The White Sail, and Other Poems

The White Sail, and Other Poems

Title: The White Sail, and Other Poems Author: Louise Imogen Guiney Release Date: June 14, 2017 [EBook #54907] Language: English Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif, Emmy, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) HIGH on the lone and wave-scarred porphyry, The promontoried porch of Attica, Past evenfall, sat he whose reverend hair Down-glittered with the breakers volleying foam Visioned before him in the level dark: geus, of wronged Pandion heir, and king. And round about his knees, and at his feet, In saffrons and sad greens alone bedight, Sat, clustered in dim wayward sidelong groups Sheer to the oceans edge, those liegemen fond Who with him wished and wept. As thro the hours Of ebbing autumn, on a northward hill, Lies summers russet ruined panoply, Knotted and heaped by the fantastic winds Hap-hazard, while the first adventuring snow Globes itself on the summit; so they clung Secure among the rangd crevices,{12} Month after month, and wakeful night on night Vigilant; ever neighbored and oertopped With that white presence, and the boding sky. And geus prayed: O give me back but him! My desert palm, my moorland mid-day fount, My leopard-foot, in equal tameless grace Swaying suavely down cool garden-paths Or into battles maw: my lad of Athens! With bronze and tangly curls a-toss, to show Infancys golden-silken underglow; The glad eye dusking blue, as is the sea Ere fiery sunset tricks it; and the lashes In one close sombre file against his cheek, Enphalanxed in perpetual trail and droop, Wherethro gleams laughter as thro sorrows pale. And angers self doth tremble maidenly; The massy throat; the nostril mobile, smooth; The breast full-orbed with arduous large pride, As I so oft have marked, when from the chase, The witness-dropping knife swung with the bow, Heading the burdened company, he came, Aye vermeil with the wholesome wind, outwrestler Of storms and perils all. High-mettled Theseus! Keystone of greatness, bond of expectation, Stay of this realm! in his strong-sinewed beauty{13} Dear unto men as Tanais bright-sanded Whose flood harmonious lapses on the ear, And makes for hearts yoke-wearied, thither roaming, Thrice feastful holiday. Ah, righteous gods! Forasmuch as I love him and await him, Who from my youth have been your servitor, Yield my old age its boon of vindication: Haven the happy ship here, ere I die. Still heedlessly the hushed moon bent her bow Over the unshorn forest oakenry And the dense gladiate leaves of Thors pine: The cold and incommunicable moon, Waxing and waning thro the barren time That brought not Theseus self, nor of him sign, Nor any waif of rumor out of Crete, Whereto, a year nigh gone, the ship had sped Forlorn; her decks enshrouded in plucked yew Strewn to the mizzen; and her oary props And halyards all with blossomed myrtle twined, And every sail dark as from looms of hell, In token of the universal dole. And on her heavd anchor and spurred keel Cheers none, but protest, moans, and ire attended, When from the quay, in melancholy weather Forward she sobbed on black unwilling wing.{14} But ere that going drear, one foot ashore, Theseus with his mild comrades hand in hand, The seven maids and boys to bondage sealed, Lifted his head, and met his fathers eyes, And out of morning ardor made this oath: My people, stand not for our sakes in tears! No shape of ill shall daunt me; I will strike And overcome, Heavens favor for my shield. And when engirt with conquest I return (Or never else hies Theseus hitherward), That ye may read my heart while yet at sea, And know indeed that fate hath used me fair, That these your lambs I shepherd and lead home, Lo, I will set upon the central mast The sky-sail white! white to the hollowing breeze, White to that fierce and alien coast, and white To your espial, from the horizons brink Unto the moored fulfilment of your joy. Watch: you that keep your faith and love in me. And they believed and watched, albeit with dread, Steadfastly without plaint, to soothe the king, Who, taciturn and close-engarmented, From his nocturnal towered station leaned Pining against the unresponsive tide. And thro his brain, with hum processional,{15} Wheeled memories of Theseus, deeds of Theseus, The race he won of yore, the song he sang; His truth, his eloquence, his April moods, And all his championship of trodden tribes, Since first he lit on Athens, like a star. For geus, to the low-voiced Meta wed, Thereafter to Rhexenors daughter spouse, Childless, and by his brethrens guile deposed, Led by a last mysterious oracle, Once, exiled, to Trzene wandered down; And there, accorded Aphrodites grace, To whom the sacrificial smoke he raised, Atonement and conciliation sweet, Begot to Greece her hero; and straightway Bereavd thra, of old Pelops race Forsook, by destined rumor summoned home. But with the auroral kiss of parting, he In the spring sunshine, on the mellow shore Laid his huge blade beneath a caverned rock, And both the jewelled sandals from his feet, With lofty exhortation: Bid my son, When he, with strength inherited of mine Can heave this boulder, take the sword and shoon, And claim in Athens me his sire. Farewell!{16} And thra bided, dreaming, at the court, Till from her knee laughed back her own blue eyes. And the young boy, loosed in sun-dappled groves, Defiant, chased the droning harvest-fly, Or nicked pomegranates with his ruddy thumb Ripe from the bough; nor would his mother chide, But with strange awe hang oer him worshipping, As one that turns with passionate-praying lips East to the Delian shrine he shall not see: Save once, when he a turtle-pigeon pent In wicker-work of some swart soldiers skill, With lisping promise aye to nourish it; And stroked his plaining bird for one long day, But on the morrow ceased his fostering, And left his captive caged, the tiny gourd Of water unreplenished. Then the child Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute; And thra held his innocent hand in hers With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw Remorse, and irremediable ache, And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves To the eased byways of forgetfulness. She, his hot brows caressing, so besought The weeping prince: If thou, O little son!{17} Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself, Stand mindful of them; all thy vows observe. Be a trust broken but a small, small thing, Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe. And ere the dial veered, did thra speak His vanished fathers name and gave the charge, And led him to the rock, and in him fired The aspirations of his godlike race. Lost quite to former pastimes, thenceforth he Brooded on her sweet chronicle; and oft Burst thro arcades and vaporous aisles of dawn, And stood, flushed in the rubious dimpling light, Straining his thews at sunrise, to cajole The granite treasurer of those tokens twain: With his young heel intrenched in faithless sand, His cloud of yellow hair hanging before, Tugged at the flint; or pressed his forward knee With obdurate sieges, into its hard side; Anon, with restful rosy stretch of limb, Plunged to the onset, hound-like, on all fours, Beating a moated way about that place Where the grim guardian held a fixd foot; And ever, noon on noon, with petulant tears, Stole back, oervanquished, to his quiet nooks. There would he woo his mothers frequent tale,{18} And urge her gentle prophecy, that he The kinsman of great Herakles, should too Rise, mighty, and oer earths fell odds prevail. Wherefore, at waking-time, he plucked up heart To wrestle with the pitiless rock anew, Season on season, patient. And behold, When the tenth summers delicate keen dews Died from his shoreward path, at last befell One sure petrean tremor, one weird shock At his tense vigor; and ere twilight failed, Clean to the seas verge rolled that doughty bulk! And Theseus, in his full inheritance, In the superb meridian of his youth, Sandalled, the great hilt hard against his breast, Climbed to his mothers bower. thra laid Her lips to his warm cygnet neck, and swooned, Thereby apprised the destined hour had come, And having sped her boy upon his quest, Drooped, like a sun-void lily, and so died. Then radiant Theseus, journeying overland, All robber-plagues infesting those still glens Physicianed, and redeemed all realms distressed. Pha, prodigious Crommyonian shape, Apt Cercyon of Arcadia, he slew; And of his dominant valor overcame{19} The smith-gods son, who with the mortal mace Beleaguered travellers in Epidaur; Unburied martyrs fitly to avenge, He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs; And him that thrust the lavers of his feet Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served By dint of hospitable precedent; Wide Marathonias lordly bull he led, Engarlanded with hyacinth and rose, To the knifes edge at bland Apollos shrine; Last, guided to a grove sabbatical, Knelt to the chanting white Phytalid, And in their midst was chrismed, and purified From all the bloodshed of his troublous path. On to the gate of Athens Theseus strode, Docile to thras warning, that unnamed, And with strict privacy, he should seek his sire; For fifty jealous sons of Pallas held The citys sovereignty; and overruled Their fathers childless brother, geus old: The agile, able, proud Pallantid, Whose wrath would rise against the tardy heir, Tumultuous, and encompass Greece in war. Therefore, unheralded, with wary step,{20} Chancing upon an open banquet-hall, Preceded of his fame, came brave-arrayed The stranger hero, but erewhile a boy; And straight, along the heaped board glancing down, Evil Medea, on her harmful track From Corinth unto Colchis, intercepted. This was Medea of the Fleecemen, late Her tender brothers slayer, whose vile spells Had promised geus princes of his blood. Stole from him, at the beck of that mock moon, Honor, the flood august of all his life: For he, distrustful of the oracles, Inasmuch as Trzene flowered no hope, Now in the season of his utmost need, Subservient to the sorceress and her whims, Blasphemed, in slackened faith, and clave to her; And strangling conscience, made his thraldom fine With golden incident and public pomp, Holding by night most sumptuous festival, Feasting beside her, restless and unthroned. Now Theseus knew that wily womans face, Who, reading her arraignment in his eyes, Shrank close to geus, voluble with fear, And urged within his palm a carven bowl, That he should bid the young wayfarer drain{21} Health to Medea! in one envenomed draught: Which Theseus heard, alert, past harp and bell, Past intervening hubbub of rich mirth, And sprang to cower the temptress with a word. But at the instant, sprang her minions too, And riot and upbraidings dire began, Conflict, and scorn, and drunken challenging. Then leaped quicksilvered Theseus thro the fray, With loves suspicion kindling in his veins, And gained that space before the startled host Whence from her couch Medea shrieked away: Limned beautiful and clear from front to feet, Shod with the shoon gean; and his arm Sabred with the one sword that geus knew! Who, blanching neath roused memorys ebb and flow, Among the wrangling merry-makers all, Clarioned My own! and strained him to his breast. Theseus, in those fresh days of his return, Tarried not idle; but with warlike haste Bore down on the usurping lords of state, Juniors and kin of his discrownd sire; Them, ere the morrow dwindled, he beheld Scattered as chaff from off the threshing-floor, And geus, oer the wreckage of their reign Exalted, with calm brows indiademed.{22} Then was the sacred and sequestered prime Of liberation, benison, and peace; When the round heaven, in summers ministrance Rolled on its choral axle; till, at end Like to a cloudlet that assails the blue, Comely and yet with rains ingerminate, Minos the Cretan unto Athens sent His nimble princeling. In a fortnights span, The island lad, competing in the games, Won fairly; whereupon the envious mob Made rude revolt, and took upon itself The barbarous dishonor of his death. And vengeful Minos sailed, and razed the town, Laying the bitter forfeit in this wise: Athens shall yearly proffer unto me Her virgin tribute of patrician seed, Seven youths, and maidens seven, as by lot, Wherewith to feed the ravenous Minotaur. Athens the peerless bowed her ashen head. So dragged the dreadful twelvemonth thro the realm, Aye of its dearest blood depopulate, And losing grasp on life. The fourth weak year, Youngest of all departed, full thirteen Faltered aboard the deck calamitous; And with them Theseus, best-belovd Theseus,{23} The kings sole-born, whom last the doom befell. But as no sister-galley eer set out To dolorous ports predestined, in due lapse Returning with her steersman, went this ship, Not hopeless; now her bravest made his vaunt To thread the maze Ddalian, and destroy The pampered monster, holding harm at bay From the frail flock of Athens; and to flash Homeward, to chime of oar-compelld waves, Signalling with the white exultant sail! So that I live, this thing, he said, is sworn: Watch! you that keep your faith and love in me. Such tales of Theseus youth his fathers mind Rehearsed, while at his vigil in the night, Deep pondering on each noble circumstance, As a man shifteth, thro an idle hour, Anon with hand in light, anon in shade, The lustres of his one memorial gem. And oft the king, with a foreboding throe Called, urging elds unserviceable sight: Shines the white sail yet? Spake the murmurous ring: Nay; but fantastic clouds low-wandering on. Then the fond voice of geus, askingly: Alcamenes! yield my sad heart a song.{24} Rose kind Alcamenes, who from his birth The king had cherished, from a mossy seat, The anxious faces turned his happy way; And with his pose quiescent, lyre in arm, Breathed forth a simple ditty, sweet-sustained Against the diapason of the sea. Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces, Thy silver-margined voice like the ample moon and free: Ah, beautiful! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces, The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee. My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day! And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging, Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away. But the king hid his brow in both wan hands, Sighing: That song at her beguiling feet, Out of my brief enslavement, did I make The year that Theseus on our revels stole. It sears me like a brand with fires oerpast: Be silent, my Alcamenes! spare it me. Thou rather, Theron, sing! Engird my pain With some thrice-gallant catch, some madrigal That sets the dull blood dancing. Theron smiled,{25} Masking suspense (for he was Theseus friend), Half-prone beneath his damask cloak, with chin Hand-propped; and fixed his dark eyes on the king, In trolling of an agitated lay. I drowse in the grass, to the crickets elfin strings, With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book, At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs, Cydippes hand in my hair.... Ah, horrible thrill! Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look, My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill, In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook: Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill! My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings, Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there. See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippes hand thro my hair. Again, with swift uneasy gesturing Turned geus, chiding, and protested ere The whipped-up courage of that roundels close: Cease, Theron! this is but an ominous song, A song of retribution. For he thought: So retribution dogs my bruisd age; Still, still Medeas soft and deadly name Stings all the leafy splendor of my life,{26} And daunts the morrows bud. And if there be A reckoning I must pay for follies past, Must it beO not that, not now, not here! And drawing to his height, he cried: The sail? Comes the sail from the south? They chorused Naught Save argent flutterings of the shoreward gull. And geus, craving solace, urged once more: Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul, In numbers honey-clear. Now Rhodalus The poet, too, was loyal sentinel; A fiery patriot, wont to domineer The moods of Athens; very potent he, And flexile-throated as the nightingale. With all his fingers knit about his knee, And head against a hoary pillar raised, Dream-locked, upon the lowest sprayey ledge, Riddling the unintelligible space, Void thrones, and filmy wakes of fugitives, And interstellar agonies of midnight; To him the kings voice throbbed a second time: Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul. Who, grave with poesys most candid mien, Answered the summons softly: Sire, I cannot. The music of my brothers is amiss, So mine would be. Our strings are jangled, wrested{27} From their discreet and silvern vassalage, Snapped quite with languishment for Theseus sake. I cannot sing. But O you holy stars! Stretching to us your tendrils of high glory; Tacit compellers of our wayward spirits; You domd guardians of this tear-bound earth, You rich-wrought visions, charioted thousands Hale rank on rank, thro warless cities riding! Young semispheric moon, O burning Seven, Hesper and Phosphor! blue hour-measuring orbs That elsewhere look on Theseus! Speed his pinnace, Bide thro the watches with us; shine; exhale not! And the dense quiet bound them. Cautiously, In his far corner, one behind the king At the dumb bursting-point of that weird hush, With nervous finger twitched his neighbors sleeve, And strove to whisper him with palsied tongue, And straight relaxed, and smiled; but new-convinced Towards twilights gracious advent, crept in awe With arm extended, to his fellows side; And the two thrilled alike, immovable, Each palm down-roofed above the frantic eye, Froze at their posts: which eager Theron marked, Piloting his keen sight across the main, And smote his bosom with quick-smothered groan,{28} And, breathless, gazed and gazed. By twos and threes The apprehensive company dropped aghast Out on the reeling ragged precipice Sparkled and shelled with the oncoming tide: Till geus, slow-divining dupe of hope, Awoke, and knelt him down against his throne, Faint with thanksgiving. And the moments creaked In gyral passage, like Ixions wheel, Spoke on accursd spoke, portending woe. But he, athwart his lonely pinnacle Called like a ghost from walled eternity: What of the sail? What cheer? Their lips congealed Nothing replied. The cruel hour rolled on. Intolerable arid east-blown wave Vaulting on wave thro all her caverns loud, Far upon Oliaros boomed the sea. Then bearded Rhodalus, compassionate, Spied leaning oer the crags the frenzied king, Rending his garment to the paling moon; And yet evasive of those pleading eyes, Knotting his arms against his breast, downcast, Adjured him: O most reverend, O most dear! The heart of life is rotten; prayer is vain. Stay up thy soul: for lo! the sail is black. And all the trancd host burst into moan.{29} Old geus, like a dreamer, muttered Aye, Passive; and from his brain the fever fell, And more than Zeus himself, he things unseen Saw, and to unheard choirings lent his ear. Theseus, truth-speaking, vowed the sky-sail white; The sail was black: therefore was Theseus dead In untriumphant state; his comrades, dead; Dead, the emprise of Greece; her dynasty Ungendered, dead; the very gods were dead! And he alive, alive? a wind-worn leaf All winter gibbeted upon that bough Whence the last fruit was reft? O mockery! Inert, of his own broken heart impelled, From the steep, solitary trysting-place, King geus, like a stone, dropped in the sea. A wraith of smoke, fast-driven against a flame, Yon by the crimsoning east the dark ship moved, Her herald noises strangely borne ashore: Joy, joy! and interlinked: O joy, O joy, Athens our mother! joy to all thy gates! And thunderous firm acclaim of minstrelsy, Laughter, and antheming, and salvos wild Outran the racing prow. But mute they lay, The blinded watchers, spent beyond desire, Wounded beyond this wonders balsaming.{30} Yet ever, thro the trembling lovely light, Known voice on voice re-echoed, face on face Uprose in resurrection. They were safe, And Athens, hark! from her long thraldom free! And Theseus, victor, sang and sailed with them, The pale unsistered Phdra for his bride, For whom was constant Ariadne cast On Naxos, where a god did comfort her. Theseus! who when his bark the shallows grazed, Leaped in the gentle waves for boyish glee, Gained the thronged highway, crossed it at a bound, Scaling the cliffs; and stood among them there, Clausus, and his dear Theron, and the rest, Nodding upon the clamorous crowd below; But they, as soon, had turned them blunt away, In hot resentment of that false one. He, Oerbrimming with frank welcomes, in dismay, Stricken with sight of unresponsive hands, Scenting disaster, reining up his tongue, Asked sharply for the king. He understood After mad struggle and bewilderment, And gloomy gazing on the absent deeps. Down on the penitential rock he sank, All his fair body palpitant with shame, Syllabing agony: geus, geus! ah,{31} Glory of Hellas! dead for trust in me. Life-giver, irrecoverable friend, My father! ah, ah, loving father mine, Ah, dear my father!... I forgot the sail. And the great morn burst. On a hundred hills The marigold unbarred her casement bright. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 54907
Author: Guiney, Louise Imogen
Release Date: Jun 14, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English