Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
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Gods whom we may not; for to these they give
Life of their children, flower of all their seed, 310
For all their travail fruit, for all their hopes
Harvest; but we for all our good things, we
Have at their hands which fill all these folk full
Death, barrenness, child-slaughter, curses, cares,
Sea-leaguer and land-shipwreck; which of these,
Which wilt thou first give thanks for? all are thine.
PRAXITHEA.
What first they give who give this city good,
For that first given to save it I give thanks
First, and thanks heartier from a happier tongue,
More than for any my peculiar grace 320
Shown me and not my country; next for this,
That none of all these but for all these I
Must bear my burden, and no eye but mine
Weep of all women’s in this broad land born
Who see their land’s deliverance; but much more,
But most for this I thank them most of all,
That this their edge of doom is chosen to pierce
My heart and not my country’s; for the sword
Drawn to smite there and sharpened for such stroke
Should wound more deep than any turned on me. 330
CHORUS.
Well fares the land that bears such fruit, and well
The spirit that breeds such thought and speech in man.
ERECHTHEUS.
O woman, thou hast shamed my heart with thine,
To show so strong a patience; take then all;
For all shall break not nor bring down thy soul.
The word that journeying to the bright God’s shrine
Who speaks askance and darkling, but his name
Hath in it slaying and ruin broad writ out,
I heard, hear thou: thus saith he; There shall die
One soul for all this people; from thy womb 340
Came forth the seed that here on dry bare ground
Death’s hand must sow untimely, to bring forth
Nor blade nor shoot in season, being by name
To the under Gods made holy, who require
For this land’s life her death and maiden blood
To save a maiden city. Thus I heard,
And thus with all said leave thee; for save this
No word is left us, and no hope alive.
CHORUS.
He hath uttered too surely his wrath not obscurely, nor wrapt
as in mists of his breath, [Str.
The master that lightens not hearts he enlightens, but gives them
foreknowledge of death. 350
As a bolt from the cloud hath he sent it aloud and proclaimed
it afar,
From the darkness and height of the horror of night hath he
shown us a star.
Star may I name it and err not, or flame shall I say,
Born of the womb that was born for the tomb of the day?
O Night, whom other but thee for mother, and Death for the father,
Night, [Ant.
Shall we dream to discover, save thee and thy lover, to bring
such a sorrow to sight?
From the slumberless bed for thy bedfellow spread and his bride
under earth
Hast thou brought forth a wild and insatiable child, an unbearable
birth.
Fierce are the fangs of his wrath, and the pangs that they give;
None is there, none that may bear them, not one that would
live. 360
CHTHONIA.
Forth of the fine-spun folds of veils that hide
My virgin chamber toward the full-faced sun
I set my foot not moved of mine own will,
Unmaidenlike, nor with unprompted speed
Turn eyes too broad or doglike unabashed
On reverend heads of men and thence on thine,
Mother, now covered from the light and bowed
As hers who mourns her brethren; but what grief
Bends thy blind head thus earthward, holds thus mute,
I know not till thy will be to lift up 370
Toward mine thy sorrow-muffled eyes and speak;
And till thy will be would I know this not.
PRAXITHEA.
Old men and childless, or if sons ye have seen
And daughters, elder-born were these than mine,
Look on this child, how young of years, how sweet,
How scant of time and green of age her life
Puts forth its flower of girlhood; and her gait
How virginal, how soft her speech, her eyes
How seemly smiling; wise should all ye be,
All honourable and kindly men of age; 380
Now give me counsel and one word to say
That I may bear to speak, and hold my peace
Henceforth for all time even as all ye now.
Dumb are ye all, bowed eyes and tongueless mouths,
Unprofitable; if this were wind that speaks,
As much its breath might move you. Thou then, child,
Set thy sweet eyes on mine; look through them well;
Take note of all the writing of my face
As of a tablet or a tomb inscribed
That bears me record; lifeless now, my life 390
Thereon that was think written; brief to read,
Yet shall the scripture sear thine eyes as fire
And leave them dark as dead men’s. Nay, dear child,
Thou hast no skill, my maiden, and no sense
To take such knowledge; sweet is all thy lore,
And all this bitter; yet I charge thee learn
And love and lay this up within thine heart,
Even this my word; less ill it were to die
Than live and look upon thy mother dead,
Thy mother-land that bare thee; no man slain 400
But him who hath seen it shall men count unblest,
None blest as him who hath died and seen it not.
CHTHONIA.
That sight some God keep from me though I die.
PRAXITHEA.
A God from thee shall keep it; fear not this.
CHTHONIA.
Thanks all my life long shall he gain of mine.
PRAXITHEA.
Short gain of all yet shall he get of thee.
CHTHONIA.
Brief be my life, yet so long live my thanks.
PRAXITHEA.
So long? so little; how long shall they live?
CHTHONIA.
Even while I see the sunlight and thine eyes.
PRAXITHEA.
Would mine might shut ere thine upon the sun. 410
CHTHONIA.
For me thou prayest unkindly; change that prayer.
PRAXITHEA.
Not well for me thou sayest, and ill for thee.
CHTHONIA.
Nay, for me well, if thou shalt live, not I.
PRAXITHEA.
How live, and lose these loving looks of thine?
CHTHONIA.
It seems I too, thus praying, then, love thee not.
PRAXITHEA.
Lov’st thou not life? what wouldst thou do to die?
CHTHONIA.
Well, but not more than all things, love I life.
PRAXITHEA.
And fain wouldst keep it as thine age allows?
CHTHONIA.
Fain would I live, and fain not fear to die.
PRAXITHEA.
That I might bid thee die not! Peace; no more. 420
CHORUS.
A godlike race of grief the Gods have set
For these to run matched equal, heart with heart.
PRAXITHEA.
Child of the chief of Gods, and maiden crowned,
Queen of these towers and fostress of their king,
Pallas, and thou my father’s holiest head,
A living well of life nor stanched nor
stained,
O God Cephisus, thee too charge I next,
Be to me judge and witness; nor thine ear
Shall now my tongue invoke not, thou to me
Most hateful of things holy, mournfullest 430
Of all old sacred streams that wash the world,
Ilissus, on whose marge at flowery play
A whirlwind-footed bridegroom found my child
And rapt her northward where mine elder-born
Keeps now the Thracian bride-bed of a God
Intolerable to seamen, but this land
Finds him in hope for her sake favourable,
A gracious son by wedlock; hear me then
Thou likewise, if with no faint heart or false
The word I say be said, the gift be given, 440
Which might I choose I had rather die than give
Or speak and die not. Ere thy limbs were made
Or thine eyes lightened, strife, thou knowest, my child,
‘Twixt God and God had risen, which heavenlier name
Should here stand hallowed, whose more liberal grace
Should win this city’s worship, and our land
To which of these do reverence; first the lord
Whose wheels make lightnings of the foam-flowered sea
Here on this rock, whose height brow-bound with dawn
Is head and heart of Athens, one sheer blow 450
Struck, and beneath the triple wound that shook
The stony sinews and stark roots of the earth
Sprang toward the sun a sharp salt fount, and sank
Where lying it lights the heart up of the hill,
A well of bright strange brine; but she that reared
Thy father with her same chaste fostering hand
Set for a sign against it in our guard
The holy bloom of the olive, whose hoar leaf
High in the shadowy shrine of Pandrosus
Hath honour of us all; and of this strife 460
The twelve most high Gods judging with one mouth
Acclaimed her victress; wroth whereat, as wronged
That she should hold from him such prize and place,
The strong king of the tempest-rifted sea
Loosed reinless on the low Thriasian plain
The thunders of his chariots, swallowing stunned
Earth, beasts, and men, the whole blind foundering world
That was the sun’s at morning, and ere noon
Death’s; nor this only prey fulfilled his mind;
For with strange crook-toothed prows of Carian folk 470
Who snatch a sanguine life out of the sea,
Thieves keen to pluck their bloody fruit of spoil
From the grey fruitless waters, has their God
Furrowed our shores to waste them, as the fields
Were landward harried from the north with swords
Aonian, sickles of man-slaughtering edge
Ground for no hopeful harvest of live grain
Against us in Bœotia; these being spent,
Now this third time his wind of wrath has blown
Right on this people a mightier wave of war, 480
Three times more huge a ruin; such its ridge
Foam-rimmed and hollow like the womb of heaven,
But black for shining, and with death for life
Big now to birth and ripe with child, full-blown
With fear and fruit of havoc, takes the sun
Out of our eyes, darkening the day, and blinds
The fair sky’s face unseasonably with change,
A cloud in one and billow of battle, a surge
High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears
That shake on us their shadow, till men’s heads 490
Bend, and their hearts even with its forward wind
Wither, so blasts all seed in them of hope
Its breath and blight of presage; yea, even now
The winter of this wind out of the deeps
Makes cold our trust in comfort of the Gods
And blind our eye toward outlook; yet not here,
Here never shall the Thracian plant on high
For ours his father’s symbol, nor with wreaths
A strange folk wreathe it upright set and crowned
Here where our natural people born behold 500
The golden Gorgon of the shield’s defence
That screens their flowering olive, nor strange Gods
Be graced, and Pallas here have praise no more.
And if this be not I must give my child,
Thee, mine own very blood and spirit of mine,
Thee to be slain. Turn from me, turn thine eyes
A little from me; I can bear not yet
To see if still they smile on mine or no,
If fear make faint the light in them, or faith
Fix them as stars of safety. Need have we, 510
Sore need of stars that set not in mid storm,
Lights that outlast the lightnings; yet my heart
Endures not to make proof of thine or these,
Not yet to know thee whom I made, and bare
What manner of woman; had I borne thee man,
I had made no question of thine eyes or heart,
Nor spared to read the scriptures in them writ,
Wert thou my son; yet couldst thou then but die
Fallen in sheer fight by chance and charge of spears
And have no more of memory, fill no tomb 520
More famous than thy fellows in fair field,
Where many share the grave, many the praise;
But one crown shall one only girl my child
Wear, dead for this dear city, and give back life
To him that gave her and to me that bare,
And save two sisters living; and all this,
Is this not all good? I shall give thee, child,
Thee but by fleshly nature mine, to bleed
For dear land’s love; but if the city fall
What part is left me in my children then? 530
But if it stand and thou for it lie dead,
Then hast thou in it a better part than we,
A holier portion than we all; for each
Hath but the length of his own life to live,
And this most glorious mother-land on earth
To worship till that life have end; but thine
Hath end no more than hers; thou, dead, shalt live
Till Athens live not; for the days and nights
Given of thy bare brief dark dividual life,
Shall she give thee half all her agelong own 540
And all its glory; for thou givest her these;
But with one hand she takes and gives again
More than I gave or she requires of thee.
Come therefore, I will make thee fit for death,
I that could give thee, dear, no gift at birth
Save of light life that breathes and bleeds, even I
Will help thee to this better gift than mine
And lead thee by this little living hand
That death shall make so strong, to that great end
Whence it shall lighten like a God’s, and strike 550
Dead the strong heart of battle that would break
Athens; but ye, pray for this land, old men,
That it may bring forth never child on earth
To love it less, for none may more, than we.
CHORUS.
Out of the north wind grief came forth, [Str. 1.
And the shining of a sword out of the sea.
Yea, of old the first-blown blast blew the prelude of this last,
The blast of his trumpet upon Rhodope.
Out of the north skies full of his cloud,
With the clamour of his storms as of a crowd 560
At the wheels of a great king crying aloud,
At the axle of a strong king’s car
That has girded on the girdle of war —
And feet whose fall was followed of thunder,
A God, a great God strange of name,
With horse-yoke fleeter-hoofed than flame,
To the mountain bed of a maiden came,
Oreithyia, the bride mismated,
Wofully wed in a snow-strewn bed 570
With a bridegroom that kisses the bride’s mouth dead;
Without garland, without glory, without song,
As a fawn by night on the hills belated,
Given over for a spoil unto the strong.
From lips how pale so keen a wail [Ant. 1.
At the grasp of a God’s hand on her she gave,
When his breath that darkens air made a havoc of her hair,
It rang from the mountain even to the wave;
Rang with a cry, Woe’s me, woe is me!
From the darkness upon Hæmus to the sea: 580
And with hands that clung to her new lord’s knee,
As a virgin overborne with shame,
She besought him by her spouseless fame,
By the blameless breasts of a maid unmarried
And locks unmaidenly rent and harried,
And all her flower of body, born
To match the maidenhood of morn,
With the might of the wind’s wrath wrenched and torn.
Vain, all vain as a dead man’s vision
Falling by night in his old friends’ sight, 590
To be scattered with slumber and slain ere light;
Such a breath of such a bridegroom in that hour
Of her prayers made mock, of her fears derision,
And a ravage of her youth as of a flower.
With a leap of his limbs as a lion’s, a cry from his lips as
of thunder, [Str. 2.
In a storm of amorous godhead filled with fire,
From the height of the heaven that was rent with the roar of his
coming in sunder,
Sprang the strong God on the spoil of his desire.
And the pines of the hills were as green reeds shattered,
And their branches as buds of the soft spring scattered, 600
And the west wind and east, and the sound of the south,
Fell dumb at the blast of the north wind’s mouth,
At the cry of his coming out of heaven.
And the wild beasts quailed in the rifts and hollows
Where hound nor clarion of huntsman follows,
And the depths of the sea were aghast, and whitened,
And the crowns of their waves were as flame that lightened,