Heavens and Earth

by Stephen Vincent Benét

THE LAST VISION OF HELEN

Argument—Helen, after the fall of Troy, departs to Egypt with ghostly companions, as in the old tale. She encounters the Sphinx and a marvel is wrought upon her.

Measureless sand ... interminable sand....

The smooth hide of that yellow lion, Earth,

Ruffled a little and was dark again

Beneath the descending torrents of the night,

Plunging like cobalt from the cliffs of the sky,

Blotting the stiff wedge of each pyramid

With the slow gurgle of a rising wave,

A wave burning with stars....

The Sphinx alone

Couched on her forepaws like a sleepy hound

Under the weight of a caress of rock

And smiled her woman’s and chimera’s smile

Inexorably, drowned with the savage dark.

The black tide filled the heavens up and ceased,

A little tongueing flame ran on the sand

Bright as a fire of paper, swift and light

As a bird’s restless eyes. It rose. It bloomed,

An angry dream before the Sphinx’s feet,

The exhalation of a furious thought,

Tall as the ghosts of Heaven’s battlements,

The apparition that had once been Troy!

A girl went out in the summer skies,

(The dice lie white for the throwing!)

A girl went out in the summer skies

And the sunlight laughed as it kissed her eyes!

(And the wind of Fate is blowing!) Song of the City Troy

She was ruddy and gold as a changing leaf

When gilded Autumn gathers the sheaf.

She was lily and pale as a sleeping moth

When the full moon bleaches the skies like cloth.

The grass was glad to be under her shoe,

The poppy proud to be floor unto

The silvering dance of her feet like dew!

... But her lord walks chill as a cloud of snow

Where the kings of the earth are bending the bow.

They are roaring the fame of the flying dart,

But he whispers low, in a place apart,

With the evil ice of his freezing heart.

“Helena, Helena, mouth of wine,

Two more days for your sun to shine!

Helena, Helena, mouth of musk.

Two more days and I make you dusk.

Two more nights on your silky bed,

And your lover over it, bloody and dead,

And your body broken as I break bread!”

His lips are writhing, sucking and cold,

His hands are twitching like trees grown old,

He shivers as if he had trod on mold.

The Golden Queen at her anchor strains.

(Sails on the sapphire, snowing)

Paris walks on the deck like a man in chains.

(And the wind of Fate is blowing.)

He wastes in his love like leaves in a flame,

But his mind is a spear in a dauntless game,

And the face of his doom has a girl’s soft name.

The fifty sailors are whetting their swords.

The brown sun beats on the tarry boards.

And Helena skims by the rolling sand

And waves with the fleck of a foam-white hand.

And the blood of Youth pounds hot in the throat

As the long oars lash from the lunging boat.

Richly she came through the leaping green,

Like the shrine of a god, like a sun first seen,

And they cried “Hurrah for the Golden Queen!”

The white sails soar like a rising gull,

The water spins by the speeding hull.

She smiles with her chin cupped into her hand

At the drowning shadow of fading land

—And Paris shakes like a torching brand.

And Paris crushes her, breath to breath,

And she gives him her honey of love and death.

But chill Menelaus a Fury hath,

He has thawed his hate to a roaring wrath!

He is loosing his hounds on the ocean-path!

The blooms of the years are withered and fall.

(Dawn—and a red flame crowing)

And Time’s cracked fingers number them all.

(And the wind of Fate is blowing.)

And a wooden horse is trampling Troy

As a hoof-thrust crushes a crumpling toy.

Ruddy and gold where the torches stare

Helena sits in her carven chair.

Lovely and strange as a moonlit cloud—

But her head droops down like a petal bowed.

Beneath her the blood and the wine run deep

—But her eyes are seas more quiet than sleep.

The drunkards brawl and the cup goes round;

But she gives no sign and she makes no sound.

Red Menelaus has poured her drink;

And she does not sip and she does not shrink.

And her mouth is a flower that says “Depart!”

And the hilt of a knife is under her heart.

The kings of the world have finished their chase,

They dash their wine in the glorious face.

And Paris is dead in a sickly land;

And they wrench the rings from the plume-white hand.

They dice for her rings and the game is sweet

And lean Menelaus is smiling sleet.

And the captains chuckle, counting their scars,

For the hosts of the earth have finished their wars

And Helen and Troy are cold as the stars.

Waves in the dusk with a sound like tears

(And the deep tide foaming and flowing)

Saying one name for a thousand years!

(And the wind of Fate is blowing!)

Like air beaten by swords, like the long cry

Of an old trumpet harsh with rust and gold

The ballad rose assaulting, struck and died

Into a clamorous echo.

The Sphinx stirred,

Shaking the drifted moonlight from her coat

As a dog shakes water, rising mountainously;

Then from that drum of terrible stone, her throat,

Rolled back her answer at the enormous sky.

The arrow of Eros flies The Song

In the dark, in the trembling dark; of the

Piercing and sweet is the song it cries Sphinx

And the cup of the heart its mark!

And the cup of the heart is dust,

And the wine of the heart is spilled.

And the barb flings whimpering back to Lust

With “Master, see—I have killed!”

It was thus and thus that you were begot!

I am Death’s bright arrow! Forgive me not!

The ribbon of Fate unreels

In the road of the days and nights;

There are flute-voiced airs for the dancing heels,

But over them hang the kites!

And the path grows dark as the laws

And the kites drop down in a ring,

Till a blind stag torn by the slashing claws

Is the end of the trumpeting!

It is there and there that your fathers rot!

I am Destiny’s halter! Unloose me not!

The mirror of Wisdom shines

Like a face in a troubled pool.

Like the eyes of a snake are its weaving signs

To the eyes of the anxious fool.

For the secret form of the soul

Is there in its terror shown

—And it rends the sight like a crumbling coal

Till the eyes of the fool are stone!

It was this and this that your ardor sought!

I am Wisdom’s mirror! Behold me not!

Then, like a forgotten tumult of the heart,

The multitude of men who died for Helen,

Vague, terrible, wounded forms began to chant.

Glance at us once from your sacred tower,

Helen divine!

The cutworm crawls in the almond-flower,

The rats are eating the thrones of power, Song of

Yet glance at us once and the clouds will shower the Men

Our lips with wine! of Helen

Loosen your hair to the storm again,

To the whistling brine!

We are very desperate men,

Reeds when fire goes over the fen,

Lighten our dark with your marvel then,

Helen divine!

Give us drink for our bitter thirst,

Helen divine!

Bless you the thieves that each priest has cursed,

Queen of us, queen of us, last and first,

Flame we followed and child we nursed,

Star at trine!

Open the heaven of your embrace,

Oh burning sign!

This is the end of the bloody race,

Whispering sea and the stars like lace,

You gather our souls to your shining place,

Helen divine!

The thunder ebbed away into a sigh,

Died into sand, was calm.

And suddenly

Helen of anguish, Helen of the song,

Helen the victory on the lips of Zeus,

Helen the princely word, the proud despair,

The voiceless cry of the ecstatic dream,

Shone with the radiance of a consuming wish

Upon the desert, and stretched out her arms

As if to take that whole great ghost of Troy,

Pennon and panoply, champion and car,

Back to its home, her breast.

Would there ever be a bud Helen’s

If the sap considered storm? Song

It would stay in happy mud,

Damned and sleepy, safe and warm!

Who would want to be a rose

If its petals thought of snows?

Why I lived I never knew.

Life—I took it like a toy,

Something like a worship, too,

To adore and to enjoy.

Then the gods began to play

—And the toy was put away.

Like a perfume made intense,

Like the planet of a dark,

I became magnificence

For my hour, in my spark,

There is rapture in my ghost,

Telling all my least and most.

Fate and Wisdom, judging loud,

These are shadows I can mock

With the thoughtlessness of cloud,

With the indolence of rock.

Let them air the inn they keep!

I am tired. I would sleep.

So, with the pause, all earth and sky were still

As if they had just been made—and the Sphinx lay

Silent, engulfed in silence.

Then she moved

Uneasily, and settled back again,

And in a low harshness of diminished sound

Spoke out her final judgment.

Zeus of the silver dawning took the scarf of a cloud,

He quickened the wraith with fire till the life cried out aloud,

He called Desire from his lightning, Despair from her weaving old,

And they fashioned the shape to a woman that men might die to behold!

Golden Zeus of the sunbeam slapped his hand on his thigh The Last

As the swords ran out of their scabbards and the arrows sang in the sky, Song of the

And the woman like leafy April was the chant that an archer sings Sphinx

Over sands grown bloody with purple that has come from the hearts of kings!

Zeus of the brazen twilight, nodding his eyes awake,

Armed him a doom for Helen lest Earth burn up for her sake;

Chill on the heart of incense, the hands that desired so much,

Fell the snow-like veil of his wisdom, till the flesh was still at its touch!

Iron Zeus of the night-time, watching the chariot moon

Trample the skies to whiteness, turns like a moving dune

To gaze at the shade of Helen. His eyes as the skies are vast;

Seeing her sleep like a swallow in Death’s wide bed at last.

Helen stood

Within the tremendous circle of the paws,

Moving like light towards the dark secret heart.

The Sphinx cried terribly with a wordless sound

Of birth and anguish struggling to be heard ...

And the light vanished ...

And Helen and the Sphinx

Were one forever, stone and ghost and dream—

And Troy was gone like vapor in the dark.

So the dawn came, and toiling caravans,

Whose princes halted, arrogant as hawks,

To stare but once into the Sphinx’s eyes

... And so were staring till Death breathed on them

With the slant feathers of his ruffling wing,

Seeking within the rock, the stubborn rock.

The gaze and burning of their Lost Desire.