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Title: Greek wayfarers, and other poems

Author: Edwina Stanton Babcock

Release date: March 5, 2025 [eBook #75533]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75533

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREEK WAYFARERS, AND OTHER POEMS ***

Greek Wayfarers

and

Other Poems

By

Edwina Stanton Babcock

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

New York and London

The Knickerbocker Press

1916

COPYRIGHT, 1916

BY

EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To

MARIÁNTHE

The author believes that Greece today—largely because of her people’s opportunity in America—knows conscious renewal of her endless spirit while she still keeps wonder and glory for all who approach her.

Whatever her destiny, her natural beauties have not betrayed her, and through her glorious wildness and barrens her people are looking outward and forward. Therefore, if these verse-pictures of ancient and modern Greek life bring to those familiar with Greece any refreshing memory and to those who do not know this beautiful country an awakened interest, they will justify their existence.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE AMAZONS AT EPÍDAUROS

3

THE BLACK SAIL

5

WIDOWED ANDROMACHE

6

THE SACRED SHIP FROM DELOS

7

THE LITTLE SHADE

9

THE CONTRAST—VOLO

10

“SHE HAD REVERENCE”—VOLO

11

THE GLORY—GOOD-FRIDAY NIGHT, ATHENS, 1914

12

SUNSET ON THE ACROPOLIS

15

THE STREET OF SHOES (ATHENS)

16

ON THE ELEUSINIAN WAY—SPRING

18

IN THE ROOM OF THE FUNERAL STELÆ (ATHENS MUSEUM)

20

“THE SEVEN-STRINGED MOUNTAIN LUTE”

22

GREEK WAYFARERS

23

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

30

BY THE WALLACHIAN TENTS—THESSALY

32

THE VALE OF TEMPÉ

35

THE ENCOUNTER

37

EASTER DANCE AT MEGARA—FIRST PICTURE

40

EASTER DANCE AT MEGARA—SECOND PICTURE

41

PEACE, 1914

44

DELPHI

46

THE DESCENT FROM DELPHI

49

TWILIGHT ON ACRO-CORINTH

51

ROMANCE

53

NIGHT IN OLD CORINTH

55

AQUAMARINE

57

THE SHEPHERDESS

60

MAY-DAY IN KALAMATA

63

FROM THE ARCADIAN GATE

66

THE ABBESS

68

GREEK FARMERS

70

SONG

73

TO THE OLYMPIAN HERMES

75

GREECE—1915-1916

78

THE SINGING STONES

80

THE OLD QUEST

83

THE GODS ARE NOT GONE, BUT MAN IS BLIND

86

THE SEA OF TIME

87

ON THE THOROUGHFARE

89

AT PÆSTUM

90

PHIDIAS—A DRAMATIC EPISODE

95

EPILOGUE

118

GREEK WAYFARERS

TO THE AMAZONS AT EPÍDAUROS

Ride, Amazons, ride!

Militant women, careless of tunic and limb;

Sinuous torsos, naked legs boy-like and pressed

Close to the warm horse’s flank, while the wild battle-hymn

Fixes the eyes with the far-reaching look of the quest;

Caring no more for the places of mother and bride;

Ride, Amazons, ride!

Ride, Amazons, ride!

Arrow-swift warriors galloping over the plain,

Feverish, urged ever onward with furious rage;

War-fretted golden-hair tangled with wind-fretted mane;

One-breasted heroines, vigorous, quick to engage,

Hot with the vigor of pulsating, vehement pride—

Ride, Amazons, ride!

Ride, Amazons, ride!

Penthesilèa falls by Achilles’ drawn bow.

Fell she, the Queen, by the white tents of bold Priam’s side?

Leaderless women, on to the battle ye go—

Plunging on, speeding on; galloping Vengeance, astride

Horses that feel ye victorious, with gods allied—

Ride, Amazons, ride!

Ride, Amazons, ride!

Fearless stone-women, ardent and flushed with the race,

Gleaming like swords, ruthless of body and breast;

Nothing shall utterly quell ye, nor wholly deface,

Ye shall ride onward forever, on ultimate quest.

Spirited! Splendid! Time shall not turn ye aside.

Ride, Amazons, ride!

THE BLACK SAIL

How did it seem, that warm thyme-scented day

When emerald figs hung swelling in the dark

Rose-nippled glooms of laurel and of bay,

And pomegranate flowers burned their spark

Through cypresses, to wait ’neath temple frieze,

Scanning the hermless highways of the seas,

Watching for one white canvas far away,

And when the morning seemed to grow so late,

Going, amaracus and grapes to lay

With reeds and gums on Nike’s stylobate,

Muttering: “’Tis the Day—he cannot fail!”

Then on a sudden, seeing—the black sail!

WIDOWED ANDROMACHE

“Full in the morning sun I saw him first

And followed him through meadows, flower-massed,

All his steep, toilsome ways, I, too, traversed;

After his battles all his wounds I nursed,

From our tent gazing to the cities passed.

“Then, to the Trojan walls, where battle burned

And every altar had a bloody rim,

I trod his ardent footsteps, though I yearned

For fields so free; but until back he turned

My only way was onward, after him.

“The summons came while I was following, true,

Eager, alert, though bruised by thorn and stone.

Had he but paused to tell me, ere he drew

His cloak about him, what I was to do,

I would have kept the path, yea, all alone!

“But he was silent, answering not my woe.

He muffled him against my prayers and tears.

I raise my arms, hung with the links of years,

Hung with his broken chains, my right to show

But—o’er his Unknown Paths, I may not go!”

THE SACRED SHIP FROM DELOS

(The Pilot speaks)

“Strange, how I felt the homeward voyage long;

As I looked back to Delos o’er our wake,

And heard the priest’s song, saw our sails out-shake

Under the round sun hanging like a gong

Mid-heaven. All night long I lay on deck

Remembering how he taught us in the Porch;

Yet, the black waters’ phosphorescent torch

Gave me no Sign, no word in white foam-fleck.

“When we passed Sunion, methought I saw

Red fires burning ’mid the holy white

Of sacred columns; but the Athenian law

I did not know! And then, the reef’s long jaw

Foamed at us. Through the hollow night

We fared, unwitting; putting forth our might;

Speeding with oars our fated way upon,

Till the white Dawn ensilvered Phaleron.

“At the Piræus, when I saw the throng,—

Crito and Phædo, there, to meet us,—I

Gave myself no portentous reason why,

But thought: ‘He’s free!’ (Forsooth he did no wrong)

Then I remembered lofty words he said

Of freedom as its dangerous truth he read,—

Great Zeus! The cowards might as well indict

Sea-circled priest or mountain anchorite!

“Crito it was who told me, voice all raw

With grief, and on my shoulder his kind hand:

He saw me flinch,—‘Tremblest?’ he said, ‘Nay, stand

Here in the shadow. ’Twas thy ship they saw,

The Sacred ship from Delos, ere they gave

The signal for the hemlock—and his grave!

He drank the cup: the while, methought, thy prow

Would have steered Hades-ward, didst thou but know.’

“I made no sign. No trite word left my lip.

I turned from Crito, and saw Phædo, grave,

Join him. Alone, I went back to my ship,

Sails furled with garlands riding harbor-wave;

I looked at her, rehearsed the sacred rite,

And purified me; set my torch alight:

‘Socrates! Master!’ I sobbed once; set then

Aflame the Sacred Ship of Ill-Omen!”

THE LITTLE SHADE

No longer that grey visage fix,

Charon,

Asking me how I come to mix

With this pale boat-load on the Styx,

Charon.

I am so very small a Shade,

Charon,

Holding the vase my father made

And toys of silver all inlaid,

Charon.

Ferry me to the golden trees,

Charon,

To isles of childish play and ease

And baths of dove-like Pleiades,

Charon.

Ferry me to the azure lands,

Charon,

Where some dead mother understands

The lifting of my baby hands,

Charon.

THE CONTRAST

“Neither my Magnesian home, nor Demetrias, my happy country mourned for me, the son of Sotimos; nor did my mother Soso lament me,—for no weakling did I march against my foes.”—From a painted stele at Volo, Thessaly.

’Tis said, when young Greeks went to die,

Greek mothers would not weep;

And steadfast mien and tearless eye

Controlled themselves to keep.

Ah!—they were trained to bloody deed;

We—in this time so late

That life seemed gentle, know our breed

More tragically great!

Had we foreseen, no tear would fall.

Now mothers, too, could smile ...

Only, we proved men brave ... and dead

In such a little while!

“SHE HAD REVERENCE”

“O Rhadamanthos, or O Minos, if you have judged any other woman as of surpassing worth, so also judge this young wife of Aristomachos and take her to the Islands of the Blessèd. For she had reverence for the gods and a sense of justice sitting in council with her. Talisos, a Cretan city, reared her and this same earth enfolds her dead; thy fate, O Archidíke!”—From a painted stele in the Museum at Volo.

The dear dead women Browning drew

Lean forth in happy watchfulness;

With them Rossetti’s Starry-tress:

And Tennyson’s royal maidens press

To bring you to their Sacred Few.

Lovely companions wait for you,

Dear Archidíke, wife divine,

With asphodels your locks to twine;

Thus crowning with celestial vine

That noble reverence you knew!

THE GLORY

Good Friday Night, Athens, 1914.

Myriad candles windy flaring

Over faces stilled in prayer;

Silken banners, icon-bearing,

Jewelled vestments, laces rare—

All the people in a daze,

Walking in a candle-haze,

Of uplifted pure amaze.

All the people in a stream,

Crowding in an Easter dream;

While choragic song

Pours from out the throng—

“It is the Glory—holy holiday.”

So, smiling, good Athenians say.

Priests in choir, softly singing,

Carry the Pantokrator,

While the city-bells are ringing

In their wild two-toned uproar;

All the people, in a mass,

With the purple-robed Papas,

Bearing crosses made of brass,

Scarlet cap, and fustanelle,

Turkish fez, and bead, and bell,

While choragic song

Leads the trancèd throng.

“It is the Glory—holy holiday,”

So, smiling, good Athenians say.

Colored lights, and dripping torches,

Burn on Lykabettos crags;

In the narrow streets and porches

Whole-sheep roasting never flags.

Bonfires all the country light,

Up to dark Hymettus’ height,

Making all the hillsides bright.

Still the surging crowds advance,

Moving, moving in a trance;

While choragic song

Leads the trancèd throng.

“It is the Glory—holy holiday,”

So, smiling, good Athenians say.

In their wistful majesty,

See them waiting for a sign,

Of religious unity

From the human or divine;

Faithful, yearning, poor, uncouth,

Pagan-born, yet craving truth—

Old grey-heads and stripling youth.

All the people in a stream,

Holding candles in a dream,

While choragic song

Swells throughout the throng.

“It is the Glory—holy holiday,”

This, smiling, good Athenians say.

SUNSET ON THE ACROPOLIS

If ever I have freed me of all time,

Let me so free me now, that I have brought me

Near to these hill-top temples, which have caught me

Up to their soaring heights and Vision wrought me

Of things serene, and stricken, and sublime.

Let me, the titled, spurious Christian, face

This solemn wistfulness of Pagan yearning—

This aspiration of white columns, burning

With golden fires, their pillars deep inurning

The tragic, sunset beauty of the place.

Let me stand silent, under evening skies,

Watching this radiance grown cold and hoary;

In death-white, black-stained ruins, read the story

The Parthenon tells of ancient Grecian glory,

Reiterating beauty as it dies.

Let me stand silently and humbly, there,

Seeking that Unknown God Greeks apprehended;

That, as the temples fade, and day is ended,

My own hope with this ancient faith be blended,

And I be part of this eternal prayer!

THE STREET OF SHOES

(Athens)

Now, while the Bulgars creep in stealthy crews

To Macedonian borders, do they stay

In Athens as they were one April day—

The busy cobblers in “The Street of Shoes”?

I wonder: for the faces leaning there,

Had Oriental heat, the hands that sewed

Had look of readiness; some skillful code

The hammers rapped on leather-scented air.

The old shoemakers, hung about with hide

In cave-like booths, with beads and fringe adrip,

Muttered their restless words beneath the clip

Of shoe-laces, or hammered, sombre-eyed;

Red-capped, white-bearded, keen for petty strife,

They hammered and they stitched; while, might and main

Down their small, narrow, red-morocco lane,

They cut the scarlet shoes with gleaming knife.

How would it go, if mad Bulgarian hordes

Invaded here with pillage and abuse?

I like to think that in the Street of Shoes

Those old, gnarled hands would fiercely leap to swords!

I love to think how fiery faces there

Would light like lurid skies before the storm,

And that Athenian shoemakers would swarm

To guard the city with ferocious care.

Then, if the foe to trample Athens choose,

I pity them if those Greek cobblers still

Stick to their lasts. These would not wait to spill

A brighter red than red-morocco shoes!

Bulgars would know how nimble fingers use

Flayed skin to keep the needles very bright;

They would learn much before they took their flight

Forever from the valiant Street of Shoes!

ON THE ELEUSINIAN WAY—SPRING

Hush! Walk slowly;

All this winding road is holy;

Place your votive image in a niche

By Pass of Daphne, where rocks forward pitch.

Now, sit lowly—

Under dim firs that cool the dust-white way

Curving from Athens to Eleusis Bay.

Soft! Speak lightly!

See’st this myriad Concourse? all the sprightly

Luminous Mystæ? Naked flower forms

Dancing in close commingled color-swarms

So brightly?

Follow them in their green-hot Mænad flame,

Their sweet mysterious rapture of no name.

Watch! Far-seeing

Demeter’s yellow torches fitful fleeing.

And seed processions moving towards the shrine

Where motion, moisture, act in soft sunshine;

And being

Earth-taught, flower-figures of desire

Sway toward white Oreads quick with fire.

Take, unceasing

Joy of powers these Mystæ are releasing

Eternal, they, who seem so lovely-brief.

Soft luminous shapes of petal and of leaf

Increasing,

They sweep across Semele’s ancient fields

Handing the torch the calm Earth-mother yields.

Yea—the senses

Have their holy truths and recompenses

Sweetly simple may their teachings be

“Wine flashing clusters from a sacred tree”;

Defences

From all our sorry wisdoms have these flowers

Who teach deep truths with Dionysiac powers!

IN THE ROOM OF THE FUNERAL STELÆ

(Athens Museum)

O’er all the world I wandered with my grief,

My human grief, that would not be forgot,

Finding no face, no word, nor any spot

Where haunted heart and brain could find relief.

Until the morning I unwitting stept

Into the stelæ-halls and the great peace

Of the Greek sorrow over Life’s surcease

Enveloped me, even in woe inept.

Here, marble love in simple human sense

To nearest friend gives earthly treasure up,

A matron handing maid a box or cup;

A man from dog and slave turning him hence;

A soldier springing out into the dark;

A wife slow fading in her husband’s arms;

The inexorable Fact, its vague alarms

And Love grown suddenly aloof and stark!

Yet no breast-beating here, nor frantic woe,

Nor bitter tears, nor loud outcry of pain.

Only the question: “Will they live again?

Go they forever from us, when they go?”

Majestic sorrowers the figures stand,

Absorbed in contemplation of One Thing ...

No promises, nor priestly counselling,

Only the longing eyes and clasping hand!

Down the long halls I wandered; Athens’ Spring

Radiant without, with almonds’ rosy spray,

And violets crowding on the hills. That day

My dead heart stirred to marble comforting!

For the Greeks knew! Death is the only thing

That keeps its dignity. So Death they met

Ready to pay to him a subject’s debt;

Going out awe-struck as to meet a King.

The Greeks knew! nothing any more can heal

The heart Death once despoils of sorrowing.

With proud simplicity they felt the sting,

Then wore the mystery like sacred seal!

Calm-eyed, controlled, those marble figures gaze

Into the depths no mortal eyes have known,

Then, Grecian head thrown back, the world is shown

Sorrow’s transfigured face, immortal ways!

“THE SEVEN-STRINGED MOUNTAIN LUTE”

“Homer, Sappho, Anacreon, Pindar, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, the very names are a song.”—M. C. M.

I knew, no matter how they plucked at me

Like golden fingers—all those cadenced names—

That never could I answer; for the power

Of their majestic harmonies was perfect flower.

No greater song, nor lovelier verse could be

Unless Greece lived another golden hour.

I tried to echo them. I vainly sought

Timid expression of their rhythmic fire;

My melodies with halting effort caught

Faintly their classic motive and desire.

Yet, while I failed, a miracle was wrought,

Themselves did sing! Thus, humble, I was taught

These names that are the plectrum and the lyre.

GREEK WAYFARERS

I

Around the Hellenic coast the dark-blue bands

Of circling waters, like a loin-cloth, wind

The stalwart nakedness of seaward lands;

Bronze crag, and beach, and rock and terrace bind

As foreground for the somber swelling tent

Of purple mountain. On the morning sky

Pale azure summits, with their sides snow-rent,

Loom in the distance; slowly, solemnly,

The coasts of Greece define; their misty chains

Backed by soft clouds and silver sky-moraines.

While we sail on, reverent vision-sharers,

To read the romance of the Greek Wayfarers!

II

Those serrate ridges toward the southward brew

Grape-colored mist, snow-frothed; the foamy crest

Of Mount Taÿgetos bursts on the blue

Peloponnesian pinnacles, repressed

Back of fair bays and coasts. Rich lands of corn,

“Slopes that the Spartans loved,” the Headlands Three

Hide from the eye; but nearer shores forlorn

Wounded and Ancient, scarred of rock and tree

Looming beyond the starry-clustered Isles,

Where fire-blue waters surge on circled strand,

Lead to far cliffs, which once were beacon-bearers

In early wars, for early Greek Wayfarers.

III

Each azure-rippled, rock-encrusted beach

Tells of the dusky, strong Phœnician sails

That came from Sidon, passed the stormy reach,

And touched at islands, dark as wave-tossed bales

Left floating in the murex-stainèd sea

Where restless fishers, full of dawning schemes

Cruised in the tunny waters; sailing free,

Drawn by the Tyrian Purple to new dreams.

Adventurers, traders, heard the sailor-boasts

Of civilized beginnings on the coasts,

And in black vessels brought the new Space-Darers

Whose reckless sea-paths made them Greek Wayfarers!

IV

Thus rovers came, and dark-skinned traders planned

New villages by fertile pasture lures

In lonely valleys; by succeeding hands

Minoan vases, Mycenean ewers

Were fashioned; then the tribes fought hill by hill,

And coast by coast, for wealth, till Knossos’ tombs

And Tiryns’ palaces had dawning skill

Of goldsmith and of craftsman in their glooms.

The legends grew, the wooden statues raised

New, mystic Cults. Where rams and young kids grazed

Distaffs sprang up, and primitive sheep-shearers

Brought snowy fleece to clothe the Greek Wayfarers.

V

Delphi, Eleusis, guided human awe

By mystic voices and by legend thrill;

Then, one by one, came templed porch and floor

Gleaming by sea or on some fir-crowned hill.

Far back in forest, or on Islands, rose

Transcendent loveliness of chiselled stone,

And in the secret shrine Artemis chose

To hear, or not to hear, the victim’s moan.

The entrails burned; worshippers at the feet

Of Gold-Apollo knew the saving-sweet

Comfort of God-in-life, evolved from terrors

Of Nature-forces by the Greek Wayfarers.

VI

And then the restless ichor in Greek veins

Created dreams of new posterity,

And mother-cities planning greater gains

Sent emigrants exploring on the sea.

Before Ionians, strange Æolians went.

To Chalcedon came “œkist” altar-fire;

Silver, and iron, and flax, for commerce sent

Dorians roving with renewed desire;

And coins and woolens, pottery and dyes,

Marked with age-seal each eager new emprise;

And shrines and temples followed all the eras

Of settled colonies of Greek Wayfarers.

VII

To vale and coppice, every forest place,

Came note of Syrinx and the sound of flutes;

And golden ball and pomegranate trace

On priestly robes; and ’mid the cool volutes

Were public treasures heaped; the Councils met;

Athens and Corinth grew to haughty names,

And glorious youths and lovely boys were set

To daring deeds at the Olympic Games.

By mountain paths and solitudes they trod,

They set the votive offerings to their god

Invoking glory—happy olive-wearers—

Consciously beautiful, as Greek Wayfarers.

VIII

Then sculptors wrought and painters ground the crude

Colors, and potters found the yellowish glaze;

And out of Cretan bowls and bottles rude

Came polychrome and monographic vase.

The echoing, marble theatres curved in hills,

Where master-voices, with dramatic art,

Chorused all joys and passions, and all ills—

And touched with deep emotion every heart,

Till poet-minds flowered to richer truth;

Forsaking earlier thoughts and laws uncouth,

With nobler aim to be the way-preparers

Of philosophic thought for Greek Wayfarers.

IX

While every river mothered daughters fair,

And clouds conceived, and ancient trees enslaved

Satyr and hama-dryad ... then the flare

Of the Greek torch too happy-high was waved—

The jealous East was plotting, Persians lay

In plundering splendor, with their blazing hosts,

Till Marathon and grim Thermopylæ....

Then, envious cities, roused at Athens’ boasts

Of glittering power, crushed the Golden Age.

Under the Spartan and Bœotian rage;

“Leagues” and sea-struggles, Macedonian terrors,

Dragged to a desperate pass the Greek Wayfarers.

X

Yet after Byzantine and Ottoman

Settled despotic heel upon the land,

No cruel Venetian yoke nor Turkish ban

Forced the brave Greeks’ unconquerable stand.

Outsiders saw the Cause inviolate,

Byron’s hot poet’s heart and cosmic brain

Urged on the struggle, to once more create

An independent Greece, unchained again.

The whole world watched the piteous battle fought,

And hailed small triumphs, passionately bought

With faith, until, from wild, despairing errors,

The struggling Greeks once more were Greek Wayfarers.

XI

Now on Greek highways, where the wagons roll,

Piled high with wineskins, or with bags of flour,

Past schools and churches and the fountain bowl,

New hope springs in the peasants hour by hour.

Greeks know that through their sordid modern strife

They walk in poetry, believing well

They are the children of enchanted life,

That sends them forward messages to tell

Of Greek restraint and hospitality,

Greek love of beauty, and Greek dignity,

Making them, in their toil, devoted carers

For new and better goals for Greek Wayfarers.

XII

What are the goals to be, and what the gain?

As soldiers camp in valley and on hill

Do Spartan youths leap on the dusty plain?

Does spirit of Leonidas keep still

One death-defying purpose? Will the blood

Leap of a sudden out of the Soros,

And Marathon with bright phalanxes flood?

Do all Greeks bear the title agathos?

Ah, Greece! Ah, Greece! dare for the precious Past,

And throw your lot with gallant men that cast

Eternal die, to be the Spirit-Bearers

For all the world and all the Greek Wayfarers.

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

“This mess of hard-kneaded barley-bread and a libation mixed in a little cup.”—Greek Anthology.

There’s a white stone-paven floor

Set in a jade-green field

Where the spiked acacias yield

A shadow, and the four

Earthen pots on a round well-wheel

Come up drippingly full and spill

Where the white horse runs his circle round

Drawing water for garden ground.

The white foundation here

Has ne’er held temple-plinth,

But mint and terebinth

Perfume is in the air.

And here, at the harvest-time the wains

Rattle along the sunburnt plains,

And the peasant’s arms are bared to thresh

Food from the golden barley mesh.

Before the morning’s long

Comes drowsy, sliding snatch

Of primitive threshing-song;

Down in the garden patch

The murmurous sleepy drone of bees

Blends with the stir of the poplar-trees,

And the rustle of bundled grain

Tossed from the wagon train.

Ah! the Mavrodaphne wine

Is fruity and sweet to taste,

And the oranges are fine

And the blocked Loukoúmi paste.

But I long for a crust of peasant bread

Eaten with honey from Parnes’ head,

And I hunger the more and more

At sight of the threshing-floor!

BY THE WALLACHIAN TENTS

THE BOY

Over dripping washing-trough

Bends my mother busy drubbing,

Father’s fustanella rubbing

With the dark soap, smeary—rough.

There my goats go, wild careering

From the sound of wagons, nearing.

Oootz—Ella—Whooff—!

Out of there, you silly kid,

By the old soup-kettle hid.

THE MOTHER

That boy, lying in the thyme,

Sheepskinned loafer in the grasses,

He is carelessness sublime,

Sunned in yellow iris masses.

Thinks he of the dead men sleeping

Far away from flocks he’s keeping,

Piled in bloody mountain-passes?

With the brutal guns again

Booming: “Give us men! More men!”

THE BOY

Baby hanging from the tree,

Peeps from out his bright bag-hollows,

While the white dog rolls and wallows

Bitten by an angry bee.

Forth for those sheep he must sally,

Where they by the cold brook dally.

Oootz—Ella—Deee!—

Now the fools, in silly mass,

Scamper toward the mountain-pass.

THE MOTHER

Far off, on the dusty plain,

Reels my drunk Wallachian,

Coming up from town again.

Drinking in the village khan,

All our Balkan coin he’s spending;

As his stupid way he’s wending

I the future scan.

Ugh! I hear those guns again

Surly—growling: “Men! More men!”

THE BOY

Swift the smooth Peneios flows

Smoky-white to sea’s blue gleaming.

Where the battleships are steaming

Ready for their foes,

I should like to fight and bear me

Fiercely. Nothing there would scare me.

Ella—Ella—Pros!

With this high-swung shepherd-stick

That old bucking ram I’ll hit!

THE MOTHER

St. Spiridion! He beats

That old ram as ’t were his woman!

What a fine, big, brawny human

Have I suckled at these teats!

Ah! I have my mother-reasons

To distrust Rumanian treasons,

When our Council meets.

Bah! those dirty guns again

Booming: “Give us men! More men!”

When my man comes, o’er and o’er

I will bluster—Not will hunger

Nor your beatings make me monger

Sons to angry war.

That brown boy, in sunshine dreaming,

I’ll not feed him to the teeming

Snorting cannon-maw!

Move we now our tents again,

Far from guns that roar: “More men!”

THE VALE OF TEMPÉ

The river that winds through the Vale of Tempé is white,

Smokily white, like water opaque with a charm,

Olympus knows why. He towers there, frostily bright,

And Ossa forth stretches a slaty, precipice arm,—

Deepening silvery pools into green-clouded light,—

So that Tempé is hidden and secret and free from alarm.

But the green Vale of Tempé leads forth to the stir of the Sea

Where the battleships growl and where Salonica is held

Fast in the grip of the Powers, who fight for the key

Unlocking the Border-doors; if Tempé were shelled,

Then the white Peneios, veiled as for bridal, would be

Scarlet with blood of soldiers, like forests felled.

Pindar, Spenser, Shelley, Byron,—ye bards—

Lyric-tongued all! What if the fair Tempé glade,

Where delicate flowers gleam on the virginal swards

And the cuckoo pipes to the shy-footed dryad-maid

And the trees hide Daphne,—What if the horror-mad hordes

Trample this Pastoral, where old Mythology stayed?

They answer not and the soft Peneios is veiled,

’Mid the joy of the fauns and flowers and river-born shade.

But an old Belief in the smoky-white water is trailed—

Who knows but Apollo, fierce for his pagan glade—

Will hasten, haughtily, in shining sun-armor mailed,

And carry it off to the Greek gods’ ambuscade?

THE ENCOUNTER

’Twas there in Tempé that he lay

Under a plane-tree, fast asleep,

His pipes far-flung.—Pan! growing gray;

Lines on his mocking face; his gay

Scuffling hoofs forgot to leap.

The river pleaded, “Wake the God”;

The birds sat by with soft aside;

Up from the delicate spring-sod

I saw the eager flowers nod,

And little leaves my language tried.

I woke Pan. Bore the deep earth-gaze

On my false being, false to life

By all the dreary modern ways:

“Pan,” I dared whisper—“long the days—

One needs thy music in the Strife.

“Full many a spring when poppies fired

This brook-side, did I play for you.”

Pan answered me: “My music tired,

For colder music you desired;

So be it—I am weary too!”

“Forgive me for my sad unworth,

Oh, patient Pan,” I murmured low.

“I know that I have failed the earth;

Only, perhaps, by spirit-birth,

My children thy wild pipes will know.”

Pan frowned: “Nay, all the world doth rave;

Against the Pipe; they rant, like you!

Go, people my deserted cave

With theories and books. Zeus save

That I should hinder what you do!”

Far back in Tempé’s leafy glade

The dappled sunshine filtered through,

And dewdrops opalled every blade.

I was not of the god afraid.—

And still there was a thing to do.

“Ah, Pan, dear Pan,” I softly cried,

“Who is it that shall save but thee?

Thy music, god, the whole world wide,

Is listened for on country-side,

And every dreamer bows the knee!

“By musky grapes in rosy hands,

And all the golden fruits that glow,

A happy lover understands

Thy fluting, hearts in sober lands

Languish till they thy clear pipe know!

“Ah, Pan—play on! Forgive the souls

Whom knowledge cheats of love; forgive

That life exacts its bitter tolls

And leads to artificial goals.

Oh! Play! that we may surelier live!”

I bent, I touched the shaggy hoof,

The horns; I looked into the eyes

Clear as rock pools, and yet aloof

Like wild bird’s, then I saw the proof

That Pan is kind beyond surmise.

Tears! In Pan’s eyes!—I sprang away

(Not even Pan should see me weep)—

Yet on through Tempé, all that day

I heard wild, happy piping.—Yea,

I wakened Pan!—He’s not asleep!

EASTER DANCE AT MEGARA

FIRST PICTURE

Green lizards flash along the walls

Curd-white against the fire-blue bay;

The pepper-trees’ fern branches sway

Their delicate, hot, scarlet balls.

The linkèd maidens wreathe the square,

Blazing with festal coinage, hung

On brown necks; yellow kerchiefs, flung

O’er dusky, long, twin braids of hair.

The Attic maids, with Attic mirth

Subdued and shy, from hill and plain,

On Easter holiday, at birth

Of spring, weave altar-pacèd chain.

And sing a song, to shepherd flute,

Its shifting, three-toned lilt is cold,

Only—it is so very old,

The wonder is it is not mute.

But so, they say, did maidens dance

In dim Eleusis, near the shrine.

And that is why these dark eyes shine

With classic-cultured ignorance.

And that is why, from near and far,

Greek peasants come with stately pride,

They know that Past from which they glide

Into the dance at Megara!

SECOND PICTURE

In his long smock, and farmer’s cotton cap,

Demetri dances.

The old crones smile, the little children clap,

The young girls’ glances

Follow him, tall and grave, and deep of eye,

Marvelling at him, yet aloof and shy;

His fellow-dancers jostle roughly by

With rude askances.

The piper plays his reediest, shrillest tune,

And at his leisure

Demetri, as though pacing in a rune,

Treads out a measure.

The elders laugh: “Dance there, fantastic fellow!

Tread down the grapes, while harvest moon is mellow,

Give thy feet wings, fly o’er the sunset billow

At thy good pleasure!”

The little glasses of brown resin-wine

Are quaffed; beads slipping

Through the Greek fingers, slender, brown, and fine,

Accent his skipping.

They nudge, to see his hand curve on his shoulder,

They marvel as his dark eyes burn and smoulder,

And note his step less vague, his bearing bolder,

And go on sipping.

Around him dance the peasants, pacing slow

With rhythmic swinging,

But in and out he threads their simple show

’Midst childish singing.

Reels past old bearded Greeks, their grave tales weaving,

And fierce Wallachians come for Easter thieving;

Albanian women with bold bosoms heaving

To children clinging.

Spell-bound, all watch him reel, and swerve, and bend;

His dizzy spinning

Dazzles their eyes. Word goes from friend to friend:

“He is beginning!”

For now with somber eyes, unveiled and burning,

From peasant dance they see Demetri turning

To an old trance of rapturous discerning—

Loud plaudits winning.

The sun shines paler on the kerchief’s gold,

The church-bell’s tolling;

The sea grows purple, and the distance cold,

With dark waves rolling.

The long lines break, the black-haired maidens wrangle;

With exclamation all the dusty tangle

Comes to a halt, ’mid glint of peasant spangle

And soft song trolling.

But tall Demetri lost in dreaming pace

In solemn swaying,

Keeps on alone, with tense and mystic face

As he were praying.

With hand upraised, as holding the caduceus,

He looks away to old far-off Eleusis,

Devising Dionysiac curves and nooses,

Old Laws obeying.

Why, in his face that mystic peering gaze

Like a faun, waiting?

Why does he pace his lonely, occult ways

His eyes dilating?

“Demetri!” “Mitchu!” tease the girls. Their screaming

He does not hear, lost in far other seeming,

In strange dance-spell, in old blood-tutored dreaming,

Old rhythms creating.

PEACE, 1914

Why do the women walk so free and strong

In Thessaly?

It is because the Turks wreak no more wrong;

The Balkans ended, sunburnt soldiers throng,

In Thessaly.

Why do the old monks pray so hard for rain

In Thessaly?

It is because the mountain slopes again

Roll in green terraces of silver grain,

In Thessaly.

Why does the shepherd wear a broidered shirt

In Thessaly?

Because ’tis peace; clean is the goat-herd’s skirt,

The women spin; the needles are alert,

In Thessaly.

And why the young kids, white as snowy curds,

In Thessaly?

The farmers are successful with their herds;

The highway’s loud with guttural teamster-words,

In Thessaly.

Why are the threshing-floors so thickly set

In Thessaly?

Because, when harvest comes, and youth is met,

Comes the old will of Nature, sturdy yet,

In Thessaly.

And these deserted hovels that we see

In Thessaly,

Where the Peneios winds about the tree?

The villagers have gone across the sea

From Thessaly.

And this trim town of plaster and of thatch

In Thessaly?

America hangs fortune on the latch,

Our sons come back, then blooms the garden patch,

In Thessaly!

Then, this is no decadent race I see

In Thessaly?

Oh, stranger, who can tell? Hard things must be.

Only, the “Greeks were Greeks,” and Greeks are we

In Thessaly.

DELPHI

Matrixed ’mid purple mountain steeps,

An ancient Grecian city sleeps.

Where rock-hewn fountains spill

Down scarlet-poppied hill;

Long time ago its temples fair

Rose, Doric-columned, on the air,

And voices told of riddles strange

That echoed down the mountain range;

And men and cities brought their all

To Delphi and the priestess’ thrall.

While in the mountain-pass a pipe

Played on and on and on—

A pipe played on.

Now up the aisles of olive-trees

Come wistful souls from over-seas,

From the Itean shore,

Past rose-hung cottage door,

And in the sacred fount they dip,

Or tell the lore with alien lip;

Or, dreaming, scan far snow-crowned heights,

Lit, as of old, with pagan lights.

While through the thyme, ’mid rock and pool,

The sheep-bells tinkle, water cool,—

And in the mountain pass, a pipe

Plays on and on and on—

A pipe plays on.

While glowworms blur the dewy gorse,

And stars float from their tidal source,

And Grecian peasants steal

By creaking wagon-wheel,

We ponder on this Life and Death

Within the taking of our breath;

So old, these ruined fanes that lie,

Beneath the temple of the sky!

So old these sacred stones that gleam

With the strange shining Delphic dream.

While in the mountain-pass the pipe

Plays on and on and on—

A pipe plays on.

So old, this silence trembles, brought

To solemn tension with our thought—

Deep as the mystic strain

Born in Apollo’s fane:

“Dear God, ’tis well no Pythoness

For us may prophesy or bless!

Well, that no riddle-verse controls

The will that slumbers in our souls!

Well, that we choose, calm, clear-eyed, free

To live and learn our truth from Thee!”—

Still in the mountain-pass the pipe

Plays on and on and on—

The pipe plays on.

THE DESCENT FROM DELPHI

Dawn, pallid and cold,

Parnassos, grave in the mist

Like the shrouded form of a priest;

No light in the East,

Save thin stars, worn and old.

Under the “Shining Ones”

The temple-steps, in white,

Chromatic, gleaming, light,

Mount to the stadion’s

Oval of crumbling stones.

Dawn, stealthy and still,

Frostily fills the fields,

Dew sprinkles the maize;

Where ranging cattle graze,

His pipe a shepherd plays.

Sun, striking the snow

On far off mountain height,—

Day, solemn and slow,

Rises from Long Ago

Clothed in pure samite.

A scarlet rug in a field;

A man and a woman asleep—

Around them, dogs and sheep,

Where the maize is quivering gold,

As the broad day is unrolled.

The man and the woman asleep—

Alone in the Delphian field!

And the world, once more revealed

Young, and all time is healed

The Oracle unsealed!

TWILIGHT ON ACRO-CORINTH

From the Venetian arch, the doubting owl

Sends forth his whimper; where the sheep-dogs lope

Sounds donkey’s thirsty octave, call of fowl,

And near green-silver maize and poppied slope,

Goat-bells ring jangling on the tether-rope

As, truant from some hooded shepherd’s scowl,

Dim, hornèd shapes in black thyme-bushes grope.

I look four ways down all the rich descents

To mountain, cliff, and sea. First to the South

Where Argolis in purple permanence

Gives sumptuous breast to dark sea’s hungry mouth.

Enthroned in mountain fastness, warm, immense,

Or, lying prone by misty olive-fence

Losing herself in languid, dusty drouth.

Far Eastward, islanded Ægina keeps

Her tree-girt shrine, and Sunion the prow

Of white sea-temple lifts on Laurion steeps

Where mines are hid, and silver quarries show.

Then, like a bee, the eager eye upsweeps

To Athens, where the Acros-flowers grow

And the dim road to far Eleusis creeps.

I look toward Athens, over golden gorse,

Purple anemones, Saronic seas,

Powerful, kingly blue. I see the source

Of all Mind ever was, and then the trees

Blurring, I turn me West, perforce

Sweeping Arcadian ridges, as light flees

And over paling skies cloud-horses course.

Bœotia, Phocis, Lokris ranges tread

Vast gorges ’round the Gulf’s imperial shores;

Like citadels, their summits, thunder-bred,

And at their feet are sacred river-floors,

And many a mountain stream its crystal bed

Has hidden beyond those labyrinthine doors

From whence down winds the clue-like glancing thread.

And as the night surrounds me and the stars

Climb up the clouds like mountain-pastured flocks,

I muse on Progress, that which hurts and scars

Nature with blood, machines, and battle-shocks.

But, as I gaze, the whole wild sky unbars

War’s end portending; the new time unlocks

Ultimate peace no human passion mars.

ROMANCE

The “wine-dark” sea menaces as of old,

When young Odysseus dared; and all our ship

Shudders against the midnight mountain-waves

Hurrying to crush the steamer, in her plunge

On black path, under wind-blown scattered stars.

Strange is the contrast! Strange it is to lie

Cabined and berthed, feeling like crystal, hid

In a night-moving mountain; thence to see

At port-hole’s glimmer, land, solemn and strange!

Old as all prayers, all vigils, and all hope!

As the ship stops at Patras, and bells ring,

To look out on the mole-lights, red and white,

And see the black, unreadable night-shore.

And then, to lie back, ponder the mystery

Of that one man—that little ugly man—

Reviled, unknown, and unbelieved, who burned

So fiercely with his message, that he sailed

From port to port, to give it. My age boasts

Its Christian ethics cool expedience.

That age, simply knew a man named “Paul,”

Who fought with beasts, endured the stripes, to give

His flaming, tender, strong epistles; wrote

To the people, as ’twixt starvings and shipwrecks

He sailed these waters, from the “upper coasts.”

NIGHT IN OLD CORINTH

A hill trembling with grain

And a winding path.

Shadowy sheep on the slopes;

The sound of bells and sea,

The sound of a peasant song,

The sound of pipe and drum ...

And in the twilight grey

Apollo’s temple.

Wide doors and the cottage fire,

Bright coffee-coppers; plates

Of white curds and of fish;

A man in a scarlet cap,

Turning a roasting spit;

A woman by the fount ...

And in the twilight grey

Apollo’s temple.

How was it when Paul came?

Corinth was blazing white,

Walled and rich and corrupt.

They “sat to eat and drink

And rose up but to play!”

The Purple Sellers knew ...

But in the twilight gleamed

Apollo’s temple!

The fountain’s hung with moss

But the cypress-trees are tall,

And little wingèd shapes

Say “Níke” in the ground.

The Jews “requiring signs,”

And the Greeks “looking for wisdom,”

Still in the twilight, see

Apollo’s temple!

AQUAMARINE

I think, when I grow tired of the world,

I shall go back to Greece (in spring, of course),

By forest trail, and oleander source,

Past snow-peaks on green mountain lawns impearled.

To Trypi: where, from saddle I shall slide,

And hear my donkey’s bell jerk as he feeds

On herbs and simples—growing to his needs—

By rosy roofs set in the green glenside.

Far down the valleys I shall hear the call

Of white-garbed peasants; throaty cattle-cry;

The little Trypi brook will rustle by

Among the poplars, silver-green and tall.

I shall watch Greek girls, toiling up the height,

Laden with brush and whorls of scented thyme,

And see their youthful climbing pantomime,

Ere I lie down to ponder with my might

On three sweet subjects, simple village themes,

And yet so strange, so subtle, I have met

No man, nor woman, who can tell me yet

The answers, nor have found them in my dreams.

First: The Greek plane-trees, cool ancestral trees,

Biblical-strong, like mighty tents of Saul,

What earth power spreads their green ethereal

Canopied gloom, their soft immensities?

Next, the Greek fruits and flowers; what godlike soil

Nourishes orange, fig, and olive stretch,

So that no child goes forth the goats to fetch

But fills his cap with colored orchard spoil?

Last, I shall ponder (never sure, quite,

Imaging richly, merged in miracle)

Wondering what source conceals the mystic shell

Staining with blue the Ægean’s mica-light.

Lies in it some great Pool, that slow distils

Azure of flowers and skies to pigment bold?

Or do the encircling mountain-chains enfold

A vat of purple, whence wine-color spills?

Ægean Blue, that crimson-orchil tide

Bold, deep, intensest, incandescent flame,

Pure well of Azure, fitly has no name

But Greece in her inimitable pride

Of worship on strange occult secret planes

The hidden sponsors of her visual life

May, long ago, ’neath sacrificial knife

Have loosed the gods’ blue blood from Dacian veins.

One can see Spartan blood flow down Greek shores,

In crimson poppy-tide, in scarlet waves;

But it is “wine-dark” energy, that laves

Gold-bronzèd rocks and hidden sea-cave floors.

Ah! it is not enough for me to say

“Faery silver-azure! Clear, superb

Cobalt no chemistry of sun can curb,

Attar of purest lapis-lazuli.”

’Tis not enough for me to invent a name

Like Nauplian Blue, Greek Blue, Blue of Emprise,

As I re-vision golden argosies

Or red-sailed moth-boats sailing molten flame.

No—I must ponder (never sure quite),

Always a-dream in Trypi, where the trees

Whisper adventurous old names of seas,

Through silver valley-eve and mountain night.

THE SHEPHERDESS

Not only mulberry vendors travel Langada Pass,

Rough soldiers and black-fezzed peddlers take that trail

And stop to drink at a khan ’neath the rocky mass,

Where the pine-trees root in the drifts of sliding shale,

And a half-crazed Greek sells resin-wine and cheese

And “Thalassa” mutters, pointing to far-off seas.

For Langada Pass is miles of precipice rock

Where the rug-hung pack-mules scramble with fumbling feet

Sliding unsteadily over the cobbles, that shock,

Stone upon stone, in monotonous noontide heat.

But a mountain girl, fleet-footed, with brown knees bare,

Flutters along the crags, where the great pines flare.

Now the mulberry vendors are fuddled with Spartan rum,

They howl in the cañons and kick the sides of their steeds.

The soldiers are merry, they sit on the rocks and hum

And talk politics and twiddle their malachite beads;

Hardly a shrine for a maid, or a convent roof,

Under the blue sky, classic and calm and aloof;

The goats stand cynical, cloven of horn and hoof.

But she whistles and calls and scrambles up to her flock,

High on the bronze-grey peaks of Langada Pass,

With warm eyes mote-flecked, bright as the quartz gold rock

A deer-like, dryad-like fierce, shy, crag-born lass,

Perching where orange anemones spangle the banks

And white streams flash down thicketed mountain flanks.

We told her the tale of the world and the dreams of men,

We poured out wine-of-the-world in her shepherd cup,

She took it calmly, thoughtfully, drinking up

All that we were, quaffing us, thirstily, then:

“Salute your cities,” the wild little shepherdess said,

And swift as an eagle, far up the precipice sped.

Washington, New York, and Boston have new renown!

Their rivers of seething light, where the witch wires hold

Clustering, bright-balled fruits, and the chimneys frown

Like satyrs drunk with smoke through the sunset gold—

All these must bow, in turn, to a little lass

Who “salutes the cities” out of Langada Pass!

MAY-DAY IN KALAMATA

In Kalamata, where the harvests are

Purple and crimson for the currant-bin,

When merchants close their shutters with a jar,

The young night-gallant twangs his brown guitar,

And first begins the merry May-day din.

All night they strum the mandolins and lutes;

Glyco, the jolly merchant of the fruits,

Sings to accordion: “O nux kalé!”

In Kalamata on the first of May.

Morning comes. See the church across the street

Its doorway wreathed! See Anastasia pass,

Twining her pretty shoulders with the sweet

Mountain-born orchids, brought on tireless feet

By lads from Sparta o’er Taÿgetos.

All night they strum the lute, and mandolin,

Georgio, the dark-eyed, plays the violin,

Sings under balconies: “O nux kalé!”

In Kalamata on the first of May.

The cottage-doors are hung with poppy-wreaths,

To keep away the evil spirits: hats

Are garlanded with oleander. Leaves

Fair, golden-braided Marianthé weaves

Into a veil for her long sunny plaits.

All night they sound the flutes and castanets;

Mitchu, in pompommed shoes, fingers the frets,

Quaffs resin-wine,—“Aha—! O nux kalé!”

In Kalamata on the first of May.

To the Platea, all the booths astir;

Mulberry vendors clad in goat-skins come;

Here are embroidered bags and fragrant myrrh,

And silver-handled knives; and the drum-whirr

Beats like a heart throb in the village hum.

All night they play the rough accordion;

The sailors from the “skala,” to a man,

March, drunk with mastika, along the quay,

In Kalamata on the first of May.

Along the railroad all the stations fill

With children garlanded; the peasant throngs

Sing at car windows. From a laurel hill,

Rings “Zito” with the happy springtime thrill,

While rose-crowned maidens chant their merry songs.

All night they play the violin and drum;

And to the windows tawdry women come

Bright-eyed and bold, to hear: “O nux kalé!”

In Kalamata on the first of May.

May-day, down all the silver-olive plain,

Along the mountain trail, and torrent track,

May-day on ships on blue Messenian Main,

On locomotives, where the young Greek swain

Hangs lily wreaths upon his engine stack!

All night I hear the zither; the guitar

Maddens my northern pulses, and from far,

Far up the mountainside: “O nux kalé!”

Wakes Kalamata on the first of May.

FROM THE ARCADIAN GATE

From Arcadian Gate, with its tower-topped bulk,

White on Ithóme’s war-ridden hulk,

A road winds down past the artichokes,

And the almond-trees, and acacia-spokes.

And, silver-harnessed, the small brooks fly

Down to Messenian industry.

And, here one sees, under the trees,

Greek women making the cheese.

Black kettles hang from the giant plane,

Where children gather, and where you gain

A charming sight from your donkey-mount,

For the wash-trough’s set by the village-fount,

And, hanging high on the olive-boughs,

Where, grey, light-fingered zephyrs drowse,

Swaying in bags, in the summer breeze,

Greek babies take their embroidered ease.

In old Dodona, so they say,

In a time when priest-craft had its sway,

“The Will of the Gods” came jostling,

Through the oak-leaves’ gentle rustling,

And the Priest of the Oracle carefully hung

Brazen vessels, which, easily rung,

By moving branches, in many keys,

Instructed the Greeks how their gods to please.

’Tis an old Greek fashion this hanging of things;

Many the legends from which it springs.

Twists of scarlet, and bright-dyed flax,

Hang on the rough Arcadian shacks,

Where the railroad follows the mountain base.

They hang brown jugs by the watering-place.

Amulets hang on the goats and the swine;

Wreaths hang high on the house and the shrine.

And now the pots for the cheese

And the babies in black-eyed reveries

Sway, like the brasses long ago.

Hanging on high branch and on low!

Somehow the sight doth strangely please,

This new fruit on the old Greek trees!

One hears “Will of the Gods!” in speech

Babbling from olive and oak and beech.

THE ABBESS

Pink oleander lamps the brook-bed trails,

And orange-trees hang fruitage o’er the grain,

And there are hedges, green with fitful rain,

And cyclamen in white the hillside veils.

While through the villages, ’neath Mistra’s height,

The children run to give a rose and stare

At strangers riding where grey olives flare

Mistily in the long hills’ summer light.

Rose-pinnacled, a Franco-Turkish wall

Trailing with ivy, rears its crumbling mass,

Pantassa Church’s apse and mouldered hall

Look down upon the plain of Eurotas.

Byzantine tower’s clear octagonal,

Jewel-like and fretted, circles on the sky;

A pavèd walk leads to the nunnery,

Past moss-grown arch and ruined capital.

And here, an Abbess, old, yet maiden-faced,

Sits in a frigid pomp, in solemn pride:

Stately, aloof, the church’s pallid bride,

Greets us with countenance austere and chaste.

The Abbess leads the way, with rigid calm,

Detached, haughty, imperious; her eyes

Pompously ignorant, religious-wise,

Cool as the blank intoning of a psalm.

There are great piles of rose-leaves in the room,

Convent-brewed wines and bright bags, needle-wrought;

There is an ancient fountain in the court,

And guttering candles in the Church’s gloom.

“The times have changed,” we said; “women no more

Hide them from life. We mingle and we work.

Christ only asks that not a soul shall shirk

Or flinch from bearing burdens that He bore.”

The Abbess smiled. “Silence,” she said; “we learn,

On this hilltop we women watch the East,

The morning sun o’er Sparta is our priest,

The mountain stars like midnight tapers burn.”

We looked at her; her eyes were crystal clear,

Passionless, pure and cold as moonlit snow.

Something she felt that we could never know;

Our vision to her eyes could not appear.

We left her in the shadowed court to brood,

Where Frankish frescoes peer through shadows dim,

And cloistered nuns in tuneless, wailing hymn,

Chant Faith untried in mountain solitude.

GREEK FARMERS

In green Laconia, where the hedges are

Spring-starred with flowers, and the little brooks

Wake all the mountains from their solemn dreams

Of the old days, when gods moved strong and white

On hill and sea, or slept within the clouds;

There are great slopes, broken with tillage, rough

With clumsy ploughing, thick with olive-trees.

And here they stand, the tall, black-bearded men,

Whose eyes, unblinking, look into the sun.

Men, plainly bred from tribal wanderings,

Whose blood is fevered fire, men whose lands

Are bare with waste and bloodshed; men who stand

Gazing at strangers with shy interest;

Who, when you question their fresh peasant-eyes

Straighten up from their field-tasks and reply:

“These are our flocks and pastures—we are Greeks!”

Black-bearded men who sow, What is the Seed?

For Greece has lain beneath the Turkish plough,

And all her hills and mountains smoke again

With treachery, rape, and murder. On the seas

The nations wait to grasp; the kings and crews

Who play the Blood-game snap at little lands

Like dogs at flies. Yea, that fair seed ye sow,

Is it Greek seed? though sown by mongrel hands?

Seed of a greatness far exceeding theirs,

The lands that would despoil Greece? Will it grow

That seed, Deucalion’s hope, Athena’s pride,

Is it once more the sacred seed that fell

Out of Demeter’s hand on holy ground?

Or, is it Cadmus-sown, for crops of Hell?

Truthfully, farmers, can ye stand and say:

“These are our fields and pastures, we are Greeks”?

They make no answer—strong, black-bearded men,

Grimly at work on the Phigalian Hill

Where the grey Bassæ Temple guards the corn.

They make no answer in the mountain towns

Arcadian, where pink-roofed houses splotch

The hillsides and where hidden teamsters climb

Thicketed bridle-paths beside the streams.

They cannot tell us, if they know, what seed

The sculptors, patriots, and statesmen sowed;

Nor even if these furrows that they plow

Will bring a season’s harvest to their doors.

But, as we pass them, under upland oaks,

Under the fig-trees in the rocky gorge,

They walk with strange, fleet steps, so tireless,

So strong, with eyes set on some distant goal,

Till we, too, puzzled, murmur: “They are Greeks.”

Oh, fateful World! insatiate modern life—

Driven by urgencies too great to tell,

Destroying, recreating, balancing—

What of this Old World, dreaming modern dreams,

Yet with the old dream dwelling in the land

To teach it Pride? Shall we dare face a Greek—

With all his shining temples at his back,

With the eternal Thought behind his name,—

As he were German, Russian, Turk, Chinese?

If these black-bearded mongrels share the pride

Of Argonauts and claim a classic birth

And till the wild land, dropping in the seed,

Forever saying softly, “We are Greeks,”

Why should they garner any other crop,

Why should they bend and toil for better gain

Than seeing New Greece realize her dream?

SONG

Toil on, fishermen!

Pan sits on the cliff,

Smiles and watches the fare,

Wreaths him with flowers there,

Bites at a lettuce leaf,

Binds him a poppy sheaf,

Drinks from a painted jug,

Watching the full nets tug;

Toil on, fishermen!

Work on, harvesters!

Demeter rests on the hill,

Near to the threshing-floor;

Near to the cottage door,

Girds her with fruited vines,

Blows foam from the wines,

Drinks from a golden bowl,

While corn-filled wagons roll;

Work on, harvesters!

Rest well, goat-herds!

Hermes cares for the sheep,

Flashes across the sun,

Burnishes helmet wings,

The wreathed caduceus brings,

To swift talaria-flight,

Through the sheep-scattered night;

Rest well, goat-herds!

TO THE OLYMPIAN HERMES

Now let the formal, folded curtain fall

Over this majesty of mellowed stone.

Let me go forth with eyes alight with joy

From this god-gazing. Let me not pause nor stay

Till by some clear word I have given faith

To doubting minds, how Greeks ennobled form

And carved high meaning in a body’s truth.

Yet, Hermes, fair god, consciously the flower

Of the Greek dream, sculptured so lofty-kind,

Stainlessly physical, superbly true;—

Who is to tell thee that thou hast one fleck

On that pure manliness, and dare to speak

Something against thy calm that seems to say,

“Earth has no greater gift than perfect limbs,

And god-like manhood’s straight significance”?

Forgive me, Hermes, I had thought to take

Thy princely healthiness to ailing worlds;

To meanness and to littleness and lust,

Bidding them gaze upon thee in thy calm,

Telling them: “This is all. This Hermes stands

For Greek expression of a definite truth

Speaking its message to the world of men

And placing beauty as a final goal.”

But then I pondered: What will be the gain

If men say: “Hermes is very kind and fair,

Wholesome and generous and unafraid

And—soulless! Let be! we’ll no longer hope

For strength more than the body—loftier calm

Than this superb control of manly limbs,

Friendly with sun and rock, and sea, and life.

Now yield we up that old, defeated claim

Of soul, the ugly, hunted, harried thing,

And trust us to a pagan manliness,

Stand Hermes-like, unpuzzled, unamazed!”

I knew, oh Hermes! Greek perfection, lit

Like stately lamp with one clear, shining joy,

That of well-being, I knew life ended not

With just the beauty of a human form;

Marble, translated into mystery

Must needs have line to make it fair and right;

And that is all.... Thy unknown sculptor knew

The pagan mind and set thy godhood high,

In an unsullied semblance of a man

Untouched by sorrow, poverty, and shame.

Immortal semblance—then the cleavage comes!

Real men must live (we mortals know the fight),

Hot-blooded, passionate, forlorn, astray;

We know how men determine to be true

To some one Greatness,—struggle to the test

Baffled and crucified;—in bitter shame

Leaving the unsolved meaning of their lives.

And now we know, by those French faces torn

To rags, around the dumbly loyal eyes;

By English soldiers, done to crippled wrecks

And hideous mangling, how men dare to die,

Or live their silent, agonizing days.

And then we know there is a human thing

Transcending any body—called a Soul!

Yea, let the formal, folded curtain fall

O’er all that graciousness of mellowed stone.

The Pagan knew the beauty of the flesh.

We, Modern, view that beauty with resolve

Firm and unswerving that it be outdone,

Firm that all ugly, bruised, and broken things

Shall stand invested with a deathless pride

Before our eyes—that see them beautiful;

Determined that the perfect ones approach

Humbly with sense of some imperfectness,

And kneel in homage to the shattered brave.

GREECE, 1915-16

Yea, taunt me, World Voice—I am dumb and blind,

My body broken, and my heart unclad.

Yet am I silent, while strange forces wind

The chains about me. Helpless, scorned, maligned,

I answer not. The Greece of long ago

Speaks for me in this newest time of woe.

Europe reviles me. Yea, I stand alone

Like woman left before the ruined door,

Like woman who, beneath her outraged moan,

Remembers sacred hours. Like a stone

I am cold, passionless, mid the wild uproar,

Murmuring “Peace” and “Hellas” o’er and o’er.

Apollo’s beauty sprang from out my womb;

Socrates called me, mother. Every hill

And templed glade, and solemn-urnèd tomb,

Bids me refrain; no longer to resume

War and rapine, no longer blood to spill,

Nor hate engender, nor intent to kill.

Europe! Greece speaks, Greece, who so deeply drank

The bitter cup of ravage; who has laid

A new foundation: near her altars, blank

Of by-gone fires, she phalanxes the rank

Of golden grain. And bids the new-born Greek

Old classic words with modern tongue to speak.

Homer withholds me, Æschylus restrains,

“Human Euripides” exhorts me—“Stay!”

I was despoilèd once; strike off my chains,

Unsay the insult! Greece nor plots nor feigns,

Only withholds her, agonized, at bay,

But loyal to her hallowed cliffs and plains!

THE SINGING STONES

“Remember me, the Singing Stone ... for ... Phœbus ... laid on me his Delphic harp—thenceforth I am lyre-voiced; strike me lightly with a little pebble; and carry away witness of my boast.”—Greek Anthology.

Beyond brute Titan dissonance, black, bitter strains

Of Warfare; through the smitten fields of wheat;

Upon the bloody bridges, where the wains

Roll drone chords between marching soldier-feet;

Through mob-voice, robbed of cadence and of beat,

I hear the Stones of Sunion

Singing by the sea:

“Lift we on high our time-defying shafts!

Our white-wing on the promontory stays,

Our age-old glory from the Ancient wafts

Godward out of an old, blind, Pagan mood,

While in the surging blue the Islands brood

In dim, time-purpled haze.”

Out of the din of sociologic strife,

Of hoarse-voiced men, embruted by their work,

Of women, low-intoning lesser life,

From the rich Theme, which modern voices shirk,

Where all the forced, half-harmonizings lurk,—

I hear the stones of Delphi

Singing in the rain:

“Black swell the mountains, guarding well the Cleft,

Clear spills the water, o’er the fountain rim,

The worshipers are gone, the priests bereft.

Men keep no light upon the altar dim;

No Council meets, but ah, the hope is left,

The dream goes on, new voices chant the Hymn.”

To the soft twilight of Æsthetic ease,

Where a smile is no smile, a tear no tear;

Where the fruit has no seed, the wine no lees,

No strong song comes. Yet, faintly year by year,

’Mid those who listen, wistful, and in fear,

I hear the stones of Bassæ

Singing on the heights:

“Grey comes the dawn upon the mountain crest,

Warm lie the vines on the Phigalian Hill;

The deities are gone, their secrets rest

Hidden by time. But still the Sun-God smites

Altar and soil, and richly thus requites

The farmers’ faith, and all the fields fulfill.”

And everywhere my wistful head is bowed,

Pensive, absorbed, to find significance,

I hear stone chorus; the immortal crowd

Of pillars round some vocal radiance—

Chant Spirit-Song of new inheritance—

I hear all Pagan Temples

Singing in the dawn:

“Lift we on high our columns shining white!

Our broad wings on the promontories stay;

For us forever was the world’s first light,—

Ignorant God-seeking. Ye, that follow, may

Soar to a higher vision! ’mid the Pagan night.

We were the singers of a brighter Day.”

THE OLD QUEST

“Feed in joy thine own flock and look on thine own land.”—Greek Anthology.

“Friend! hast thou seen the rosy mass

Of cyclamen along the pass

To Arcady?

Doth the green country sweep enlarge

Beneath the white cloud’s floating barge?

Does the sun lift a gleaming targe

On Arcady?

“Hold.... Do the trees keep happy nests

Between the young leaves’ trembling breasts

In Arcady?

Does running water laugh and sing,

Do butterflies waft wing-and-wing?

Spins the white moon her mystic ring

O’er Arcady?

“Speak!—Are there greenwoods cool and dense,

Do flower-grails gleam out from thence

In Arcady?

Do pines the aisles and arches blur,

With frankincense and breaths of myrrh,

Veiling the happy forms that stir

Through Arcady?

“Thou seest that I am blind,”—said he,

“But hast thou been where I would be

In Arcady?

Oh! didst thou see within the gate

The one who promised me to wait?

Stays she for me, though I come late

To Arcady?

“I wonder that she doth not send

A clue to show the roads that trend

To Arcady—

But thou canst tell me. Does it rise

Empinnacled to azure skies?...

Thou sayst?... None knoweth where it lies,

Fair Arcady!”

’Tis sunset and the end of day,

The roads are closed—so all men say—

To Arcady.

The birds and butterflies are fled;

The honey quaffed; the perfume shed;

The feet that used to dance are sped

From Arcady.

“The roads are closed?... Oh, not to me!

Thou seest that I am blind,” said he.

“And Arcady?...

Full well I know thou liest now,

Hast thou the world-mark on thy brow?

Hast thou no one to ’wait thee—thou?

In Arcady?”

He wanders down the darkling way

The mute horizons watch him stray

Toward Arcady.

His feet are bleeding, he is blind,

He dreams of that he will not find,

But in his wide unconquered mind

Lives Arcady!

THE GODS ARE NOT GONE, BUT MAN IS BLIND

Over the hills the gods come walking,

Where the black pines draw their swords,

And the spell-bound leaves cease talking,

For the High-Priest sun comes stalking

And ’tis no time for words.

And oh! the gifts the gods are bringing—

Stretches of happy heath,

Jewels with souls, and flowers singing;

Smiling stars, and new hope springing

With the wingèd hope called Death!

Over the hills the pipes are playing,

And the gods come strong and fair.

Alas! they know not of the straying,

The faithlessness and bitter saying:

“We know no gods, nor care....”

Over the hills—the day-sky kindles

On a blackened world of clods;

Dead and dry are the flaxless spindles,

The cruse is drained,—the fire dwindles ...

No worshipers for the gods!

THE SEA OF TIME

(Sappho sings to Alcæus)

Only our few short hours,

For you and me;

Temples and groves and bowers,

And then—the Sea!

Only our finite word

For you and me,

Who knows what gods have heard

Under the Sea?

Love, though the gold moons wane

For you and me,

We shall not meet again

Down by the Sea.

Ours shall be hidden ways;

For you and me

Stretch the long separate days—

Mist on the Sea!

Artemis—will she say

For you and me

What Law we must obey

Moves in the Sea?

Moves, till the faces worn

By you and me,

Luminous, dream-forsworn

Change in the Sea?

Change, for unending tides

Bear you and me

And the Self in us glides

From Sea to Sea.

Love, shall the sailing souls

Of you and me

Float where new shore unrolls

Rimmed by the Sea?

Comes then the meeting place

For you and me?

Silence ... white bubbles trace

Foam on the Sea!

ON THE THOROUGHFARE

To-day I go to buy some dates

From Glyco’s cart.

“Ten cents,” my smiling fruitman states,

And then we part—

I to the mart,

He for the next fig-buyer waits!

Back to my world I go, its keen

Quick energy

And competitions sharp and mean,

Its flippancy,

And sophistry,

And tampering with things unclean;

But Glyco waits; he has ten cents;

And he has hope,

And back of him, antecedents

Give him such scope!

With his traditions’ affluence

I cannot cope!

AT PÆSTUM

The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,

A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,

The far blue reaches of Salerno’s bay,

Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.

These are the caskets of the sun-sealed years;

’Mid tides that ebb and flow, ’neath stars that set,

Deathless their grave and tranquil beauty ... yet

Buried in silence, in eternal tears.

Beneath these tympana the Dorians trod;

Here, Doric priests upon an alien shore

Made sacrifice, perhaps these myrtles wore,

And garlanded the offering to their god.

Demeter saw the bright libations spilled;

To Hermes leapt the scarlet through the fleece.

Amid these columns moved the gods of Greece;

These lofty spaces with the pæan thrilled.

This, centuries ago. Demeter now

Is known no more. Poseidon, too, hath fled.

’Twould seem that Pan and Hermes both are dead;

No Nike springs upon a Grecian prow.

Yet is this sacred pause, this pillared calm

Still stirred by whispers from Tyrrhenian waves

While near the shadows of these architraves

Lie smiling shores of terraced fruit and palm.

And springing from Demeter’s altar site,

Where the old dream of gods hath died away,

And the Greek torch burned down to ashen grey,

There blooms a star shape, mystical and white.

One mystical white star! Oh! Pagan fire

Whose temples stand, whose gods have been forgot,

One goddess holds in memory this spot,

Else why should Nature thus in bloom aspire?

Why else in this dim fane the sea intone,

And sun send fire to the altars bare,

And moss and lichen trace strange scripture, here

The lizards flash like symbols o’er the stone?

The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,

A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,

The far blue reaches of Salerno’s bay,

Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.

PHIDIAS

A DRAMATIC EPISODE

Dungeon in an Athenian prison; a small grated window near the ceiling shows a patch of blue sky. The scene discloses Phidias, prostrate and manacled. In the dusk of the cell lingers the JAILER.

JAILER (curiously). What sayst thou, Phidias, who art accused?

The old plaint, snarling that thou art abused?

PHIDIAS (lifting his head wearily). What do I answer? Yea! what thing thou wilt!

What care I for this legendary guilt?

Who makes or unmakes Unity? Accused?

Why, any fool accuses. It amused

The enemies of Pericles to stab

At him through me. Let gossips spread their blab,

The sea is just as broad, the sky as clear

And I as blameless.

JAILER (persisting). But that brought thee here,

Took thee from royal favor, once the dear

Adviser, friend of Pericles. It seems

Here is the end of all thy mighty dreams;

’Twas Pericles who made thee, and there lurks

His royal patronage about thy works.

PHIDIAS (sullenly). So reason vulgar minds; as well to say

Hephæstus made me, manacled this way,

Hammered to fever, bent to twisted woe.

No, clown! no tyrant brought this overthrow,

Nor my once vivid glory, but the fate

That overtakes the artist; whether late,

Slow, poisoning, by deadly world-born things,

Or early blight of strong imaginings

Too fervent for his frame. Athens is free

From every blame. Not Pericles made me!

JAILER (wagging his head obstinately). ’Twas love of Pericles that cast thee here,

Ungeniused thee, put thee to rot in drear

Murk of this den; and if not he who made

Thee what thou wast—aloof and haughty blade

Fellow I watched in Agora, as one

Treading on air, thy white himation

Streaming like wings back of thy eager form,

As thy swift sandal moved among the swarm

Of merchants, gamesters, thieves; while deep gaze drank

Of something that was neither wealth nor rank—

Why then,—who made thee? for that thou hast fame

’Tis granted, when the rabble speak thy name.

PHIDIAS (moving restlessly, clenches his hands, answering impatiently). I made me, fool, made this unfinished self,

Nourished me as a child, in happy health,

Fostered the thirst my mother gave to me

With her electric milk. Ecstatic tree

Charmides planted, I did grow and thrive,

Adding to that, what Greece alone could give!

Studied cult-statues, studied Xoana, saw

Paralysis in Polygnotus’ law,

Wondered that Hegias and Hageladas wrought

Hardly beyond the cold Egyptian thought.

Out of their almond-eyed archaic things,

New butterfly, my free Athena springs!

My Zeus Olympian came to my prayer

To see a god. I saw, then made him there!

(To jailer.) Poor ragged dolt, clanking thy silly keys,

Did Pericles make me as I made these?

Did Athens tell me what a man must do

Who sees instinctive life, and sees it true?

JAILER (impudently). How now! What saw’st thou that I might not see?

A rosy nymph at bath! Aphrodite

Caught in a net of foam? Hermes’ disguise?

Come now, what is this power within thine eyes?

PHIDIAS (speaking dreamily as if to himself). What is the power? Life! The heroic thing

Streaming magnetic from a sea-gull’s wing,

That light in stars, in waves, in children’s eyes,

In green plane-tree, or in deep, sphinx-like skies

Of unknown countries, where the grasses blow

Unseen of man; where flower-laced streamlets flow

Past mystic herbs, Demeter loves to keep

Secretly growing on the mountain steep.

I saw the curves of fruits, saw Grecian sails

Take fire-blue seas; saw the soft, misty veils

Of maidens wrap their limbs, saw horses, shields,

Victories, warriors, priests, and battlefields;

Each man a poem; women each a jar

Filled with soft, psychic flame, an avatar

Shaped to a noble outline, lofty truth

From some great vital Source—

(The Sculptor breaks off suddenly, scrutinizing the jailer and continuing.)

Rascal, uncouth

As are thy words and gestures, I can see

Some trace of life-light.—Gods! were I but free—

JAILER (interrupting with smug complacency). Which, proper thanks to Theseus, thou art not,

Thou light-fingered; thou dingy-robed sot!

Carving thy way to treason, selling State

For greasy coin, with Hermes as thy mate

Slanting his profile on it. Dreamer,—thou!

“Bronze-worker.” Yea! By Dionysus! How

Thou workedst guilty things for Athens’ shame,

Thinking to hide behind thy Patron’s name!

Athens, the famous city; thou, a worm,

Coiling in earth, no four-eyed marble herm

Will mark. Our furry worms that make the silk

Munch the mulberry; but thy crafty ilk

Munch the fine gold, for sickly marble shapes

Of statues stoned by every Jack-a-napes;

’Twas thou, worm, coiled ’round thy princely friend,

And gained War-Treasure for thy braggart’s end.

PHIDIAS (sadly musing). The fool is glib. His lesson he has got

From Agora and Propylæa, not

The polished utterance of Bema’s Hill.

But that crowd’s word, that bodes or good or ill

From a fierce thirst; sneering pitiless breath,

Freezing a man, or scorching him to death.

JAILER (scratching his head, expectorates knowingly and argues). Why are thy statues costly? with the urns

Of Dipylon Gate, the passer-by discerns

Good lusty statues, made by Such-an-one,

Quite comely, they, and all of porous stone;

Why use Pentelic marble? so much gold?

Thou dreamer-schemer, sculptor overbold?

PHIDIAS (with a moan turns from his tormentor to face the stone wall, muttering). “Dreamer,” he called me. Is it by that name

My curse comes? Verily; I dreamed my shame,

My rich accusings. Dreamed brook-flowing folds

Of draperies, dreamed my young hero-moulds,

Dreamed men who sat their horses, as they rode

Clouds over seas, dreamed Panathenaic ode

In singing-rhythm round the Parthenon;

The frieze and metopes of Theseion;

Dreamed the sweet-bodied girls, whose maiden strength

Poise vase and basket all the Temple length.

Dreamed the slow, garlanded, portentous beasts,

Led by the veiled and sacrificial priests;

Dreamed the young, leaping horseman’s haughty ease

Pediment grouped, or filleted in frieze.

Was it a dream only to-day shall know?

Lives it no longer than this artist’s throe?

If that must be, then butterfly most drear

I sink back to the worm-thing crawling here.

JAILER (having curiously listened, now struts forward and faces the Sculptor. He eyes him stupidly and shakes his finger at him). Why, were it not for Pericles who gave

Thee marble, color, gold for statues brave,—

Poured out his coffers,—we should amply be

Equipped for Persia. Bronze and ivory

Changed back to drachmæ, all the sacred rock

Would stand as staunch, to the barbaric shock,

As when Pisistratus, with hardy race,

Made the Acropolis his fortress place.

And look ye, with that gold Athena wears

(Filched from State monies, for thy stone affairs),

We could plant ships in Piræus, array

Our strength to Corinth, where the Persians may

Once more with envy strike.—But, thou wouldest bring

To a State’s need thy stone imagining!

Fie! but for gold, thy dreams would be as vague

As fat my wife scrapes from altar-dreg,

And boils to stuff to make my chiton white;

Ethereal substance, wind-shaken, alight

With lambent iridescence, very fine,

From the amphora gushing forth like wine.

But look you, in a moment, just a trace

Of foam is all that froths from out the vase,

And nothing’s left but the damp greasy lees;

So knave, with thee, without thy Pericles!

THE SCULPTOR (with scornful amusement to himself).

He mouths that name as if it were a mask,

Through which a stupid actor says his task,

Forgets, mistakes, yet struts around the place

Thinking the mask gives him a certain grace.

(Phidias wearily rises and stretches himself, the jailer meanwhile curiously observing him.)

PHIDIAS (abruptly). Slave, thou art childish, many a name like this

Links close to art, for its own ego-bliss,

To have possession, be the master, who

Owns, keeps, controls, the work we artists do.

Pericles views the height of Athens’ power,

Pomp of Acropolis, where every hour

In golden, crimson, blue, and creamy dye

Ecstatic marble forms sing to the sky,

And hears them sing! (This for his kingly wage:)

“Nikomen, Athens, Pericles, Golden Age!”

JAILER (looking at the prisoner with heavy curiosity). And what, by Hades, is the thing they sing?

PHIDIAS (turns impulsively to answer; then a fierce reticence makes him draw himself up and turn away). Torture me not with thy coarse questioning;

My sorrowing answers, for the ribaldries

Of bath or games: “Thus spluttered Phidias,

Maddened at being walled up.” So the crass

Idling crowd, jostling in brainless mass,

Gapes, sneers, and marvels, at my grim defeat;

Mud covers stately names where rascals meet.

JAILER (with offended dignity). Well, then, good-night. I leave thee to thy prayers.

No friends, no patron, for thy artist-wares,

Unless, indeed (grinning back of his hand)

Zeus showers thee with gold

Like Danaē.

PHIDIAS (steadily and reverently). Yea, most mighty Zeus can hold

Me to my service, to that Ageless Thing

Higher than he, called Beauty.

(He breaks off suddenly, goes eagerly to the now departing jailer, saying authoritatively.)

Fellow, bring

Here to my cell, some wax, a tool or two,

Some clay, a lump, stuck in thy cap will do—

A hand’s length of the white, Pentelic stone,

From where it sleeps within the mountain, grown

Pregnant by streams and flowers, for some birth

Of wingéd dream, out of hypnotic earth.

JAILER (backing mockingly away, mimics coarsely).

A jewel, a star, a little bit of wax!

Some tiny thing this mighty genius lacks!

That pearl, perchance, Aspasia’s bosom decks,

Or blood-red stones hung round Hetairæ-necks!

PHIDIAS (beseechingly). Only some clay, man, in the dark my touch

Will fashion thee a goddess-image, such

As still they place in niches, who obey

“Sea-wards, oh! Mystæ,” on Eleusis-Way.

I’ll mould thee woman’s hand, or horse’s head,

A dreaming faun, Marsyas as he bled;

A babe’s round, dimpled, saucy little back;

A vine-wreathed satyr, with his grape-filled sack.

JAILER (pompously drawing aloof). By Dionysus! that were illy done.

Artist is one thing. State another. Shun

Thee and punish thee, doth Will of State,

Who art no artist more, but he who late

Sculptor to Pericles, now is a knave,

Who sits and twists his thumbs in prison-cave!

(The JAILER finishes by an insulting gesture and departs. PHIDIAS going to the heavy door listens to his retreating footsteps. He draws a long sigh and, standing with his back to the door, looks up at the patch of blue sky, in silence. At last he speaks.)

Thus they leave Phidias, worker in the bronze,

Breather of life! breaker of chisel-bonds!

He is, they think, a man, a common thing—

All yellow, freckled, thin-blooded; they wring

His soul, because of policies.

Make him a sacrifice to fallacies;

“Drop him,” they say, in any dungeon now;

“Gods, grant in time his traitor’s neck shall bow

To death, for that he trifled with the State!

Strike his face from the shield where he dared mate

That face with Pericles,”—Oh! lofty Hill

High Sacred Rock, where sun-bathed columns thrill;

Proud statue-gleaming, gold Acropolis;

Dreamed I so high, to fall as low as—this?

Athens, I made thee out of my heart’s blood;

Rising by ages, from Time’s ’whelming flood.

Deucalion-fashion, soar my stones that sing

The beauty of this age’s visioning.

Out of Iktinos’ soul the Parthenon grew—

Those glorious Doric shafts, that taper through

The blaze of morn or eve. Athena’s shrine,

Lodging her ivory maidenhood, is mine!

’Twas I who gave the Lemnian her life,

Knew god-like action whether peace or strife.

Knew how a god would stand, breathe, smile, or frown,

And by that knowledge, deities’ renown,

I was a god-creator. Yet I lie

Here in befoulèd darkness, with the sky

Still burning blue upon the mountain tops

Surrounding Athens; where the Sun-God stops

Of evening, all his golden fingers laid

On marble chords of rhythmic colonnade,

And plays so strange, so Delphic-high a strain,

That hopes ethereal fill men’s hearts again.

Oh! Athens, marble glory, is it naught

Phidias lived, and dreamed, and planned, and taught?

(In his agony the Sculptor buries his head in his hands. There is a long silence, suddenly broken by the alighting of a CRICKET upon the small grated window; the CRICKET keeps up a steady trilling and is not at first noticed by the Sculptor.)

THE CRICKET

Greet, greet, greet,

Pan with hymning sweet.

Wine and corn are here,

Grapes and honey clear;

Olives, purple-black,

Burst from tawny sack.

Through Olympian night

Temples glimmer white

Stars their tangled vines

Wreathe around the shrines.

Shepherds all alone

Under mountain tree,

By the midnight sea,

Shall pipe songs of thee

Singer in the stone!

(PHIDIAS listening intently, passes his hand over his eyes, creeps nearer under the grating, straining his gaze upward.)

Prometheus! but I think this minstrel wrings

Wise melody from gauzy zither-wings,

A healing balm, like to the lustral wave

At Delphi, comes my broken soul to lave.

For, as he perches with his roundelay,

Methinks he counsels me; not for to-day

Only is artist-pride and feverish bliss—

Perchance my spirit still may suffer this

Infamy, yet go singing down the years!

(The Sculptor pauses doubtfully. Still looking upward, he presses closer beneath the little window.)

Answer me, Cricket, are my stricken tears,

My empty hands, proof of a thing to be,

That I dreamed true? If Beauty nourished me,

Mothered and saved; shall I in ages more

Stand firm and proud, telling what guise she wore

These days? For with young Myron I would hold

There is a law of Beauty, which, controlled

By men’s stern truth, becomes a sacred thing,

Expanded from our holy cherishing.

It is not static, cold, but lives and grows

Out of the All of Life, the artist knows.

(The CRICKET after another silence, again chirps. This time the rhythm is feebler and grows fainter and fainter, as the Sculptor, face upwards, eagerly listens.)

THE CRICKET

Sweet, sweet, sweet,

Praise is full and meet;

O’er the architrave,

Beautiful and brave,

Strong and good and fair,

Poise in hallowed air.

In the violet clime,

In the winter rime,

On the poppied steep,

In the passes deep,

All the temples know

Paths that Greece shall go

Toward posterities

Far beyond the seas!

Far as man is known,

Thou shalt speak to men

Far beyond thy ken,

Beyond tongue or pen,

Singer in the stone!

(PHIDIAS at the close of the lilt lifts both arms appealingly. The CRICKET is silent a moment.)

PHIDIAS. Hist!—the green minstrel, god-of-little-things,

Thinketh perchance he strums his lyric wings

On dark Hymettus, where bees sip so long,

They lose their way in all the flower throng,

And many a little waxy dot of fuzz

Is caught in honey-prison. (Whimsically.) Thou dost buzz

Cricket, as loud as I, encased

In this hard prison, bitter to my taste.

(The CRICKET after a long pause trills for the last time.)

Fleet, fleet, fleet,

The ways of fame are sweet.

A marble head of dreams

Conquers the world, meseems.

Beautiful vases tell

How happy peoples dwell.

Beautiful bodies speak

New message to the weak.

Greece adown the years

Is the song of Seers.

Kora still intones

Nike still responds:

“Wielder of the wands.”

“Worker in the Bronze.”

“Singer in the Stones.”

SCULPTOR (suddenly and rapturously). Xaire! thou little herald, Xaire! thou

Hast cheered me, saved me! See my courage now!

What foul, damp cell can ever hold me here?

What slander stain my work of yester-year?

Upon the Hill my glowing children call

To the unborn of Artists; to the All,

Great Fusion of the races, who

Shall yet unite, some holy thing to do,

Before this strange world on its journey far

In trackless space shall move an empty star.

For portico and frieze and vase and fane.

Fountain and stele, that our utmost main

Our utterest patience brought to perfect whole

Will cast strange, spellful seed, and where the soul

Of art is known, its free, broad, ardent wing,

“Greece,” will be whispered like a sacred thing!

(To the CRICKET.) Yea, Yea! thou little herald, “wingèd pipe,”

So I’ll indite thee in thy wisdom ripe—

Now will I write my comrade young and lithe

Pæonius, how I imprisoned writhe.

Yet for his comfort will I softly tell

The cricket message to my dreary cell.

Luck! that I hid the chalk lump in my sleeve!

Joy that I have the parchment! Who’ll believe

That this is all he hath, who was the friend

Of Pericles brought to this bitter end!

(The Sculptor with the parchment on his knee, busies himself in writing. Occasionally he pauses and reads aloud what he has written.)

Pæonius, good comrade, merry Greek,

Walking Olympian groves, watching the freak

Of scarlet-flowered pomegranate vine

Tasting the cool jugs filled with pine-tree wine,

Fruits like warm bowls of amber nectar hung

And figs from branches o’er the streamlets flung—

Read and reflect, and if thou com’st to see

Some supple scheme to set thy brother free,

Act on it swiftly; only be advised

Pericles’ day is over. What he prized

Was proud display, but what the people want

Is arms and ships that they may proudly vaunt.

(Since Marathon no Greek knows how to smile

Passing the Soros’ valiant hero-pile,

And still they say in Sparta, athletes wait

To teach barbarians how Greece is great.)

I, the poor Sculptor, lived too near the throne,

Therefore, I lie now on the dungeon stone!

(PHIDIAS’S gaze wanders, he becomes absorbed, intense, then once more he applies himself to the letter.)

Last summer, passing Sunion, my sail

Red-burning down the stormy silver trail

O’er clouded blue, I humbly turned my sight

Up to that white fane, on the bronzèd height,

All its upspringing columns touched with sun

As the slow golden clouds walked high upon

Wave buttressed paths, to purple Cyclades

Those mystic islands of Saronic seas.

And as the molten sapphire round me sprayed

O’er the eye-painted prow, I humbly prayed

Poseidon, that Piræus I might gain;

Offered no cock, no vase, oil to contain,

But vowed a frieze from my young pupil’s skill,

New, daring sculpture for the Sea-God’s Hill

In Parian marble, calm and haughty white,

To gleam for sailors passing in the night.

How I was timid then! who after dared

Dispute with Pericles, and proudly shared

His vast ambitions for that golden realm—

That Athens, which the vulgar overwhelm.

That I did promise, wilt thou execute?

So will these singing stones, out of the mute

Parian marble, form immortal choir

Chanting “Poseidon” to the ocean’s lyre.

(PHIDIAS pauses once more. He draws a long sigh, then continues writing.)

Well, brother-artist, here I agonized,

Until a cricket, by great Zeus apprised,

Perched on the window-bar and chirped a thing

Wise as Athena, took away the sting

Of the world’s serpent-sayings. Friend, I give

Faith to the cricket message while I live.

(The Sculptor, head in hands ponders deeply then again resumes writing.)

He trilled, Pæonius, a theme like this:

What we do lives, though after all the bliss

Of our own living, must our bodies pass!

Hast ever caught the perfume of sweet grass

Dying beneath the sickle? Our breath goes

Thus to the gods indifferent, ’mid the snows

High on Parnassos’ or Kiona’s crest,

Where mountain after mountain heaves a breast,

Black, billow-deep, sky-ranging, in a chain

Tumultuously, serene around the plain.

But what we make of beauty keeps its power

Down the long years, from the conception’s hour.

For mark ye, lad, I never sensed my work,

But did it all unconscious; now in murk,

In prison black, I see it flying forth,

The strong wings of my friezes! All the worth

Of Laurion silver in Colossi paid

And proud Athena, ivory o’er laid.

Gold-sandalled, springing, mellow-marble feet,

Olive-crowned heads in pensive bending, sweet

Backs, limbs, and bosoms! Noble eye and tress,

Caught in the dream of their own loveliness—

I see it all, so calm! “Nothing too much,”

Tunics in solemn folds, majesty such

As comes with purity; things strong and free;

White to the sky and naked to the sea.

Women and men that move adown the days

Out of the forest deep, through shimmering maize,

In fructifying suns, in cooling dews,—

All tranquil, noble, filled with God, or Muse

Of deathless Greece.—Yea, all my strife,

My will, my soul, was this portrayal—Life!

(Moved by what he has written, the Sculptor gets to his feet and paces feverishly his narrow cell. He goes on writing as he walks and reading aloud.)

I now see by prophetic cricket-voice

That Life is deathless, that my works rejoice

For all rejoicing. Brother mine

We carve for worlds to come. Beyond the line

Of horizons, untravelled, rise the lands

Hungry of spirit, waiting at our hands

Bread of True Vision. Yea, where rusty wars,

Hot blood of nation-struggle, stain these shores,

Women and men shall bleed with sacrifice

To a dead god, called Progress, and the Vice

Of chance-worship, on sickly, pampered knees

And counting gold in languors of disease.

Can’st picture these, coming to look upon

My glorious horsemen of the Parthenon?

Seeing your Nikes tread triumphant air?

Our marble dreams forever beauty-clean

And dark heroic bronzes stained with green,

By fire and sword and water all unspoiled,

Their perfect limbs’ clear candor unassoiled?

Mark ye, those stranger eyes shall take and take,

Still the thirst grow and still the joy to slake

From Old-World beauty. Till we sculptors stand

Supreme World-life within our pulseless hand!

Think, lad, when father’s little ones shall tell

How Greeks saw, felt, and struggled, conquered, fell!

Fear not, Pæonius, our spirits win

Out of this age to call all ages kin.

(PHIDIAS, sighing as one relieved of a burden, pauses awhile, then writes a few more lines.)

Smile not upon this, friend—All fancy—Yea!

But, by the Etruscans, gone but yesterday

To Italy, and now established there;

By Dorians, building temples by the fair

Purple Tyrennian, so I think

Greek soul o’erflows, as over fountain-brink,

And that we circle out and out, our creed

Begetting world-dream for an unborn breed,

Ardent posterities!—Thus do I then

Bid now farewell to my own race of men!

And for a future permanence, new clime,

Lift statues in the peristyles of Time

And trust my message, where that message seeks

Its own fulfillment. Hail to the happy Greeks

Hail to that Race; keen, wistful, passionate,

That shall know Greece, Athens, the gods, the State!

(The paper hangs listlessly in the hand of PHIDIAS, who sits in revery, lost to all around him.)

JAILER (entering). Rise! thou infamous sculptor! A decree!

Follow! Thy haughty judges have demanded thee!

(PHIDIAS wearily rising, stares stupidly at him, then looks up to the little window where the CRICKET perched and makes a slight gesture of salute and farewell.)

PHIDIAS. “So be it.”

(Hastily aside.) See this coin? Of all good fees

The best, with head of high Themistocles—

Thine—if thy hand this simple scroll wilt bear

To the great sculptor at Olympia.

To give to him my farewell words and tears,

(The Sculptor pauses, looking unseeingly at the JAILER and adding softly.) As I pass outward—down the faithful years!

EPILOGUE

As children keep

Some spiraled shell or crystal crusted stone

For wonder and for solace, when alone

They fall asleep,

So do I soft caress

And guard through days of World-dark such a charm

And cherish from indifference and harm

One loveliness.

And every Grecian vase

And sculptured fragment to my eyes doth mean

Life, calm and balanced, simple, and serene,

Transcending Race!

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious punctuation errors and omissions have been corrected.

Page 37: “grim Thermoyplæ” changed to “grim Thermopylæ”

Page 108: “the rythm is feebler” changed to “the rhythm is feebler”

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Table of Contents

Greek Wayfarers and Other Poems

CONTENTS

TO THE AMAZONS AT EPÍDAUROS

THE BLACK SAIL

WIDOWED ANDROMACHE

THE SACRED SHIP FROM DELOS

THE LITTLE SHADE

THE CONTRAST

“SHE HAD REVERENCE”

THE GLORY

SUNSET ON THE ACROPOLIS

THE STREET OF SHOES

ON THE ELEUSINIAN WAY—SPRING

IN THE ROOM OF THE FUNERAL STELÆ

“THE SEVEN-STRINGED MOUNTAIN LUTE”

GREEK WAYFARERS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

BY THE WALLACHIAN TENTS

THE BOY

THE MOTHER

THE BOY

THE MOTHER

THE BOY

THE MOTHER

THE VALE OF TEMPÉ

THE ENCOUNTER

EASTER DANCE AT MEGARA

FIRST PICTURE

SECOND PICTURE

PEACE, 1914

DELPHI

THE DESCENT FROM DELPHI

TWILIGHT ON ACRO-CORINTH

ROMANCE

NIGHT IN OLD CORINTH

AQUAMARINE

THE SHEPHERDESS

MAY-DAY IN KALAMATA

FROM THE ARCADIAN GATE

THE ABBESS

GREEK FARMERS

SONG

TO THE OLYMPIAN HERMES

GREECE, 1915-16

THE SINGING STONES

THE OLD QUEST

THE GODS ARE NOT GONE, BUT MAN IS BLIND

THE SEA OF TIME

ON THE THOROUGHFARE

AT PÆSTUM

PHIDIAS A DRAMATIC EPISODE

THE CRICKET

THE CRICKET

EPILOGUE

Transcriber’s Notes

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