Wherefore am I
Of all the blameless shades within this place
The most unhappy, if of blame, indeed,
I bear no load. For what is Sin itself,
But Error when we miss the road which leads
Up to the gate of heaven? Ignorance!
What if we be the cause of ignorance?
Being blind who might have seen! Yet do I know
But self-inflicted pain, nor stain there is
Upon my soul such as they bear who know
The dreadful scourge with which the stern judge still
Lashes their sins. I am forgiven, I know,
Who loved so much, and one day, if Zeus will,
I shall go free from hence, and join my Lord,
And be with him again."
And straight I seemed,
Passing, to look upon some scarce-spent life,
Which knows to-day the irony of Fate
In self-inflicted pain.
Together clung
The ghosts whom next I saw, bound three in one
By some invisible bond. A sire of port
God-like as Zeus, to whom on either hand
A tender stripling clung. I knew them well,
As all men know them. One fair youth spake low:
"Father, it does not pain me now, to be
Drawn close to thee, and by a double bond,
With this my brother." And the other: "Nay,
Nor me, O father; but I bless the chain
Which binds our souls in union. If some trace
Of pain still linger, heed it not—'tis past:
Still let us cling to thee."
He with grave eyes
Full of great tenderness, upon his sons
Looked with the father's gaze, that is so far
More sweet, and sad, and tender, than the gaze
Of mothers,—now on this one, now on that,
Regarding them. "Dear sons, whom on the earth
I loved and cherished, it was hard to watch
Your pain; but now 'tis finished, and we stand
For ever, through all future days of time,
Symbols of patient suffering undeserved,
Endured and vanquished. Yet sad memory still
Brings back our time of trial.
For the day
Broke fair when I, the dread Poseidon's priest,
Joyous because the unholy strife was done,
And seeing the blue waters now left free
Of hostile keels—save where upon the verge
Far off the white sails faded—rose at dawn,
And white robed, and in garb of sacrifice,
And with the sacred fillet round my brows,
Stood at the altar; and behind, ye twain,
Decked by your mother's hand with new-cleansed robes,
And with fresh flower-wreathed chaplets on your curls,
Attended, and your clear young voices made
Music that touched your father's eyes with tears,
If not the careless gods. I seem to hear
Those high sweet accents mounting in the hymn
Which rose to all the blessed gods who dwelt
Upon the far Olympus—Zeus, the Lord,
And Sovereign Heré, and the immortal choir
Of Deities, but chiefly to the dread
Poseidon, him who sways the purple sea
As with a sceptre, shaking the fixed earth
With stress of thundering surges. By the shrine
The meek-eyed victim, for the sacrifice,
Stood with his gilded horns. The hymns were done,
And I in act to strike, when all the crowd
Who knelt behind us, with a common fear
Cried, with a cry that well might freeze the blood,
And then, with fearful glances towards the sea,
Fled, leaving us alone—me, the high priest,
And ye, the acolytes; forlorn of men,
Alone, but with our god.
But we stirred not:
We could not flee, who in the solemn act
Of worship, and the ecstasy which comes
To the believer's soul, saw heaven revealed,
The mysteries unveiled, the inner sky
Which meets the enraptured gaze. How should we fear
Who thus were god-encircled! So we stood
While the long ritual spent itself, nor cast
An eye upon the sea. Till as I came
To that great act which offers up a life
Before life's Lord, and the full mystery
Was trembling to completion, quick I heard
A stifled cry of agony, and knew
My children's voices. And the father's heart,
Which is far more than rite or service done
By man for god, seeing that it is divine
And comes from God to men—this rising in me,
Constrained me, and I ceased my prayer, and turned
To succour you, and lo! the awful coils
Which crushed your lives already, bound me round
And crushed me also, as you clung to me,
In common death. Some god had heard the prayer,
And lo! we were ourselves the sacrifice—
The priest, the victim, the accepted life,
The blood, the pain, the salutary loss.
Was it not better thus to cease and die
Together in one blest moment, mid the flush
And ecstasy of worship, and to know
Ourselves the victims? They were wrong who taught
That 'twas some jealous goddess who destroyed
Our lives, revengeful for discovered wiles,
Or hateful of our land. Not readily
Should such base passions sway the immortal gods;
But rather do I hold it sooth indeed
That Zeus himself it was, who pitying
The ruin he foreknew, yet might not stay,
Since mightier Fate decreed it, sent in haste
Those dreadful messengers, and bade them take
The pious lives he loved, before the din
Of midnight slaughter woke, and the fair town
Flamed pitifully to the skies, and all
Was blood and ruin. Surely it was best
To die as we did, and in death to live,
A vision for all ages of high pain
Which passes into beauty, and is merged
In one accordant whole, as discords merge
In that great Harmony which ceaseless rings
From the tense chords of life, than to have lived
Our separate lives, and died our separate deaths,
And left no greater mark than drops which rain
Upon the unbounded sea. Those hosts which fell
Before the Scæan gate upon the sand,
Nor found a bard to sing their fate, but left
Their bones to dogs and kites—were they more blest
Than we who, in the people's sight before
Ilium's unshattered towers, lay down to die
Our swift miraculous death? Dear sons, and good,
Dear children of my love, how doubly dear
For this our common sorrow; suffering weaves
Not only chains of darkness round, but binds
A golden glittering link, which though withdrawn
Or felt no longer, knits us soul to soul,
In indissoluble bonds, and draws our lives
So close, that though the individual life
Be merged, there springs a common life which grows
To such dread beauty, as has power to take
The sting from sorrow, and transform the pain
Into transcendent joy: as from the storm
The unearthly rainbow draws its myriad hues
And steeps the world in fairness. All our lives
Are notes that fade and sink, and so are merged
In the full harmony of Being. Dear sons,
Cling closer to me. Life nor Death has torn
Our lives asunder, as for some, but drawn
Their separate strands together in a knot
Closer than Life itself, stronger than Death,
Insoluble as Fate."
Then they three clung
Together—the strong father and young sons,
And in their loving eyes I saw the Pain
Fade into Joy, Suffering in Beauty lost,
And Death in Love!
By a still sullen pool,
Into its dark depths gazing, lay the ghost
Whom next I passed. In form, a lovely youth,
Scarce passed from boyhood. Golden curls were his,
And wide blue eyes. The semblance of a smile
Came on his lip—a girl's but for the down
Which hardly shaded it; but the pale cheek
Was soft as any maiden's, and his robe
Was virginal, and at his breast he bore
The perfumed amber cup which, when March comes
Gems the dry woods and windy wolds, and speaks
The resurrection.
Looking up, he said:
"Methought I saw her then, my love, my fair,
My beauty, my ideal; the dim clouds
Lifted, methought, a little—or was it
Fond Fancy only? For I know that here
No sunbeam cleaves the twilight, but a mist
Creeps over all the sky and fields and pools,
And blots them; and I know I seek in vain
My earth-sought beauty, nor can Fancy bring
An answer to my thought from these blind depths
And unawakened skies. Yet has use made
The quest so precious, that I keep it here,
Well knowing it is vain.