The White Sail, and Other Poems

by Louise Imogen Guiney

But ere that going drear, one foot ashore,
Theseus with his mild comrades hand in hand,—
The seven maids and boys to bondage sealed,
Lifted his head, and met his father’s eyes,
And out of morning ardor made this oath:
‘My people, stand not for our sakes in tears!
No shape of ill shall daunt me; I will strike
And overcome, Heaven’s favor for my shield.
And when engirt with conquest I return
(Or never else hies Theseus hitherward),
That ye may read my heart while yet at sea,
And know indeed that fate hath used me fair,
That these your lambs I shepherd and lead home,
Lo, I will set upon the central mast
The sky-sail white! white to the hollowing breeze,
White to that fierce and alien coast, and white
To your espial, from the horizon’s brink
Unto the moored fulfilment of your joy.
Watch: you that keep your faith and love in me.’

And they believed and watched, albeit with dread,
Steadfastly without plaint, to soothe the king,
Who, taciturn and close-engarmented,
From his nocturnal towered station leaned
Pining against the unresponsive tide.
And thro’ his brain, with hum processional,
Wheeled memories of Theseus, deeds of Theseus,
The race he won of yore, the song he sang;
His truth, his eloquence, his April moods,
And all his championship of trodden tribes,
Since first he lit on Athens, like a star.

For Ægeus, to the low-voiced Meta wed,
Thereafter to Rhexenor’s daughter spouse,
Childless, and by his brethren’s guile deposed,
Led by a last mysterious oracle,
Once, exiled, to Trœzene wandered down;
And there, accorded Aphrodite’s grace,
To whom the sacrificial smoke he raised,
Atonement and conciliation sweet,
Begot to Greece her hero; and straightway
Bereavèd Æthra, of old Pelops’ race
Forsook, by destined rumor summoned home.
But with the auroral kiss of parting, he
In the spring sunshine, on the mellow shore
Laid his huge blade beneath a caverned rock,
And both the jewelled sandals from his feet,
With lofty exhortation: ‘Bid my son,
When he, with strength inherited of mine
Can heave this boulder, take the sword and shoon,
And claim in Athens me his sire. Farewell!’
And Æthra bided, dreaming, at the court,
Till from her knee laughed back her own blue eyes.

And the young boy, loosed in sun-dappled groves,
Defiant, chased the droning harvest-fly,
Or nicked pomegranates with his ruddy thumb
Ripe from the bough; nor would his mother chide,
But with strange awe hang o’er him worshipping,
As one that turns with passionate-praying lips
East to the Delian shrine he shall not see:
Save once, when he a turtle-pigeon pent
In wicker-work of some swart soldier’s skill,
With lisping promise aye to nourish it;
And stroked his plaining bird for one long day,
But on the morrow ceased his fostering,
And left his captive caged, the tiny gourd
Of water unreplenished. Then the child
Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute;
And Æthra held his innocent hand in hers
With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw
Remorse, and irremediable ache,
And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves
To the eased byways of forgetfulness.
She, his hot brows caressing, so besought
The weeping prince: ‘If thou, O little son!
Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself,
Stand mindful of them; all thy vows observe.
Be a trust broken but a small, small thing,
Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe.’
And ere the dial veered, did Æthra speak
His vanished father’s name and gave the charge,
And led him to the rock, and in him fired
The aspirations of his godlike race.

Lost quite to former pastimes, thenceforth he
Brooded on her sweet chronicle; and oft
Burst thro’ arcades and vaporous aisles of dawn,
And stood, flushed in the rubious dimpling light,
Straining his thews at sunrise, to cajole
The granite treasurer of those tokens twain:
With his young heel intrenched in faithless sand,
His cloud of yellow hair hanging before,
Tugged at the flint; or pressed his forward knee
With obdurate sieges, into its hard side;
Anon, with restful rosy stretch of limb,
Plunged to the onset, hound-like, on all fours,
Beating a moated way about that place
Where the grim guardian held a fixèd foot;
And ever, noon on noon, with petulant tears,
Stole back, o’ervanquished, to his quiet nooks.
There would he woo his mother’s frequent tale,
And urge her gentle prophecy, that he
The kinsman of great Herakles, should too
Rise, mighty, and o’er earth’s fell odds prevail.
Wherefore, at waking-time, he plucked up heart
To wrestle with the pitiless rock anew,
Season on season, patient. And behold,
When the tenth summer’s delicate keen dews
Died from his shoreward path, at last befell
One sure petrean tremor, one weird shock
At his tense vigor; and ere twilight failed,
Clean to the sea’s verge rolled that doughty bulk!
And Theseus, in his full inheritance,
In the superb meridian of his youth,
Sandalled, the great hilt hard against his breast,
Climbed to his mother’s bower. Æthra laid
Her lips to his warm cygnet neck, and swooned,
Thereby apprised the destined hour had come,
And having sped her boy upon his quest,
Drooped, like a sun-void lily, and so died.

Then radiant Theseus, journeying overland,
All robber-plagues infesting those still glens
Physicianed, and redeemed all realms distressed.
Phæa, prodigious Crommyonian shape,
Apt Cercyon of Arcadia, he slew;
And of his dominant valor overcame
The smith-god’s son, who with the mortal mace
Beleaguered travellers in Epidaur;
Unburied martyrs fitly to avenge,
He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb
Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs;
And him that thrust the lavers of his feet
Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served
By dint of hospitable precedent;
Wide Marathonia’s lordly bull he led,
Engarlanded with hyacinth and rose,
To the knife’s edge at bland Apollo’s shrine;
Last, guided to a grove sabbatical,
Knelt to the chanting white Phytalidæ,
And in their midst was chrismed, and purified
From all the bloodshed of his troublous path.

On to the gate of Athens Theseus strode,
Docile to Æthra’s warning, that unnamed,
And with strict privacy, he should seek his sire;
For fifty jealous sons of Pallas held
The city’s sovereignty; and overruled
Their father’s childless brother, Ægeus old:
The agile, able, proud Pallantidæ,
Whose wrath would rise against the tardy heir,
Tumultuous, and encompass Greece in war.
Therefore, unheralded, with wary step,
Chancing upon an open banquet-hall,
Preceded of his fame, came brave-arrayed
The stranger hero, but erewhile a boy;
And straight, along the heaped board glancing down,
Evil Medea, on her harmful track
From Corinth unto Colchis, intercepted.

This was Medea of the Fleecemen, late
Her tender brother’s slayer, whose vile spells
Had promised Ægeus princes of his blood.
Stole from him, at the beck of that mock moon,
Honor, the flood august of all his life:
For he, distrustful of the oracles,
Inasmuch as Trœzene flowered no hope,
Now in the season of his utmost need,
Subservient to the sorceress and her whims,
Blasphemed, in slackened faith, and clave to her;
And strangling conscience, made his thraldom fine
With golden incident and public pomp,
Holding by night most sumptuous festival,
Feasting beside her, restless and unthroned.
Now Theseus knew that wily woman’s face,
Who, reading her arraignment in his eyes,
Shrank close to Ægeus, voluble with fear,
And urged within his palm a carven bowl,
That he should bid the young wayfarer drain
Health to Medea! in one envenomed draught:
Which Theseus heard, alert, past harp and bell,
Past intervening hubbub of rich mirth,
And sprang to cower the temptress with a word.
But at the instant, sprang her minions too,
And riot and upbraidings dire began,
Conflict, and scorn, and drunken challenging.
Then leaped quicksilvered Theseus thro’ the fray,
With love’s suspicion kindling in his veins,
And gained that space before the startled host
Whence from her couch Medea shrieked away:
Limned beautiful and clear from front to feet,
Shod with the shoon Ægean; and his arm
Sabred with the one sword that Ægeus knew!
Who, blanching ’neath roused memory’s ebb and flow,
Among the wrangling merry-makers all,
Clarioned ‘My own!’ and strained him to his breast.

Theseus, in those fresh days of his return,
Tarried not idle; but with warlike haste
Bore down on the usurping lords of state,
Juniors and kin of his discrownèd sire;
Them, ere the morrow dwindled, he beheld
Scattered as chaff from off the threshing-floor,
And Ægeus, o’er the wreckage of their reign
Exalted, with calm brows indiademed.
Then was the sacred and sequestered prime
Of liberation, benison, and peace;
When the round heaven, in summer’s ministrance
Rolled on its choral axle; till, at end
Like to a cloudlet that assails the blue,
Comely and yet with rains ingerminate,
Minos the Cretan unto Athens sent
His nimble princeling. In a fortnight’s span,
The island lad, competing in the games,
Won fairly; whereupon the envious mob
Made rude revolt, and took upon itself
The barbarous dishonor of his death.
And vengeful Minos sailed, and razed the town,
Laying the bitter forfeit in this wise:
‘Athens shall yearly proffer unto me
Her virgin tribute of patrician seed,
Seven youths, and maidens seven, as by lot,
Wherewith to feed the ravenous Minotaur.’
Athens the peerless bowed her ashen head.

So dragged the dreadful twelvemonth thro’ the realm,
Aye of its dearest blood depopulate,
And losing grasp on life. The fourth weak year,
Youngest of all departed, full thirteen
Faltered aboard the deck calamitous;
And with them Theseus, best-belovèd Theseus,
The king’s sole-born, whom last the doom befell.
But as no sister-galley e’er set out
To dolorous ports predestined, in due lapse
Returning with her steersman, went this ship,
Not hopeless; now her bravest made his vaunt
To thread the maze Dædalian, and destroy
The pampered monster, holding harm at bay
From the frail flock of Athens; and to flash
Homeward, to chime of oar-compellèd waves,
Signalling with the white exultant sail!
‘So that I live, this thing,’ he said, ‘is sworn:
Watch! you that keep your faith and love in me.’