had been;
Stones blackened by the fire and misplac’d
By roots of vines that fed upon the paste
Of all the pride where she had lived a queen.
Troy was no more than weeds and fire-flaked stone,
But still the straits ran roaring to the south,
And still the never-quiet winds were blown
With scent of meadow-sweet from Simois’ mouth.
Moon-Blossom.
Yet no Greeks were moving on the beaches,
No galleys of the Greeks came oaring in,
Nor did lancer scouts or parties ride the whin,
Bringing in or checking convoys from the river’s upper reaches
Where the forest pines begin.
And the forges were all gone, and all the fires
Of the camps and burnings of the dead.
And the grinding of the bronze-shod chariot-tyres
Rang no more.
Both in city and on shore
There were no more shouted orders, clash of arms, or marchers’ tread.
Rose-Flower.
All was manless now, uncared for; both the streams had left their courses.
There was marsh where corn had grown of old, and there, where Paris lay,
Was an apple-tree with fruit which fed the now wild Trojan horses,
That with bright teeth bit each other;
Earth made Greek and Trojan brother,
All the passion that had raged there now was dead and gone away.
Moon-Blossom.
Then she cried, “I caused the quarrel that brought death along these beaches,
I alone made Troy this ruin, I alone, from haste of youth,
From a women’s bent, that listens to a lie, if it beseeches;
Now I stand here old and friendless, having nothing but the truth.”
Rose-Flower.
There she stopped, for there before her, in the ruins, stood a stranger;
“This is changed indeed,” he told her, “since I stood here once before:
Then it flamed all red to heaven and it rang with death and danger,
And I stood here with noble Agammemnon,
In the thunder of the ending of the war.”
Moon-Blossom.
Something in the old man’s bearing made her start and catch her breath.
“You are Nireus, friend,” she answered. “You are he who brought me here
When my life and love were dear:
Then I came to life and loving, now I come to grief and death.
“There is no small grass, in plain or water,
But grows from the body of one killed
By the deadly love of me, who am Helen, Leda’s daughter:
All the young and swift and lovely, all the quick of heart are stilled;
I was cause of their going to the slaughter.
“Daylong and nightlong their shadows pursue me with evil,
Haunting my thought in the day, killing my rest in the night;
Now they have drawn me here; their multitudinous devil
Bids me die where I sinned.
I hear their cry in the wind,
I see their eyes in the light.”
Rose-Flower.
Nireus answered, “Ah, not thus, not so, Queen Helen, surely,
Are those who died for love of you, to win you or to keep!
If they gave their lives, they gave them as a man gives frankly, purely,
Without question, comment or complaint,
The strong heart equal with the faint,
All content to see your beauty and to tread hard ways to sleep.
“Now they know that your beauty made them splendid,
Splendid to the death; for I have seen,
Seen and talked, beloved Helen, with the souls of those who ended
In the ruins of this city that has been,
And they praise your name, they count you still their Queen.
“Now come with me, for the ship waits to receive you,
The wind is fair for Syme; let us start.
Here, where long ago I lost you, I retrieve you;
Let us leave this town of broken heart
For the peace of Syme Harbour and the mirth of Syme mart,
And the calm of knowing sorrow at an end,
And the quiet of the memory of a friend.”
Together.
Then they sailed for Syme Island, and the gods were with their going,
For their beauty came upon them both, with youth and strength and peace;
Now they rule and live forever in a spring forever blowing,
High in Syme where the sun is bright and skylarks never cease.