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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