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                               HEPHAESTUS
                         PERSEPHONE AT ENNA AND
                           SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA



                                   BY
                            ARTHUR STRINGER






                   METHODIST BOOK & PUBLISHING HOUSE
                                TORONTO
                         GRANT RICHARDS, LONDON
                                  1903




                           Table of Contents

                           Dedication
                           Hephaestus
                           Persephone
                           Sappho in Leucadia

    Table of Contents added for reader's convenience.

    Transcriber's Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.




                               DEDICATION


                What bird that climbs the cool dim Dawn
                But loves the air its wild wings roam?
                And yet when all the day is gone
                But turns its weary pinions home,
                And when the yellow twilight fills
                The lonely stretches of the West,
                Comes down across the darkened hills,
                Once more to its remembered nest?

                And I who strayed, O Fond and True,
                To seek that glory fugitive
                And fleeting music that is You,
                But echoes of yourself can give
                As through the waning gold I come
                To where the Dream and Dreamer meet:
                Yet should my faltering lips be dumb,
                I lay these gleanings at your feet!






                               HEPHAESTUS


    (HEPHAESTUS, _finding that his wife_ APHRODITE _is loved by his
    brother_ ARES, _voluntarily surrenders the goddess to this
    younger brother, whom, it is said_, APHRODITE _herself
    preferred_.)

  Take her, O Ares! As Demeter mourned
  Through many-fountained Enna, I shall grieve
  Forlorn a time, and then, it may be, learn,
  Some still autumnal twilight by the sea
  Golden with sunlight, to remember not!
  As the dark pine forgoes the pilgrim thrush
  I, sad of heart, yet unimpassioned, yield
  To you this surging bosom soft with dreams,
  This body fashioned of Aegean foam
  And languorous moonlight. But I give you not
  The eluding soul that in her broods and sleeps,
  And ne’er was mine of old, nor can be yours.
  It was not born of sea and moon with her,
  And though it nests within her, no weak hand
  Of hers shall cage it as it comes and goes,
  Sorrows and wakens, sleeps, and sings again.
  And so I give you but the hollow lute,
  The lute alone, and not the voices low
  That sang of old to some forgotten touch.
  The lamp I give, but not the glimmering flame
  Some alien fire must light, some alien dusk
  Enisle, ere it illume your land and sea.
  The shell I give you, Ares, not the song
  Of murmuring winds and waves once haunting it;
  The cage, but not love’s wings that come and go.
  I give you them, light brother, as the earth
  Gives up the dew, the mountain-side the mist!

    Farewell sad face, that gleamed so like a flower
  Through Paphian groves to me of old—farewell!
  Some Fate beyond our dark-robed Three ordained
  This love should wear the mortal rose and not
  Our timeless amaranth. ’Twas writ of old, and lay
  Not once with us. As we ourselves have known,
  And well your sad Dodonian mother found,
  From deep to deep the sails of destined love
  Are blown and tossed by tides no god controls;
  And at the bud of our too golden life
  Eats this small canker of mortality!

    I loved her once, O Ares—
  I loved her once as waters love the wind;
  I sought her once as rivers seek the sea;
  And her deep eyes, so dream-besieged, made dawn
  And midnight one. Flesh of my flesh she was,
  And we together knew dark days and glad.
  Then fell the change;—some hand unknown to us
  Shook one white petal from the perfect flower,
  And all the world grew old. Ah, who shall say
  When Summer dies, or when is blown the rose?
  Who, who shall know just when the quiet star
  Out of the golden West is born again?
  Or when the gloaming saddens into night?
  ’Twas writ, in truth, of old; the tide of love
  Has met its turn, the long horizon lures
  The homing bird, the harbour calls the sail.
  Home, home to your glad heart she goes, while I
  Fare on alone, and only broken dreams
  Abide with me! And yet, when you shall tread
  Lightly your sunlit hills with her and breathe
  Life’s keener air, all but too exquisite,
  Or look through purpling twilight on the world,
  Think not my heart has followed nevermore
  Those glimmering feet that walked once thus with me,
  Nor dream my passion by your passion paled.
  But lower than the god the temple stands;
  As deeper is the sea than any wave,
  Sweeter the summer than its asphodel,
  So love far stronger than this woman is.
  She from the untiring ocean took her birth,
  And from torn wave and foam her first faint breath;
  Child of unrest and change, still through her sweeps
  Her natal sea’s tumultuous waywardness!
  And losing her, lo, one thin drifting cloud
  Curls idly from the altar in that grove
  Where burn the fires that know not change or death!

    Yet she shall move the strange desires of men;
  For in her lie dim glories that she dreams
  Not of, and on her ever broods a light
  Her Cyprian eyes ne’er saw; and evermore
  Round her pale face shall pleading faces press;
  Round her shall mortal passion beat and ebb.
  Years hence, as waves on islands burst in foam,
  Madly shall lives on her strange beauty break.

  When she is yours and in ambrosial glooms
  You secretly would chain her kiss by kiss,
  Though close you hold her in your hungering arms,
  And with voluptuous pantings you and she
  Mingle, and seem the insentient moment one,
  Yet will your groping soul but lean to her
  Across the dusk, as hill to lonely hill,
  And in your warmest raptures you shall learn
  There is a citadel surrenders not
  To any captor of the outer walls;
  In sorrow you shall learn there is a light
  Illumines not, a chamber it were best
  To leave untrod.
                      O Ares, dread the word
  That silences this timorous nightingale,
  The touch that wakens strings too frail for hands;
  For, giving her, I gain what you shall lose;
  Forsaking her, I hold her closer still.
  The sea shall take a deeper sound; the stars
  Stranger and more mysterious henceforth
  Shall seem, the darkening sky-line of the West
  For me, the solitary dreamer, now shall hold
  Voices and faces that I knew not of.
  More, henceforth, shall all music mean to me,
  And she, through lonely musings, ever seem
  As beautiful as are the dead. But you—
  You in your hand shall guard the gathered rose,
  Shall hold the riven veil, the loosened chord!

  So love your hour, bright god, ere it is lost,
  A swan that sings its broken life away.
  In that brief hour, ’tis writ, you shall hear breathe
  Songs blown from some enchanted island home,
  Then mourn for evermore life’s silent throats,—
  Aye, seek and find the altar when its fires
  Are ashes, and the worship vain regret!
  A mystic law more strong than all delight
  Or pain shall each delicious rapture chill,
  Exacting sternly for each ecstasy;
  And when her voice enwraps you and in arms
  Luxurious your softest languor comes,
  Faintly torn wings shall flutter for the sun,
  Madly old dreams shall struggle toward the light,
  And, drugged with opiate passion, you shall know
  Dark days and shadowy moods when she may seem
  To some dusk underworld enchaining you.
  Yet I shall know her as she was of old,
  Fashioned of moonlight and Aegean foam;
  Some visionary gleam, some glory strange
  Shall day by day engolden her lost face.
  The slow attrition of the years shall wear
  No tenderest charm away, and she shall live
  A lonely star, a gust of music sweet,
  A voice upon the Deep, a mystery!
  But in the night, I know, the lonely wind
  Shall sigh of her, the restless ocean moan
  Her name with immemorial murmurings,
  And the sad golden summer moon shall mourn
  With me, and through the gloom of rustling leaves
  The shaken throats of nightingales shall bring
  Her low voice back, the incense of the fields
  Recall too well the odour of her hair.
  But lo, the heart doth bury all its dead,
  As mother Earth her unremembered leaves;
  So the sad hour shall pass, and with the dawn
  Serene I shall look down where hills and seas
  Throb through their dome of brooding hyaline
  And see from Athens gold to Indus gray
  New worlds awaiting me, and gladly go,—
  Go down among the toilers of the earth
  And seek the rest, the deeper peace that comes
  Of vast endeavour and the dust of strife.
  There my calm soul shall know itself, and watch
  The golden-sandalled Seasons come and go,
  Still god-like in its tasks of little things;
  And, woven not with grandeurs and red wars,
  Wanting somewhat in gold and vermeil, shall
  The Fates work out my life’s thin tapestry,
  As sorrow brings me wisdom, and the pang
  Of solitude, O Ares, keeps me strong!




                               PERSEPHONE


  Goddess and Mother, let me smooth thy brow
  And cling about thee for a little time
  With these pale hands,—for see, still at the glow
  Of all this white-houred noon and alien sun
  I tremble like a new-born nightingale
  Blown from its nest into bewildering rain.

  How shall I tell thee, Mother, of those days
  My aching eyes saw not this azure sea
  Of air, unknown in Death’s gray Underworld
  And only whispered of by restless Shades
  Rememb’ring shadowy things across their dusk?—
  Or how I often asked: “Canst thou, dark heart,
  Remember home? So far and long forlorn
  Canst thou, my heart, remember Sicily?”
  Then didst thou, weeping, call Persephone
  The Many-Songed, and where thy lonely voice
  Once fell all greenness faded and the song
  Of birds all died, and down from brazen heights
  A blood-red sun long noon by sullen noon
  On ashen days and desolation shone;
  And cattle lowed about the withered springs,
  And Earth gaped wide, each arid Evening moaned
  Amid the dusk for rain, or dew at most.
  But thou in anger didst withhold the green,
  And grim of breast forbade the bursting sap,
  And dared the darkest sky-line of lone Deeps
  For thy lost daughter, and could find her not.

  Then came the Arethusan whisper, and release;
  The refreshing rains washed down and gushed
  And sluiced the juicy grasses once again,
  And bird by bird, the Summer was re-born,
  And drooping in thine arms I wakened here.
  Yet all those twilight days I was content
  Though silent as a frozen river crept
  The hours entombed, though far I was from thee
  And from the Nysian fields of open sun,
  The sound of waters, and the throats of song.

  But when with happier lips I tell thee all
  Thou must, worn Mother, leave me here alone
  Where soft as early snow the white hours fall
  About my musing eyes, and life seems strange,
  And strange the muffled piping of the birds,
  And strange the drowsy music of the streams,
  The whispering pavilions of the pines;
  And more than strange the immersing wash of air
  That breathes and sways and breaks through all my being
  And lulls away, like seas intangible,
  Regrets, and tears, and days of heavy gloom.
  O Mother, all these things are told not of
  Where I have been, and on these eyes estranged
  Earth’s vernal sweetness falls so mystical
  Its beauty turns a thing of bitter tears;
  And even in my gladness I must grieve
  For this dark change, where Death has died to me,—
  For my lost Gloom, where life was life to me!

  Long years from now shall ages yet unborn
  Watch the returning Spring and strangely yearn;
  Others shall thrill with joy like unto mine;
  Vague things shall move them and strange voices steal
  Through sad, bud-scented April eves to them.
  Round them shall fall a glory not of earth,
  As now o’er these Sicilian meadows fall
  Dim memories that come I know not whence.
  In lands I know not of some sorrowing girl
  Shall faintly breathe: “I am Persephone
  On such a day!” and through the world shall run
  The immemorial rapture and the pangs,
  And pale-eyed ghosts shall creep out to the light
  And drink the sun, like wine, and live once more.
  The dower of my delight shall make them glad;
  The tears of my regret shall weigh them down,
  And men with wondering eyes shall watch the Spring
  Return, and weep, indeed, these selfsame tears,
  And laugh with my good laughter, knowing not
  Whence came their passing bliss so torn with pain.

  For good is Enna, and the wide, glad Earth,
  And good the comfortable green of grass
  And Nysian meadows still so milky pale;
  Good seems the dark steer in the noonday sun,
  The ploughman’s keel that turns black waves of loam,
  The laughing girls, the fluting shepherd boys,
  And beautiful the song of many birds;
  Good seem these golden bees whose busy wings
  With wavering music drone and die away,—
  The orchard odours and the seas of bloom;
  And good the valleys where the green leaves breathe,
  The hills where all the patient pines look down;
  Good seem the lowland poplars bathed in light,
  That pillar from the plain this tent of blue,—
  The quiet homes amid the cooling fields,
  The flashing rivers and the woods remote,
  The little high white town among the hills!

  All, all are good to look on, and most dear
  To my remembering eyes. Each crocus, too,
  And gold narcissus, gleams memorial,—
  Untouched of sorrow for that troubled day
  Impetuous hoof and wheel threshed through the wheat,
  And ’mid these opiate blooms the Four-Horsed One
  Swept down on me, half lost in pensive dreams,
  And like a poppy in some panting noon,
  All drooping, bore me to the gates of Hell,—
  When on my fragile girlhood closed his arms
  As on some seed forlorn Earth’s darkest loam.
  Yet think not, Mother, this fierce Son of Night
  Brought only sorrow with him, for behold,
  In learning to forbear I learned to love;
  And battling pale on his impassioned breast
  I felt run through my veins some golden pang
  Of dear defeat, some subjugation dim,
  Presaging all this bosom once was made
  To be thus crushed, ere once it could be glad.
  Thus are we fashioned, Mother, though we live
  Immortal or the sons of men; and so
  Each day on my disdain some tendril new
  Bound me the closer to him; loving not,
  Some wayward bar of pity caged me down,
  And day by languid day amid Death’s gloom,
  I grew to lean upon him, and in time
  I watched his coming and his absence wept.
  I walked companion to his pallid shades,
  And pale as yon thin crescent noonday moon
  I dwelt with him, a ghost amid his ghosts.
  If this was love, I loved him more than life.
  And now he means to me what flame and ruin
  And tumultuous conflagration of great towers
  And citadels must mean to martial eyes,
  Bewildering the blood like dizzy wine
  And sweeping on to any maddened end:
  I came to glory in him,—felt small hands
  Clutch at my breast when he was standing near,
  And knew his cruel might, yet thrilled to it
  And in his strength even took my weak delight.
  Stern were his days, yet leaned he patient o’er
  This wayward heart, till I in wonder saw
  From those dark weeds of wanton lust creep forth
  Belated violets of calmer love,—
  And, link by link, found all my life enchained!

  Only at times the music of the Sea
  Sang in my ears its old insistent note;
  Only at times I heard the wash and rush
  Of waves on open shores and windy cliffs;
  Only at times I seemed to see great wings
  Scaling some crystal stairway to the Sun,
  And languid eagles shouldering languid clouds.
  Singing on summer mornings too I heard,—
  I caught the sound that sweet green waters make,
  The music—O so delicate!—of leaves
  And rustling grasses, and the stir of wings
  About dim gardens. Where shy nightingales
  Shook their old sorrow over Ida’s gloom
  I into immortality was touched
  Once more by song and moonlight, far away.
  I mused beside dim fires with Memory
  And through my tears rebuilt some better life
  Untouched of time and change, and dreaming thus
  Forgot my woe, and, first of all the gods,
  I, wistful-eyed, with Aspiration walked!

  For, Mother, see, this dubious death in life
  Makes beautiful my immortality:
  Once all my world was only phantom stream
  And shadowy flower, and song that was not song,
  And wrapt in white eternities I walked
  A daughter of the gods, who knew not Death:
  I was a thing of coldness and disdain,
  Half-losing all that was so dear in life:
  Enthroned in astral taciturnity,
  I, looking tranquil-eyed on beauties old,
  E’er faced some dull Forever, strange to Hope
  And strange to Sorrow, strange to Tears,—Regrets;
  Joy was not joy, and living was not life.
  So unreluctantly the long years went,
  Though I had all that we, the gods, have asked,
  Drunk with life’s wine, I could not sing the grape,
  And knew not once, till Hades touched my hand
  And made me wise, how good the world could be.

  Now, now I know the solace and the thrill
  Of