Such tales of Theseus’ youth his father’s mind
Rehearsed, while at his vigil in the night,
Deep pondering on each noble circumstance,
As a man shifteth, thro’ an idle hour,
Anon with hand in light, anon in shade,
The lustres of his one memorial gem.
And oft the king, with a foreboding throe
Called, urging eld’s unserviceable sight:
‘Shines the white sail yet?’ Spake the murmurous ring:
‘Nay; but fantastic clouds low-wandering on.’
Then the fond voice of Ægeus, askingly:
‘Alcamenes! yield my sad heart a song.’
Rose kind Alcamenes, who from his birth
The king had cherished, from a mossy seat,
The anxious faces turned his happy way;
And with his pose quiescent, lyre in arm,
Breathed forth a simple ditty, sweet-sustained
Against the diapason of the sea.
‘Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces,
Thy silver-margined voice like the ample moon and free:
Ah, beautiful! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces,
The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee.
‘My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing
Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day!
And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging,
Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away.’
But the king hid his brow in both wan hands,
Sighing: ‘That song at her beguiling feet,
Out of my brief enslavement, did I make
The year that Theseus on our revels stole.
It sears me like a brand with fires o’erpast:
Be silent, my Alcamenes! spare it me.
Thou rather, Theron, sing! Engird my pain
With some thrice-gallant catch, some madrigal
That sets the dull blood dancing.’ Theron smiled,
Masking suspense (for he was Theseus’ friend),
Half-prone beneath his damask cloak, with chin
Hand-propped; and fixed his dark eyes on the king,
In trolling of an agitated lay.
‘I drowse in the grass, to the crickets’ elfin strings,
With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book,
At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs,
Cydippe’s hand in my hair.... Ah, horrible thrill!
Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look,
My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill,
In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook:
Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill!
My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings,
Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there.
See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings
Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippe’s hand thro’ my hair.’
Again, with swift uneasy gesturing
Turned Ægeus, chiding, and protested ere
The whipped-up courage of that roundel’s close:
‘Cease, Theron! this is but an ominous song,
A song of retribution.’ For he thought:
‘So retribution dogs my bruisèd age;
Still, still Medea’s soft and deadly name
Stings all the leafy splendor of my life,
And daunts the morrow’s bud. And if there be
A reckoning I must pay for follies past,
Must it be—O not that, not now, not here!’
And drawing to his height, he cried: ‘The sail?
Comes the sail from the south?’ They chorused ‘Naught
Save argent flutterings of the shoreward gull.’
And Ægeus, craving solace, urged once more:
‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul,
In numbers honey-clear.’ Now Rhodalus
The poet, too, was loyal sentinel;
A fiery patriot, wont to domineer
The moods of Athens; very potent he,
And flexile-throated as the nightingale.
With all his fingers knit about his knee,
And head against a hoary pillar raised,
Dream-locked, upon the lowest sprayey ledge,
Riddling the unintelligible space,—
Void thrones, and filmy wakes of fugitives,
And interstellar agonies of midnight;
To him the king’s voice throbbed a second time:
‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul.’
Who, grave with poesy’s most candid mien,
Answered the summons softly: ‘Sire, I cannot.
The music of my brothers is amiss,
So mine would be. Our strings are jangled, wrested
From their discreet and silvern vassalage,
Snapped quite with languishment for Theseus’ sake.
I cannot sing. But O you holy stars!
Stretching to us your tendrils of high glory;
Tacit compellers of our wayward spirits;
You domèd guardians of this tear-bound earth,
You rich-wrought visions, charioted thousands
Hale rank on rank, thro’ warless cities riding!
Young semispheric moon, O burning Seven,
Hesper and Phosphor! blue hour-measuring orbs
That elsewhere look on Theseus! Speed his pinnace,
Bide thro’ the watches with us; shine; exhale not!’
And the dense quiet bound them.
Cautiously,
In his far corner, one behind the king
At the dumb bursting-point of that weird hush,
With nervous finger twitched his neighbor’s sleeve,
And strove to whisper him with palsied tongue,
And straight relaxed, and smiled; but new-convinced
Towards twilight’s gracious advent, crept in awe
With arm extended, to his fellow’s side;
And the two thrilled alike, immovable,
Each palm down-roofed above the frantic eye,
Froze at their posts: which eager Theron marked,
Piloting his keen sight across the main,
And smote his bosom with quick-smothered groan,
And, breathless, gazed and gazed. By twos and threes
The apprehensive company dropped aghast
Out on the reeling ragged precipice
Sparkled and shelled with the oncoming tide:
Till Ægeus, slow-divining dupe of hope,
Awoke, and knelt him down against his throne,
Faint with thanksgiving. And the moments creaked
In gyral passage, like Ixion’s wheel,
Spoke on accursèd spoke, portending woe.
But he, athwart his lonely pinnacle
Called like a ghost from walled eternity:
‘What of the sail? What cheer?’ Their lips congealed
Nothing replied. The cruel hour rolled on.
Intolerable arid east-blown wave
Vaulting on wave thro’ all her caverns loud,
Far upon Oliaros boomed the sea.
Then bearded Rhodalus, compassionate,
Spied leaning o’er the crags the frenzied king,
Rending his garment to the paling moon;
And yet evasive of those pleading eyes,
Knotting his arms against his breast, downcast,
Adjured him: ‘O most reverend, O most dear!
The heart of life is rotten; prayer is vain.
Stay up thy soul: for lo! the sail is black.’
And all the trancèd host burst into moan.
Old Ægeus, like a dreamer, muttered ‘Aye,’
Passive; and from his brain the fever fell,
And more than Zeus himself, he things unseen
Saw, and to unheard choirings lent his ear.
Theseus, truth-speaking, vowed the sky-sail white;
The sail was black: therefore was Theseus dead
In untriumphant state; his comrades, dead;
Dead, the emprise of Greece; her dynasty
Ungendered, dead; the very gods were dead!
And he alive, alive? a wind-worn leaf
All winter gibbeted upon that bough
Whence the last fruit was reft? O mockery!
Inert, of his own broken heart impelled,
From the steep, solitary trysting-place,
King Ægeus, like a stone, dropped in the sea.