Apollo and Marsyas and Other Poems by Eugene Lee-Hamilton - HTML preview

 

SONNETS.

 

 

IDLE CHARON.

 

THE shores of Styx are lone for evermore,

And not one shadowy form upon the steep

Looms through the dusk, far as the eye can sweep,

To call the ferry over as of yore;

But tintless rushes all about the shore

Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep,

Hoar-bearded Charon lies; while pale weeds creep

With tightening grasp all round the unused oar.

For in the world of Life strange rumours run

That now the Soul departs not with the breath,

But that the Body and the Soul are one;

And in the loved one’s mouth, now, after death,

The widow puts no obol, nor the son,

To pay the ferry in the world beneath.

 

 

THE OBOL.[A]

 

SCARCE have I rhymed of Charon looming grey

Amid pale rushes through the dusky air,

And of the obol we no longer care

To put in dead men’s mouths as ferry-pay,

When, lo, I find, amongst some pence, to-day

Received as common change, I know not where,

A stray Greek obol, seeming Charon’s fare

To put between my lips when I be dead.

Poor bastard Obol, even couldst thou cheat

The shadowy Boatman, I should scarcely find

The heart to cross: extinction seems so sweet.

I need thee not; and thou shalt be consigned

To some old whining beggar in the street,

Whose soul shall cross, while mine shall stay behind.

 

[A] The coin referred to in this sonnet was a modern Greek piece of five lepta, rather smaller than a halfpenny, and bearing the word Obolos on the reverse.

 

 

LETHE.

 

I had a dream of Lethe, of the brink

Of leaden waters, whither many bore

Dead, pallid loves, while others, old and sore,

Brought but their tottering selves, in haste to drink.

And, having drunk, they plunged, and seemed to sink

Their load of love or guilt for evermore,

Reaching with radiant brow the sunny shore

That lay beyond, no more to think and think.

 

Oh, who will give me, chained to Thought’s dull strand,

A draught of Lethe, salt with final tears,

Were it no more than fills the hollow hand?

Oh, who will rid me of the wasted years,

The thought of Life’s fair structure vainly planned,

And each false hope, that mocking re-appears?

 

 

ACHERON.

 

WHERE rolls in silent speed through cave on cave

Soul-freighted Acheron, and no other light

Evokes the rocks from an eternal night

Than the pale phosphorescence of the wave,

Shall men not meet, and have one chance to crave

Forgiveness for rash deeds—one chance to right

Old earthly quarrels, and in Death’s despite

Unsay the said, and kill the pang they gave?

 

See, see! there looms from yonder soul-filled bark

That passes ours, a long-loved, long-lost face,

And with a cry we stretch our ghostly arms.

But heeding not, they whirl into the dark,

Bound for a sea beyond all time and space,

Which neither life nor love nor sunlight warms.

 

 

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION.

 

I SAW a vast bare plain; with, overhead,

A half-chilled sun, that shed a sickly light;

And all around, till out of reach of sight,

The earth’s thin crust heaved with the rising dead,

Who, as they struggled from their dusty bed,

At first mere bones, by countless years made white,

Took gradual flesh, and stood all huddled tight

In mute, dull groups, as yet too numb to dread.

And all the while the summoning trump on high

With rolling thunder never ceased to shake

The livid vault of that unclouded sky,

Calling fresh hosts of penitents to take

Each his identity; until well-nigh

The whole dry worn-out earth appeared to wake.

 

 

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE BINDING OF THE LOST.

 

IN boundless caves, lit only by the glare

Of pools of molten stone, the lost are pent

In countless herds, inextricably blent,

Yet each alone with his own black despair;

While, through the thickness of the lurid air,

The bat-winged fiends, from some far, unseen vent,

Bring on their backs the damned in swift descent,

To swell the crowds that wait in silence there.

 

And then begins the binding of the lost

With snaky thongs, before they be transferred

To realms of utter flame or utter frost;

And, like a sudden ocean boom, is heard,

Uprising from the dim and countless host,

Pain’s first vague roar, Hell’s first wild useless word.

 

 

MUSSET’S LOUIS D’OR.

 

ASLEEP, a little fisher-girl one day

Lay on the sands, within an old boat’s shade;

Her skirt was tattered, and the sea-breeze played

With her brown loosened hair a ceaseless play.

A poet chanced to pass as there she lay;

Her sun-burnt face, her tatters he surveyed;

A golden coin between her lips he laid,

And, letting her sleep on, he went his way.

 

What came of that gold windfall? Did it breed

Those long-loved coins which patient thrift can show

With proud pure smile to meet the household need?

Or stolen gold? or those curst coins which grow

Each year more sought, more loathed, and are the meed

Of women’s loveless kisses? Who can know?

 

 

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

 

WE touch Life’s shore as swimmers from a wreck

Who shudder at the cheerless land they reach,

And find their comrades gathered on the beach

Watching a fading sail, a small white speck—

The phantom ship, upon whose ample deck

There seemed awhile a homeward place for each.

The crowd still wring their hands and still beseech,

But see, it fades, in spite of prayer and beck.

 

Let those who hope for brighter shores no more

Not mourn, but turning inland, bravely seek

What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore.

The strong must build stout cabins for the weak;

Must plan and stint; must sow and reap and store;

For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak.

 

 

SPRING.

 

FOR those who note the fate of earthly things

There lurks a sadness in the April air,

A dreamy sense of what the future brings

To things too good, too hopeful, and too fair.

The spring brings greenness to the recent grave,

But brings no solace to the mourning heart;

Nor will its rustling and its piping save

A single pang to him who must depart.

The ivy bloom is full of humming bees;

The linnets whistle in the leaves on high;

Around the stems of all the orchard trees

In flaky heaps the fallen blossoms lie:

But every leaf upon each new-clad tree

Tells but of boundless mutability.

 

 

TO V. P.,
 ABOUT TO VISIT OXFORD.

 

SO you will see what I can see no more:

The broad quadrangles where the sunlit sward,

At which you peep through some old oaken door,

Is girt around by stone-work black and scarred;

The sedgy Isis, which the swift Eight cleaves

With mighty stroke, all rippled by the breeze;

The narrow Cherwell, gliding under leaves;

The City’s towers rising o’er the trees.

All this, alas, for me is fading fast,

And dimness seems descending on those walls

While Cherwell slowly glides into the Past.

The throng in cap and gown which filled those halls

Is turning into ghosts, whose names at last

I shall forget, as twilight round me falls.

 

 

BY THE FIRE.

 

I SAT beside the fire, ten years ago,

And in the dusk wreathed fancies in its flare,

Meting the Future out, to each his share,

While danced the restless shadows to and fro.

And when at last the yellow flame grew low

And leapt and licked no more, I still sat there

Watching with eyes fast fixed, but mind elsewhere

The darkening crimson of the flameless glow.

 

And lo, at dusk, I watch once more to-day

The slowly-sinking flame, the faint dull crash

Of crumbling embers deadening into grey;

But see alone the Past, misspent and rash,

And wasted gifts, and chances thrown away.

The Present and the Future? All is ash.

 

 

NIGHT.

 

THOU heedest not, inexorable Night,

Whether besought from some lone prison cell

To stay thy hours, by one whose scaffold-knell

Will sound not later than return of light,

Or prayed to urge them by some suffering wight

Who notes their creep as wearily and well

As men not for eternity in Hell

May note the purging flames’ decreasing height.

 

Hark! in the street I hear a distant sound

Of music and of laughter and of song,

As go a band of revellers their round:

And under prison-walls it comes along,

And under dull sick-rooms, where moans abound;

For who shall grudge their strumming to the strong?

 

 

RIVER BABBLE.

 

THE wreathing of my rhymes has helped to chase

Away despair from each untasted day,

And, on my soul, I pray of Time to stay

His hand, when I be dead, and not efface.

Yet would I tear them all, could that replace

The fly-rod in my hand, this day of May,

And watch unmoved their fragments float away

Into oblivion, on a trout-stream’s face.

 

Alas, thou fool! thou weary, crippled fool!

Thou never more wilt leap from stone to stone,

Where rise the trout in every rocky pool!

Thou never more wilt stand at dusk alone

Girt round by gurgling waters, in the cool,

While dance the flies, and make the trout thy own!

 

 

SUNKEN GOLD.

 

IN dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships,

While gold doubloons that from the drowned hand fell

Lie nestled in the ocean-flower’s bell

With Love’s gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips.

And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips

And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,

Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell,

And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.

 

So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes,

Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,

In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes.

They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold

In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,

The gleam of irrecoverable gold.

 

 

ON RAPHAEL’S ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.

 

FROM out the depths of crocus-coloured morn

With rush of wings the strong Archangel came

And glistening spear; and leapt as leaps a flame

On Satan unprepared and earthward borne;

And rolled the sunless Rebel, bruised and torn,

Upon the earth’s bare plain, in dust and shame,

Holding awhile his spear’s suspended aim

Above the humbled head in radiant scorn.

So leaps within the soul on Wrong or Lust

The warrior Angel whom we deem not near,

And rolls the rebel impulse in the dust,

Scathing its neck with his triumphal tread,

And holding high his bright coercing spear

Above its inexterminable head.

 

 

ON A SURF-ROLLED TORSO OF VENUS,
 FOUND AT TRIPOLI VECCHIO, AND NOW IN THE LOUVRE.

 

ONE day in the world’s youth, long, long ago,

Before the golden hair of Time grew grey,

The bright warm sea, scarce stirred by the dolphins’ play,

Was swept by sudden music soft and low;

And rippling, as ’neath kisses, parted slow,

And gave a new and dripping goddess birth,

Who brought transcendent loveliness on earth,

With limbs more pure than sunset-tinted snow.

And lo, that self-same sea has now upthrown

A mutilated Venus, rolled and rolled

For ages by the surf, and that has grown

More soft, more chaste, more lovely than of old,

With every line made vague, so that the stone

Seems seen as through a veil which ages hold.

 

 

ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH.

 

I.

 

WHAT stony, bloodless Judith hast thou made,

Mantegna? Draped in many a stony fold,

What walking sleeper hast thou made, to hold

A stony head and an unbloody blade?

In thine own savage days, wast thou afraid

To paint such Judiths as thou mightst behold

In open street, and paint the heads that rolled

Beneath the axe, in every square displayed?

No, no; not such was Judith, on the night

When, in the silent camp, she watched alone,

Like some dumb tigress, in the tent’s dim light

Her sleeping prey; nor, when her deed was done,

She seized the head, and with intent delight

Stared in a face as quivering as her own.

 

II.

 

There was a gleam of jewels in the tent

Which one dim cresset lit—a baleful gleam—

And from his scattered armour seemed to stream

A dusky, evil light that came and went.

But from her eyes, as over him she bent,

Watching the surface of his drunken dream,

There shot a deadlier ray, a darker beam,

A look in which her life’s one lust found vent.

There was a hissing through her tightened teeth,

As with her scimitar she crouched above

His dark, doomed head, and held her perilous breath,

While ever and anon she saw him move

His red lascivious lips, and smile beneath

His curled and scented beard, and mutter love.

 

 

STRANGLED.

 

THERE is a legend in some Spanish book

About a noisy reveller who, at night,

Returning home with others, saw a light

Shine from a window, and climbed up to look,

And saw within the room, hanged to a hook,

His own self-strangled self, grim, rigid, white,

And who, struck sober by that livid sight,

Feasting his eyes, in tongue-tied horror shook.

 

Has any man a fancy to peep in

And see, as through a window, in the Past,

His nobler self, self-choked with coils of sin,

Or sloth or folly? Round the throat whipped fast

The nooses give the face a stiffened grin.

’Tis but thyself. Look well. Why be aghast?

 

 

PROMETHEAN FANCIES.

 

I.

 

WHEN on to shuddering Caucasus God pours

The phials of his anger hoarded long,

Plunging in each abyss his fiery prong

As if to find a Titan; when loud roars

The imprisoned thunder groping for the doors

Of never-ending gorges; when, among

The desperate pines, Storm howls his battle-song—

Then wakes Prometheus, and his voice upsoars.

Yea, when the midnight tempest hurries past,

There sounds within its wail a wilder wail

Than that which tells the anguish of the blast;

And when the thunder thunders down the gale,

A laugh within its laugh tells woe so vast

That God’s own angels in the darkness quail.

 

II.

 

Prometheus—none may see him. But at night

When heaven’s bolt has made some forest flare

On Caucasus, and when the broad red glare

Rushing from crag to crag at infinite height

Stains sleeping wastes of snow, or, ruby bright,

Runs sparkling up the glacier crests to scare

The screaming eagles out of black chasms, where

But half dislodged the darkness still clings tight—

Then on some lurid monstrous wall of rock

The Titan’s shadow suddenly appears

Gigantic, flickering, vague; and, storm-unfurled,

Seems still to brave, with hand that dim chains lock,

Midway in the unendingness of years,

The Author of the miscreated world.

 

THE END..