The Poetical Works Of Robert Bridges Part 5

PR. Bid me not tell if ye have fear to hear; But have no fear. Knowledge of future things Can nothing change man's spirit: and though he seem To aim his pa.s.sion darkly, like a shaft Shot toward some fearful sound in thickest night, He hath an owl's eye, and must blink at day.

The springs of memory, that feed alike 1010 His thought and action, draw from furthest time Their constant source, and hardly brook constraint Of actual circ.u.mstance, far less attend On gla.s.sed futurity; nay, death itself, His fate unquestioned, his foretasted pain, The certainty foreknown of things unknown, Cannot discourage his habitual being In its appointed motions, to make waver His eager hand, nor loosen the desire Of the most feeble melancholy heart 1020 Even from the unhopefullest of all her dreams.

IN. Since then I long to know, now something say Of what will come to mine when I am gone.

PR. And let the maid too hear, for 'tis of her I speak, to tell her whither she should turn The day ye drive her forth from hearth and home.

IN. What say'st thou? drive her out? and we? from home?

Banish the comfort of our eyes? Nay rather Believe that these obedient hands will tear The heart out of my breast, ere it do this. 1030

PR. When her wild cries arouse the house at night, And, running to her bed, ye see her set Upright in tranced sleep, her starting hair With deathly sweat bedewed, in horror shaking, Her eyeb.a.l.l.s fixed upon the unbodied dark, Through which a draping mist of luminous gloom Drifts from her couch away,--when, if asleep, She walks as if awake, and if awake Dreams, and as one who nothing hears or sees, Lives in a sick and frantic mood, whose cause 1040 She understands not or is loth to tell--

AR. Ah, ah, my child, my child!--Dost thou feel aught?

Speak to me--nay, 'tis nothing--hearken not.

PR. Ye then distraught with sorrow, neither knowing Whether to save were best or lose, will seek Apollo's oracle.

IN. And what the answer?

Will it discover nought to avert this sorrow?

PR. Or else thy whole race perish root and branch.

IN. Alas! Alas!

PR. Yet shall she live though lost; from human form Changed, that thou wilt not know thy daughter more. 1051

IN. Woe, woe! my thought was praying for her death.

PR. In Hera's temple shall her prison be At high Mycenae, till from heaven be sent Hermes, with song to soothe and sword to slay The beast whose hundred eyes devour the door.

IN. Enough, enough is told, unless indeed, The beast once slain, thou canst restore our child.

PR. Nay, with her freedom will her wanderings Begin. Come hither, child--nay, let her come: 1060 What words remain to speak will not offend her.

And shall in memory quicken, when she looks To learn where she should go;--for go she must, Stung by the venomous fly, whose angry flight She still will hear about her, till she come To lay her sevenfold-carried burden down Upon the aethiop sh.o.r.e where he shall reign.

IN. But say--say first, what form--

PR. In snow-white hide Of those that feel the goad and wear the yoke. 1069

IN. Round-hoofed, or such as tread with cloven foot?

PR. Wide-horned, large-eyed, broad-fronted, and the feet Cloven which carry her to her far goal.

IN. Will that of all these evils be the term?

PR. Ay, but the journey first which she must learn.

Hear now, my child; the day when thou art free, Leaving the lion-gate, descend and strike The Tretan road to Nemea, skirting wide The unhunted forest o'er the watered plain To walled Cleonae, whence the traversed stream To Corinth guides: there enter not, but pa.s.s 1080 To narrow Isthmus, where Poseidon won A country from Apollo, and through the town Of Crommyon, till along the robber's road Pacing, thy left eye meet the westering sun O'er Geraneia, and thou reach the hill Of Megara, where Car thy brother's babe In time shall rule; next past Eleusis climb Stony Panactum and the pine-clad slopes Of Phyle; shun the left-hand way, and keep The rocks; the second day thy feet shall tread 1090 The plains of Graea, whence the roadway serves Aulis and Mycalessus to the point Of vext Euripus: fear not then the stream, Nor scenting think to taste, but plunging in Breast its salt current to the further sh.o.r.e.

For on this island mayst thou lose awhile Thy maddening pest, and rest and pasture find, And from the heafs of bold Macistus see The country left and sought: but when thou feel Thy torment urge, move down, recross the flood, 1100 And west by Harma's fenced gap arrive At seven-gated Thebes: thy friendly G.o.ddess Ongan Athene has her seat without.

CHOR. Now if she may not stay thy toilsome destined steps, I pray that she may slay for thee the maddening fly.

PR. Keep not her sanctuary long, but seek Botian Ascra, where the Muses' fount, Famed Aganippe, wells: Ocalea Pa.s.s, and Tilphusa's northern steeps descend By Alalcomenae, the G.o.ddess' town. 1110 Guard now the lake's low sh.o.r.e, till thou have crossed Hyrcana and Cephissus, the last streams Which feed its reedy pools, when thou shalt come Between two mountains that enclose the way By peaked Abae to Hyampolis.

The right-hand path that thither parts the vale Opes to Cyrtone and the Locrian lands; Toward Elateia thou, where o'er the marsh A path with stones is laid; and thence beyond To Thronium, Tarphe, and Thermopylae, 1120 Where rocky Lamia views the Maliac gulf.

CHOR. If further she should go, will she not see That other Argos, the Dodonian land?

PR. Crossing the Phthian hills thou next shall reach Pharsalus, and Olympus' peaked snows Shall guide thee o'er the green Pelasgic plains For many a day, but to Argissa come Let old Peneius thy slow pilot be Through Tempe, till they turn upon his left Crowning the wooded slopes with splendours bare. 1130 Thence issuing forth on the Pierian sh.o.r.e Northward of Ossa thou shalt touch the lands Of Macedon.

CHOR. Alas, we wish thee speed, But bid thee here farewell; for out of Greece Thou goest 'mongst the folk whose chattering speech Is like the voice of birds, nor home again Wilt thou return.

PR. Thy way along the coast Lies till it southward turn, when thou shalt seek Where wide on Strymon's plain the hindered flood Spreads like a lake; thy course to his oppose 1140 And face him to the mountain whence he comes: Which doubled, Thrace receives thee: barbarous names Of mountain, town and river, and a people Strange to thine eyes and ears, the Agathyrsi, Of pictured skins, who owe no marriage law, And o'er whose gay-spun garments sprent with gold Their hanging hair is blue. Their torrent swim That measures Europe in two parts, and go Eastward along the sea, to mount the lands Beyond man's dwelling, and the rising steeps 1150 That face the sun untrodden and unnamed.-- Know to earth's verge remote thou then art come, The Scythian tract and wilderness forlorn, Through whose rude rocks and frosty silences No path shall guide thee then, nor my words now.

There as thou toilest o'er the treacherous snows, A sound then thou shall hear to stop thy breath, And p.r.i.c.k thy trembling ears; a far-off cry, Whose throat seems the white mountain and its pa.s.sion The woe of earth. Flee not, nor turn not back: 1160 Let thine ears drink and guide thine eyes to see That sight whose terrors shall a.s.suage thy terror, Whose pain shall kill thy pain. Stretched on the rock, Naked to scorching sun, to pinching frost, To wind and storm and beaks of winged fiends From year to year he lies. Refrain to ask His name and crime--nay, haply when thou see him Thou wilt remember--'tis thy tyrant's foe, Man's friend, who pays his chosen penalty.

Draw near, my child, for he will know thy need, 1170 And point from land to land thy further path.

CHORUS.

O miserable man, hear now the worst.

O weak and tearful race, Born to unhappiness, see now thy cause Doomed and accurst!

It surely were enough, the bad and good Together mingled, against chance and ill To strive, and prospering by turns, Now these, now those, now folly and now skill, Alike by means well understood 1180 Or 'gainst all likelihood; Loveliness slaving to the unlovely will That overrides the right and laughs at law.

But always all in awe And imminent dread: Because there is no mischief thought or said, Imaginable or unguessed, But it may come to be; nor home of rest, Nor hour secure: but anywhere, At any moment; in the air, 1190 Or on the earth or sea, Or in the fair And tender body itself it lurks, creeps in, Or seizes suddenly, Torturing, burning, withering, devouring, Shaking, destroying; till tormented life Sides with the slayer, not to be, And from the cruel strife Falls to fate overpowering.

Or if some patient heart, 1200 In toilsome steps of duty tread apart, Thinking to win her peace within herself, And thus awhile succeed: She must see others bleed, At others' misery moan, And learn the common suffering is her own, From which it is no freedom to be freed: Nay, Nature, her best nurse, Is tender but to breed a finer sense, Which she may easier wound, with smart the worse 1210 And torture more intense.

And no strength for thee but the thought of duty, Nor any solace but the love of beauty.

O Right's toil unrewarded!

O Love's prize unaccorded!

I say this might suffice, O tearful and unstable And miserable man, Were't but from day to day Thy miserable lot, 1220 This might suffice, I say, To term thee miserable.

But thou of all thine ills too must take thought, Must grow familiar till no curse astound thee, With tears recall the past, With tears the times forecast; With tears, with tears thou hast The scapeless net spread in thy sight around thee.

How then support thy fate, O miserable man, if this befall, 1230 That he who loves thee and would aid thee, daring To raise an arm for thy deliverance, Must for his courage suffer worse than all?

IN. Bravest deliverer, for thy prophecy Has torn the veil which hid thee from my eyes, If thyself art that spirit, of whom some things Were darkly spoken,--nor can I doubt thou art, Being that the heaven its fire withholds not from thee Nor time his secrets,--tell me now thy name, That I may praise thee rightly; and my late 1240 Unwitting words pardon thou, and these who still In blinded wonder kneel not to thy love.

PR. Speak not of love. See, I am moved with hate, And fiercest anger, which will sometimes spur The heart to extremity, till it forget That there is any joy save furious war.

Nay, were there now another deed to do, Which more could hurt our enemy than this, Which here I stand to venture, here would I leave thee Conspiring at his altar, and fly off 1250 To plunge the branding terror in his soul.

But now the rising pa.s.sion of my will Already jars his reaching sense, already From heaven he bids his minion Hermes forth To bring his only rebel to his feet.

Therefore no more delay, the time is short.

IN. I take, I take. 'Tis but for thee to give.

PR. O heavenly fire, life's life, the eye of day, Whose nimble waves upon the starry night Of boundless ether love to play, 1260 Carrying commands to every gliding sprite To feed all things with colour, from the ray Of thy bright-glancing, white And silver-spinning light: Unweaving its thin tissue for the bow Of Iris, separating countless hues Of various splendour for the grateful flowers To crown the hasting hours, Changing their special garlands as they choose.

O spirit of rage and might, 1270 Who canst unchain the links of winter stark, And bid earth's stubborn metals flow like oil, Her porphyrous heart-veins boil; Whose arrows pierce the cloudy shields of dark; Let now this flame, which did to life awaken Beyond the cold dew-gathering veils of morn, And thence by me was taken, And in this reed was borne, A smothered theft and gift to man below, Here with my breath revive, 1280 Restore thy lapsed realm, and be the sire Of many an earthly fire.

O flame, flame bright and live, Appear upon the altar as I blow.