Читать книгу Poems. Volume 2 - George Meredith - Страница 30

He who has looked upon Earth

Deeper than flower and fruit,

Losing some hue of his mirth,

As the tree striking rock at the root,

Unto him shall the marvellous tale

Of Callistes more humanly come

With the touch on his breast than a hail

From the markets that hum.

Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.

’Twas the season when wintertide,

In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,

Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,

By light throwing shallow shade,

Between the beam and the gloom,

Sicilian Enna, whose Maid

Such aspect wears in her bloom

Underneath since the Charioteer

Of Darkness whirled her away,

On a reaped afternoon of the year,

Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.

O and naked of her, all dust,

The majestic Mother and Nurse,

Ringing cries to the God, the Just,

Curled the land with the blight of her curse:

Recollected of this glad isle

Still quaking.  But now more fair,

And momently fraying the while

The veil of the shadows there,

Soft Enna that prostrate grief

Sang through, and revealed round the vines,

Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,

The wheat-blades tripping in lines,

A hue unillumined by sun

Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts:

All the penetrable dun

   Of the morn ere she mounts.

Nor had saffron and sapphire and red

Waved aloft to their sisters below,

When gaped by the rock-channel head

Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow,

Reverberant over the plain:

A sound oft fearfully swung

For the coming of wrathful rain:

And forth, like the dragon-tongue

Of a fire beaten flat by the gale,

But more as the smoke to behold,

A chariot burst.  Then a wail

Quivered high of the love that would fold

Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,

Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed,

And the team of the chariot swart

Reared in marble, the six, dismayed,

Like hoofs that by night plashing sea

Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:

For, lo, the Great Mother, She!

And Callistes gazed, he gave

His eyeballs up to the sight:

The embrace of the Twain, of whom

To men are their day, their night,

Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:

Our Lady of the Sheaves

And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet

Of Enna: he saw through leaves

The Mother and Daughter meet.

They stood by the chariot-wheel,

Embraced, very tall, most like

Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel

Down their shivering columns and strike

Head to head, crossing throats: and apart,

For the feast of the look, they drew,

Which Darkness no longer could thwart;

And they broke together anew,

Exulting to tears, flower and bud.

But the mate of the Rayless was grave:

She smiled like Sleep on its flood,

That washes of all we crave:

Like the trance of eyes awake

And the spirit enshrouded, she cast

The wan underworld on the lake.

   They were so, and they passed.

He tells it, who knew the law

Upon mortals: he stood alive

Declaring that this he saw:

   He could see, and survive.

Now the youth was not ware of the beams

With the grasses intertwined,

For each thing seen, as in dreams,

Came stepping to rear through his mind,

Till it struck his remembered prayer

To be witness of this which had flown

Like a smoke melted thinner than air,

That the vacancy doth disown.

And viewing a maiden, he thought

It might now be morn, and afar

Within him the memory wrought

Of a something that slipped from the car

When those, the august, moved by:

Perchance a scarf, and perchance

This maiden.  She did not fly,

Nor started at his advance:

She looked, as when infinite thirst

Pants pausing to bless the springs,

Refreshed, unsated.  Then first

He trembled with awe of the things

He had seen; and he did transfer,

Divining and doubting in turn,

His reverence unto her;

Nor asked what he crouched to learn:

The whence of her, whither, and why

Her presence there, and her name,

Her parentage: under which sky

Her birth, and how hither she came,

So young, a virgin, alone,

Unfriended, having no fear,

As Oreads have; no moan,

Like the lost upon earth; no tear;

Not a sign of the torch in the blood,

Though her stature had reached the height

When mantles a tender rud

In maids that of youths have sight,

If maids of our seed they be:

For he said: A glad vision art thou!

And she answered him: Thou to me!

   As men utter a vow.

Then said she, quick as the cries

Of the rainy cranes: Light! light!

And Helios rose in her eyes,

That were full as the dew-balls bright,

Relucent to him as dews

Unshaded.  Breathing, she sent

Her voice to the God of the Muse,

And along the vale it went,

Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill:

Sweet, but no young maid’s throat:

The echo beyond the hill

Ran falling on half the note:

And under the shaken ground

Where the Hundred-headed groans

By the roots of great Aetna bound,

As of him were hollow tones

Of wondering roared: a tale

Repeated to sunless halls.

But now off the face of the vale

Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls

Of the lake’s rock-head were gold,

And the breast of the lake, that swell

Of the crestless long wave rolled

To shore-bubble, pebble and shell.

A morning of radiant lids

O’er the dance of the earth opened wide:

The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids

Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,

Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:

There was milk, honey, music to make:

Up their branches the little birds billed:

Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.

O shining in sunlight, chief

After water and water’s caress,

Was the young bronze-orange leaf,

That clung to the tree as a tress,

Shooting lucid tendrils to wed

With the vine-hook tree or pole,

Like Arachne launched out on her thread.

Then the maiden her dusky stole

In the span of the black-starred zone,

Gathered up for her footing fleet.

As one that had toil of her own

She followed the lines of wheat

Tripping straight through the fields, green blades,

To the groves of olive grey,

Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades

Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray

In a night, like the snow-packed storm:

Pear, apple, almond, plum:

Not wintry now: pushing, warm!

And she touched them with finger and thumb,

As the vine-hook closes: she smiled,

Recounting again and again,

Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child,

With the meaning known to men.

For hours in the track of the plough

And the pruning-knife she stepped,

And of how the seed works, and of how

Yields the soil, she seemed adept.

Then she murmured that name of the dearth,

The Beneficent, Hers, who bade

Our husbandmen sow for the birth

Of the grain making earth full glad.

She murmured that Other’s: the dirge

Of life-light: for whose dark lap

Our locks are clipped on the verge

Of the realm where runs no sap.

She said: We have looked on both!

And her eyes had a wavering beam

Of various lights, like the froth

Of the storm-swollen ravine stream

In flame of the bolt.  What links

Were these which had made him her friend?

He eyed her, as one who drinks,

   And would drink to the end.

Now the meadows with crocus besprent,

And the asphodel woodsides she left,

And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent

Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft

That tutors the torrent-brook,

Delaying its forceful spleen

With many a wind and crook

Through rock to the broad ravine.

By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes,

And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid,

And the sun-loving lizards and snakes

On the cleft’s barren ledges, that slid

Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all,

At a snap of twig or bark

In the track of the foreign foot-fall,

She climbed to the pineforest dark,

Overbrowing an emerald chine

Of the grass-billows.  Thence, as a wreath,

Running poplar and cypress to pine,

The lake-banks are seen, and beneath,

Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms,

The citadel watching the bay,

The bay with the town in its arms,

The town shining white as the spray

Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock,

Where the rock stars the girdle of sea,

White-ringed, as the midday flock,

Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree.

That hour of the piercing shaft

Transfixes bough-shadows, confused

In veins of fire, and she laughed,

With her quiet mouth amused

To see the whole flock, adroop,

Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one,

Imperceptibly filling the loop

Of its shade at a slant of sun.

The pipes under pent of the crag,

Where the goatherds in piping recline,

Have whimsical stops, burst and flag

Uncorrected as outstretched swine:

For the fingers are slack and unsure,

And the wind issues querulous:—thorns

And snakes!—but she listened demure,

Comparing day’s music with morn’s.

Of the gentle spirit that slips

From the bark of the tree she discoursed,

And of her of the wells, whose lips

Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced.

And much of the sacred loon,

The frolic, the Goatfoot God,

For stories of indolent noon

In the pineforest’s odorous nod,

She questioned, not knowing: he can

Be waspish, irascible, rude,

He is oftener friendly to man,

And ever to beasts and their brood.

For the which did she love him well,

She said, and his pipes of the reed,

His twitched lips puffing to tell

In music his tears and his need,

Against the sharp catch of his hurt.

Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak,

Nor spake as the schools, to divert,

But fondly, perceiving him weak

Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear,

A holiness, horn and heel.

All this she had learnt in her ear

From Callistes, and taught him to feel.

Yea, the solemn divinity flushed

Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast,

And the steeps where the cataract rushed,

And the wilds where the forest is priest,

Were his temple to clothe him in awe,

While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she read

The haunts of the beak and the claw

As plain as the land of bread,

But Cities and martial States,

Whither soon the youth veered his theme,

Were impervious barrier-gates

To her: and that ship, a trireme,

Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance,

Though he dwelt on the message it bore

Of sceptre and sword and lance

To the bee-swarms black on the shore,

Which were audible almost,

So black they were.  It befel

That he called up the warrior host

Of the Song pouring hydromel

In thunder, the wide-winged Song.

And he named with his boyish pride

The heroes, the noble throng

Past Acheron now, foul tide!

With his joy of the godlike band

And the verse divine, he named

The chiefs pressing hot on the strand,

Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed.

The fleetfoot and ireful; the King;

Him, the prompter in stratagem,

Many-shifted and masterful: Sing,

O Muse!  But she cried: Not of them

She breathed as if breath had failed,

And her eyes, while she bade him desist,

Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed,

As you see the grey river-mist

Hold shapes on the yonder bank.

A moment her body waned,

The light of her sprang and sank:

Then she looked at the sun, she regained

Clear feature, and she breathed deep.

She wore the wan smile he had seen,

As the flow of the river of Sleep,

On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.

In sunlight she craved to bask,

Saying: Life!  And who was she? who?

Of what issue?  He dared not ask,

   For that partly he knew.

A noise of the hollow ground

Turned the eye to the ear in debate:

Not the soft overflowing of sound

Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,

Barely swayed to some whispers remote,

Some swarming whispers above:

Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,

Hush-hushing the nested dove:

It was not the pines, or the rout

Oft heard from mid-forest in chase,

But the long muffled roar of a shout

Subterranean.  Sharp grew her face.

She rose, yet not moved by affright;

’Twas rather good haste to use

Her holiday of delight

In the beams of the God of the Muse.

And the steeps of the forest she crossed,

On its dry red sheddings and cones

Up the paths by roots green-mossed,

Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.

Then out where the brook-torrent starts

To her leap, and from bend to curve

A hurrying elbow darts

For the instant-glancing swerve,

Decisive, with violent will

In the action formed, like hers,

The maiden’s, ascending; and still

Ascending, the bud of the furze,

The broom, and all blue-berried shoots

Of stubborn and prickly kind,

The juniper flat on its roots,

The dwarf rhododaphne, behind

She left, and the mountain sheep

Far behind, goat, herbage and flower.

The island was hers, and the deep,

All heaven, a golden hour.

Then with wonderful voice, that rang

Through air as the swan’s nigh death,

Of the glory of Light she sang,

She sang of the rapture of Breath.

Nor ever, says he who heard,

Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,

From bosom of singer or bird

A sweetness thus rich of the God

Whose harmonies always are sane.

She sang of furrow and seed,

The burial, birth of the grain,

The growth, and the showers that feed,

And the green blades waxing mature

For the husbandman’s armful brown.

O, the song in its burden ran pure,

And burden to song was a crown.

Callistes, a singer, skilled

In the gift he could measure and praise,

By a rival’s art was thrilled,

Though she sang but a Song of Days,

Where the husbandman’s toil and strife

Little varies to strife and toil:

But the milky kernel of life,

With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil

The song did give him to eat:

Gave the first rapt vision of Good,

And the fresh young sense of Sweet

The grace of the battle for food,

With the issue Earth cannot refuse

When men to their labour are sworn.

’Twas a song of the God of the Muse

   To the forehead of Morn.

Him loved she.  Lo, now was he veiled:

Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:

The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,

Bent abeam, with a whitened track,

Surprised, fast hauling the net,

As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.

She said: Is it night?  O not yet!

With a travail of thoughts in her look.

The mountain heaved up to its peak:

Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;

Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.

Night? but never so fell a scowl

Wore night, nor the sky since then

When ocean ran swallowing shore,

And the Gods looked down for men.

Broke tempest with that stern roar

Never yet, save when black on the whirl

Rode wrath of a sovereign Power.

Then the youth and the shuddering girl,

Dim as shades in the angry shower,

Joined hands and descended a maze

Of the paths that were racing alive

Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways,

Incessant, with sound of a hive.

The height was a fountain-urn

Pouring streams, and the whole solid height

Leaped, chasing at every turn

The pair in one spirit of flight

To the folding pineforest.  Yet here,

Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,

The stillness bred spectral fear

Of the awfulness ranging without,

And imminent.  Downward they fled,

From under the haunted roof,

To the valley aquake with the tread

Of an iron-resounding hoof,

As of legions of thunderful horse

Broken loose and in line tramping hard.

For the rage of a hungry force

Roamed blind of its mark over sward:

They saw it rush dense in the cloak

Of its travelling swathe of steam;

All the vale through a thin thread-smoke

Was thrown back to distance extreme:

And dull the full breast of it blinked,

Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er,

Diminished, in strangeness distinct,

Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:

An Enna of fields beyond sun,

Out of light, in a lurid web;

And the traversing fury spun

Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb;

As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,

Retire, and in ravenous greed,

Inveterate, swell its return.

Up and down, as if wringing from speed

Sights that made the unsighted appear,

Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.

Lo, a sea upon land held career

Through the plain of the vale half-devoured.

Callistes of home and escape

Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.

She gazed at the Void of shape,

She put her white hand to his reach,

Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.

And divided from day, from night,

From air that is breath, stood she,

   Like the vale, out of light.

Then again in disorderly words

He muttered of home, and was mute,

With the heart of the cowering birds

Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot.

He gave her some redness that streamed

Through her limbs in a flitting glow.

The sigh of our life she seemed,

The bliss of it clothing in woe.

Frailer than flower when the round

Of the sickle encircles it: strong

To tell of the things profound,

Our inmost uttering song,

Unspoken.  So stood she awhile

In the gloom of the terror afield,

And the silence about her smile

Said more than of tongue is revealed.

I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:

It said: and not joylessly shone

The remembrance of light through the screen

Of a face that seemed shadow and stone.

She led the youth trembling, appalled,

To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise

Like a panic-struck breast.  Then she called,

And the hurricane blackness had eyes.

It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt.

Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side

Would have clasped her and dared a revolt

Sacrilegious as ever defied

High Olympus, but vainly for strength

His compassionate heart shook a frame

Stricken rigid to ice all its length.

On amain the black traveller came.

Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,

Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,

And the lord of the steeds was in form

He, the God of implacable brow,

Darkness: he: he in person: he raged

Through the wave like a boar of the wilds

From the hunters and hounds disengaged,

And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s.

Horror melted in anguish to hear.

Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path

Of the terrible Charioteer,

With the foam and torn features of wrath,

Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;

And the steeds clove it, rushing at land

Like the teeth of the famished at meat.

   Then he swept out his hand.

This, no more, doth Callistes recall:

He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,

On the maiden the chariot fall,

As a thundercloud swings on the moon.

Forth, free of the deluge, one cry

From the vanishing gallop rose clear:

And: Skiágeneia! the sky

Rang; Skiágeneia! the sphere.

And she left him therewith, to rejoice,

Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,

The life of their day in her voice,

   Left her life in her name.

Now the valley in ruin of fields

And fair meadowland, showing at eve

Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields

After battle, bade men believe

That no other than wrathfullest God

Had been loose on her beautiful breast,

Where the flowery grass was clod,

Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.

The valley, discreet in grief,

Disclosed but the open truth,

And Enna had hope of the sheaf:

There was none for the desolate youth

Devoted to mourn and to crave.

Of the secret he had divined

Of his friend of a day would he rave:

How for light of our earth she pined:

For the olive, the vine and the wheat,

Burning through with inherited fire:

And when Mother went Mother to meet,

She was prompted by simple desire

In the day-destined car to have place

At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,

And be drawn to the dear earth’s face.

She was fire for the blue and the green

Of our earth, dark fire; athirst

As a seed of her bosom for dawn,

White air that had robed and nursed

Her mother.  Now was she gone

With the Silent, the God without tear,

Like a bud peeping out of its sheath

To be sundered and stamped with the sere.

And Callistes to her beneath,

As she to our beams, extinct,

Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.

In division so were they linked.

But the song which had betrayed

Her flight to the cavernous ear

For its own keenly wakeful: that song

Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer

Of the husbandman’s heart made strong

Through droughts and deluging rains

With his faith in the Great Mother’s love:

O the joy of the breath she sustains,

And the lyre of the light above,

And the first rapt vision of Good,

And the fresh young sense of Sweet:

That song the youth ever pursued

In the track of her footing fleet.

For men to be profited much

By her day upon earth did he sing:

Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch

On the blossoms of tender Spring,

Immortal: and how in her soul

She is with them, and tearless abides,

Folding grain of a love for one goal

In patience, past flowing of tides.

And if unto him she was tears,

He wept not: he wasted within:

Seeming sane in the song, to his peers,

Only crazed where the cravings begin.

Our Lady of Gifts prized he less

Than her issue in darkness: the dim

Lost Skiágencia’s caress

Of our earth made it richest for him.

And for that was a curse on him raised,

And he withered rathe, dry to his prime,

Though the bounteous Giver be praised

Through the island with rites of old time

Exceedingly fervent, and reaped

Veneration for teachings devout,

Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped

And the wine-presses ruddily spout,

And the olive and apple are juice

At a touch light as hers lost below.

Whatsoever to men is of use

Sprang his worship of them who bestow,

In a measure of songs unexcelled:

But that soul loving earth and the sun

From her home of the shadows he held

For his beacon where beam there is none:

And to join her, or have her brought back,

In his frenzy the singer would call,

Till he followed where never was track,

On the path trod of all.