FullReads

And all the land seemed passing fair
To one who knew, and waited there.

“Goddess and Maid,” then said the King,
“Long have I sought this day should bring
An end of torment. Know me thou
God postulant, with whom below
A world awaits her queen, while here
I seek and find one without peer;
Nor deem her heedless nor unschooled
In what in Heaven is writ and ruled.
Decreed of old my bride-right was,
Decreed thy Mother’s pain and loss,
Decreed thy loathing, and decreed
That which thou shunnest to be thy need;
For thou shalt love me, Lady, yet,
Though little liking now, and fret
Of jealous care shall grave thy heart
And draw thee back when time’s to part–
If fond Demeter have her will
Against thine own.”

The Maid stood still
And guarded watched, and her proud eyes’
Scrutiny bade his own advise
Whether indeed their solemn stare
Saw Destiny and read it there
Beyond her suitor, or within
Her own heart heard the message ring.
Awhile she gazed: her stern aspect,
Young and yet fraught with Godhead, checkt
Both Him who claimed, and her who’d cling,
And them who wondered. “O great King,”
She said, and mournful was her crying
As when night-winds set pine-trees sighing,
“King of the folk beyond the tide
Of sleep, behold thy chosen bride
Not shunning thee, nor seeking. Take
That which Gods neither mar nor make,
But only They, the Three, who spin
The threads which hem and mesh us in,
Both Gods and men, till she who peers
The longest cuts them with her shears.
Take, take, Aidoneus, and take her,
My fosterling.”
Then He, “O star
Of Earth, O Beacon of my days,
Light of my nights, whose beamy rays
Shall pierce the foggy cerement
Wherein my dead grope and lament
Beyond all loss the loss of light,
Come! and be pleasant in my sight
This thy beloved. Perchance she too
Shall find a suitor come to woo;
For love men leave not with their bones–
That is the soul’s, and half atones
And half makes bitterer their loss,
Remembering what their fortune was.”
Trembling Hypsipyle uplift
Her eyes towards the hills, where swift
The shadows flew, but no more fleet
Than often she with flying feet
And flying raiment, she with these
Her mates, whom now estranged she sees–
As if the shadow-world had spread
About her now, and she was dead–
Her mates no more! cut off by fear
From these two fearless ones. A tear
Welled up and hovered, hung a gem
Upon her eyelid’s dusky hem,
As raindrops linkt and strung arow
Broider with stars the winter bough.
This was her requiem and farewell
To them, thus rang she her own knell;
Nor more gave she, nor more asked they,
But took and went the fairy way.
For thus with unshed tears made blind
Went she: thus go the fairy kind
Whither fate driveth; not as we
Who fight with it, and deem us free
Therefore, and after pine, or strain
Against our prison bars in vain.
For to them Fate is Lord of Life
And Death, and idle is a strife
With such a master. They not know
Life past, life coming, but life now;
Nor back look they to long, nor forth
To hope, but sup the minute’s worth
With draught so quick and keen that each
Moment gives more than we could reach
In all our term of three-score years,
Whereof full score we give to fears
Of losing them, and other score
Dreaming how fill the twenty more.
Now is the hour, Bride of the Night!
The chariot turns, the great steeds fight
The rocky entry; flies the dust
Behind the wheels at each fierce thrust
Of giant shoulder, at each lunge
Of giant haunch. Down, down they plunge
Into the dark, with rioting mane,
And the earth’s door shuts-to again.
Now fly, ye Oreads, strain your arms,
Let eyes and hair voice your alarms–
Hair blown back, mouths astretch for fear,
Strained eyeballs–cry that Mother dear
Her daughter’s rape; fly like the gale
That down the valleys drives the hail
In scurrying sheets, and lays the corn
Flat, which when man of woman born
Seeth, he bows him to the grass,
Whispering in hush, The Oreads pass.
(In shock he knows ye, and in mirth,
Since he is kindred of that earth
Which bore ye in her secret stress,
Images of her loveliness,
To her dear paramour the Wind.)
Follow me now that car behind.