Читать книгу Helen Redeemed and Other Poems - Maurice Hewlett - Страница 9

So he who wore his honour like a wreath

About his brows went the dark way of death;

Which being done, that deed of ruth and doom

Gave breath to Troy; but on the Achaians gloom

Settled like pall of cloud upon a land

That swoons beneath it. Desperate they scanned

Each other, saying: "Now we are left by God,"

And in the huts behind the wall abode,

Heeding not Diomede, Idomeneus,

Nor keen Odysseus, nor that friend of Zeus

Mykenai's king, nor that robbed Menelaus,

Nor bowman Teukros, Nestor wise, nor Aias—

Huge Aias, cursed in death! Peleides bare

Himself with pride, but he went raving there.

For in the high assembly Thetis made

In honour of her son, to waft his shade

In peace to Hades' house, after the fire

Twice a man's height for him who did suspire

Twice a man's heart and render it to Heaven

Who gave it, after offerings paid and given,

And games of men and horses, she brought forth

His regal arms for hero of most worth

In the broad Danaan host, who was adjudged

Odysseus by all voices. Aias grudged

The vote and wandered brooding, drawn apart

From his room-fellows, seeding in his heart

Envy, which biting inwards did corrode

His mettle, and his ill blood plied the goad

Upon his brain, until the wretch made mad

Went muttering his wrongs, ill-trimmed, ill-clad,

Sightless and careless, with slack mouth awry,

And working tongue, and danger in the eye;

And oft would stare at Heaven and laugh his scorn:

"O fools, think not to trick me!" then forlorn

Would gaze about green earth or out to sea:

"This is the end of man in his degree"—

Thus would he moralise in those bare lands

With hopeless brows and tossing up of hands—

"To sow in sweat and see another reap!"

Then, pitying himself, he'd fall to weep

His desolation, scorned by Gods, by men

Slighted; but in a flash he'd rage again

And shake his naked sword at unseen foes,

And dare them bring Odysseus to his blows:

Or let the man but flaunt himself in arms … !

So threatening God knows what of savage harms,

On him the oxen patient in the marsh,

Knee-deep in rushes, gazed to hear his harsh

Outcry; and them his madness taught for Greeks,

So on their dumb immensity he wreaks

His vengeance, driving in the press with shout

Of "Aias! Aias!" hurtling, carving out

A way with mighty swordstroke, cut and thrust,

And makes a shambles in his witless lust;

And in the midst, bloodshot, with blank wild eyes

Stands frothing at the lips, and after lies

All reeking in his madman's battlefield,

And sleeps nightlong. But with the dawn's revealed

The pity of his folly; then he sees

Himself at his fool's work. With shaking knees

He stands amid his slaughter, and his own

Adds to the wreck, plunging without a groan

Upon his planted sword. So Aias died

Lonely; and he who, never from his side

Removed, had shared his fame, the Lokrian,

Abode the fate foreordered in the plan

Which the Blind Women ignorantly weave.

But think not on the dead, who die and leave

A memory more fragrant than their deeds,

But to the remnant rather and their needs

Give thought with me. What comfort in their swords

Have they, robbed of the might of two such lords

As Peleus' son and Telamon's? What art

Can drive the blood back to the stricken heart?

Like huddled sheep cowed obstinate, as dull

As oxen impotent the wain to pull

Out of a rut, which, failing at first lunge,

Answer not voice nor goad, but sideways plunge

Or backward urge with lowered heads, or stand

Dumb monuments of sufferance—so unmanned

The Achaians brooded, nor their chiefs had care

To drive them forth, since they too knew despair,

And neither saw in battle nor retreat

A way of honour.

And the plain grew sweet

Again with living green; the spring o' the year

Came in with flush of flower and bird-call clear;

And Nature, for whom nothing wrought is vain,

Out of shed blood caused grass to spring amain,

And seemed with tender irony to flout

Man's folly and pain when twixt dead spears sprang out

The crocus-point and pied the plain with fires

More gracious than his beacons; and from pyres

Of burnt dead men the asphodel uprose

Like fleecy clouds flushed with the morning rose,

A holy pall to hide his folly and pain.

Thus upon earth hope fell like a new rain,

And by and by the pent folk within walls

Took heart and ploughed the glebe and from the stalls

Led out their kine to pasture. Goats and sheep

Cropt at their ease, and herd-boys now did keep

Watch, where before stood armèd sentinels;

And battle-grounds were musical with bells

Of feeding beasts. Afar, high-beacht, the ships

Loomed through the tender mist, their prows—like lips

Of thirsty birds which, lacking water, cry

Salvation out of Heaven—flung on high:

Which marking, Ilios deemed her worst of road

Was travelled, and held Paris for a God

Who winged the shaft that brought them all this peace.

He in their love went sunning, took his ease

In house and hall, at council or at feast,

Careless of what was greatest or what least

Of all his deeds, so only by his side

She lay, the blush-rose Helen, stolen bride,

The lovely harbour of his arms. But she,

A thrall, now her own thralldom plain could see,

And sick of dalliance, loathed herself, and him

Who had beguiled her. Now through eyes made dim

With tears she looked towards the salt sea-beach

Where stood the ships, and sought for sign in each

If it might be her people's, and so hers,

Poor alien!—Argive now herself she avers

And proudly slave of Paris and no wife:

Minion she calls herself; and when to strife

Of love he claims her, secret her heart surges

Back to her lord; and when to kiss he urges,

And when to play he woos her with soft words,

Secret her fond heart calleth, like a bird's,

Towards that honoured mate who honoured her,

Making her wife indeed, not paramour,

Mother, and sharer of his hearth and all

His gear. Thus every night: and on the wall

She watches every dawn for what dawn brings.

And the strong spirit of her took new wings

And left her lovely body in the arms

Of him who doted, conning o'er her charms,

And witless held a shell; but forth as light

As the first sigh of dawn her spirit took flight

Across the dusky plain to where fires gleamed

And muffled guards stood sentry; and it streamed

Within the hut, and hovered like a wraith,

A presence felt, not seen, as when gray Death

Seems to the dying man a bedside guest,

But to the watchers cannot be exprest.

So hovered Helen in a dream, and yearned

Over the sleeper as he moaned and turned,

Renewing his day's torment in his sleep;

Who presently starts up and sighing deep,

Searches the entry, if haply in the skies

The day begin to stir. Lo there, her eyes

Like waning stars! Lo there, her pale sad face

Becurtained in loose hair! Now he can trace

Athwart that gleaming moon her mouth's droopt bow

To tell all truth about her, and her woe

And dreadful store of knowledge. As one shockt

To worse than death lookt she, with horror lockt

Behind her tremulous tragic-moving lips:

"O love, O love," saith he, and saying, slips

Out of the bed: "Who hath dared do thee wrong?"

No answer hath she, but she looks him long

And deep, and looking, fades. He sleeps no more,

But up and down he pads the beaten floor,

And all that day his heart's wild crying hears,

And can thank God for gracious dew of tears

And tender thoughts of her, not thoughts of shame.

So came the next night, and with night she came,

Dream-Helen; and he knew then he must go

Whence she had come. His need would have it so—

And her need. Never must she call in vain.

Now takes he way alone over the plain

Where dark yet hovers like a catafalque

And all life swoons, and only dead thing walk,

Uneasy sprites denied a resting space,

That shudder as they flit from place to place,

Like bats of flaggy wing that make night blink

With endless quest: so do those dead, men think,

Who fall and are unserved by funeral rite.

These passes he, and nears the walls of might

Which Godhead built for proud Laomedon,

And knows the house of Paris built thereon,

Terraced and set with gadding vines and trees

And ever falling water, for the ease

Of that sweet indweller he held in store.

Thither he turns him quaking, but before

Him dares not look, lest he should see her there

Aglimmer through the dusk and, unaware,

Discover her fill some mere homely part

Intolerably familiar to his heart,

And deeply there enshrined and glorified,

Laid up with bygone bliss. Yet on he hied,

Being called, and ever closer on he came

As if no wrong nor misery nor shame

Could harder be than not to see her—Nay,

Even if within that smooth thief's arms she lay

Besmothered in his kisses—rather so

Had he stood stabbed to see, than on to go

His round of lonely exile!

Now he stands

Beneath her house, and on his spear his hands

Rest, and upon his hands he grounds his chin,

And motionless abides till day come in;

Pure of his vice, that he might ease her woe,

Not brand her with his own. Not yet the glow

Of false dawn throbbed, nor yet the silent town

Stood washt in light, clear-printed to the crown

In the cold upper air. Dark loomed the walls,

Ghostly the trees, and still shuddered the calls

Of owl to owl from unseen towers. Afar

A dog barked. High and hidden in the haar

Which blew in from the sea a heron cried

Honk! and he heard his wings, but not espied

The heavy flight. Slow, slow the orb was filled

With light, and with the light his heart was thrilled

With opening music, faint, expectant, sharp

As the first chords one picks out from the harp

To prelude paean. Venturing all, he lift

His eyes, and there encurtained in a drift

Of sea-blue mantle close-drawn, he espies

Helen above him watching, her grave eyes

Upon him fixt, blue homes of mystery

Unfathomable, eternal as the sea,

And as unresting.

So in that still place,

In that still hour stood those two face to face.