From the west upward
I toiled heavy-hearted;
From the east joyous,
Poising his weight on
An arching instep,
Came man to meet me.
And high in the azure,
Where the rocks ended
We sat down, friends.
He heard there how often
Was said, shown or felt
The thing that rebuked me.
Then laughed and pretended
That what the hand fashioned,
House, sword or dead body,
Alone remained;
Thoughts and intentions
Lost their existence.
His glad voice inveigled
Belief from my candour;
And lo! he was gone.
Poising my weight on
An arching instep
Down I came, gaily
Facing the sunset,
As though in the sea-port
That glittered beneath it
I had not yet smitten
The sonorous lyre.
As though the folk there
Had come from the eastward
That very morning
And found empty houses
And ships abandoned,
Needing only to be cleaned and repainted,
And meant to make them gay as spring flowers,
And were sure in the twilight
To gather about me.
"There, that is his own answer to your question. I do not think he craved just any praise, nor did he much over-prize his own gift; and you see he was not thinking of this coast, but of one facing the other way, so that the poet could arrive from the quarter opposite to the sun and meet him at noon on the peak. As much as to say, 'Not myself, nor this town's people, but any place, any people, any poet.' He worshipped man, and it angered him to see homespun preferred to the skyey fabric the god had helped him weave. He regretted his violence and could not live without those eyes it had cost him." Having drawn these sentences one by one from his sad heart, Chiron lapsed into silence till I asked, "But why did he address the Muses as enemies in his last hymn, if what the folk said was quite false?" "It is strange. Can they have appeared to him smartly fledged in white plumage, with dapper tail and wings and vulture heart? Stately women clothed in daffodil chitons delighted my gaze the only time I ever had a glimpse of them." "When was that?" "I was scarcely older than yourself, and woke in a cave to see them sitting and resting at its mouth, delicately grouped against the dawn. I remember Euterpe's lap full of flowers, and Melpomene, for her hair was stormy, black and unbound, and a deep brown cloak had slipped from her shoulders, but still hung over her elbows; it was only afterwards that I regretted not having noted the features of Urania, but assuredly no single one of them had the eye of a hawk. They rose as I woke, and strolled on. I crept after them, but when I turned the buttress of rock, no glad-robed figure was in sight, though it seemed that choral voices floated in the air; yet soon I found myself listening to silence, so could not be sure." "It must be sad to sing unpraised, however beautiful the words." "Yes, boy, and the ecstasy that sings is counterfaced with a destroying rage; that is perhaps why his darkened soul figured the Muses as birds of prey." "Do you know any more of his rhapsodies?" "Perhaps I can recall another," and he struck some strange bell-like notes and then sang:
Leap, Ibex, leap: the drop
From that mountain turret-top
Is sheer two hundred feet!
Crash head foremost to the rock;
Those massive hoops, thy curved horns, take the shock
And throw thee up! Albeit
Tossed by their supple springs,
Without the help of wings,
Scarcely may eye believe
Thou hast righted in the air!
Rashness thou dost retrieve;
Whence thou wast bounced, even there
Arrivest without let;
Four sturdy hooves of jet
Plant thee on the slab thine eye
Had chosen from on high.
So melodist that haunts
The spirit-firing peaks,
And deep in azure chants,
Must take like dizzy leap
Back to some sea-board town
To find the praise he seeks.
And would he still his fervour keep,
As fine resilience will he need
So featly to light down,
Hoop-horned Goat, as thine,
By chamois herds acclaimed divine!
A god's grace truly will he need
If he be not to suffer, not to bleed—
A shattered heart and brain a-fire,
A trodden mantle and snapt lyre!