LEADER.
How ran the sailors’ talk? Did there prevail
One rumour, showing him alive or dead?
HERALD.
None knoweth, none hath tiding, save the head
Of Helios, ward and watcher of the world.
LEADER.
Then tell us of the storm. How, when God hurled
His anger, did it rise? How did it die?
HERALD.
It likes me not, a day of presage high
With dolorous tongue to stain. Those twain, I vow,
Stand best apart. When one with shuddering brow,
From armies lost, back beareth to his home
Word that the terror of her prayers is come;
One wound in her great heart, and many a fate
For many a home of men cast out to sate
[The two-fold scourge] that worketh Ares’ lust,
Spear crossed with spear, dust wed with bloody dust;
Who walketh laden with such weight of wrong,
Why, let him, if he will, uplift the song
That is Hell’s triumph. But to come as I
Am now come, laden with deliverance high,
Home to a land of peace and laughing eyes,
And mar all with that fury of the skies
Which made our Greeks curse God—how should this be?
Two enemies most ancient, Fire and Sea,
A sudden friendship swore, and proved their plight
By war on us poor sailors through that night
Of misery, when the horror of the wave
Towered over us, and winds from Strymon drave
Hull against hull, till good ships, by the horn
Of the mad whirlwind gored and overborne,
One here, one there, ’mid rain and blinding spray,
Like sheep by a devil herded, passed away.
And when the blessèd Sun upraised his head,
We saw the Aegean waste a-foam with dead,
Dead men, dead ships, and spars disasterful.
Howbeit for us, our one unwounded hull
Out of that wrath was stolen or begged free
By some good spirit—sure no man was he!—
Who guided clear our helm; and on till now
Hath Saviour Fortune throned her on the prow.
No surge to mar our mooring, and no floor
Of rock to tear us when we made for shore.
Till, fled from that sea-hell, with the clear sun
Above us and all trust in fortune gone,
We drove like sheep about our brain the thoughts
Of that lost army, broken and scourged with knouts
Of evil. And, methinks, if there is breath
In them, they talk of us as gone to death—
How else?—and so say we of them! For thee,
Since Menelaüs thy first care must be,
If by some word of Zeus, who wills not yet
To leave the old house for ever desolate,
Some ray of sunlight on a far-off sea
Lights him, yet green and living … we may see
His ship some day in the harbour!—’Twas the word
Of truth ye asked me for, and truth ye have heard!
[Exit HERALD. The CHORUS take position for the Third Stasimon.]
CHORUS.
(Surely there was mystic meaning [in the name HELENA], meaning which was fulfilled when she fled to Troy.)
Who was He who found for thee
That name, truthful utterly—
Was it One beyond our vision
Moving sure in pre-decision
Of man’s doom his mystic lips?—
Calling thee, the Battle-wed,
Thee, the Strife-encompassèd,
HELEN? Yea, in fate’s derision,
Hell in cities, Hell in ships,
Hell in hearts of men they knew her,
When the dim and delicate fold
Of her curtains backward rolled,
And to sea, to sea, she threw her
In the West Wind’s giant hold;
And with spear and sword behind her
Came the hunters in a flood,
Down the oarblade’s viewless trail
Tracking, till in Simoïs’ vale
Through the leaves they crept to find her,
A Wrath, a seed of blood.
(The Trojans welcomed her with triumph and praised Alexander till at last their song changed and they saw another meaning in Alexander’s name also.)
So the Name to Ilion came
On God’s thought-fulfilling flame,
She a vengeance and a token
Of the unfaith to bread broken,
Of the hearth of God betrayed,
Against them whose voices swelled
Glorying in the prize they held
And the Spoiler’s vaunt outspoken
And the song his brethren made
’Mid the bridal torches burning;
Till, behold, the ancient City
Of King Priam turned, and turning
Took a new song for her learning,
A song changed and full of pity,
With the cry of a lost nation;
And she changed the bridegroom’s name:
Called him Paris Ghastly-wed;
For her sons were with the dead,
And her life one lamentation,
’Mid blood and burning flame.
(Like a lion’s whelp reared as a pet and turning afterwards to a great beast of prey,)