The very tongue, whose keen reproof before
Had wounded me, that either cheek was stain'd,
Now minister'd my cure. So have I heard,
Achilles and his father's javelin caus'd
Pain first, and then the boon of health restor'd.

Turning our back upon the vale of woe,
W cross'd th' encircled mound in silence. There
Was twilight dim, that far long the gloom
Mine eye advanc'd not: but I heard a horn
Sounded aloud. The peal it blew had made
The thunder feeble. Following its course
The adverse way, my strained eyes were bent
On that one spot. So terrible a blast
Orlando blew not, when that dismal rout
O'erthrew the host of Charlemagne, and quench'd
His saintly warfare. Thitherward not long
My head was rais'd, when many lofty towers
Methought I spied. "Master," ...

Thy look of love has power to calm
The stormiest passion of my soul;
Thy gentle words are drops of balm
In life's too bitter bowl;
No grief is mine, but that alone
These choicest blessings I have known.

Harriet! if all who long to live
In the warm sunshine of thine eye,
That price beyond all pain must give, -
Beneath thy scorn to die;
Then hear thy chosen own too late
His heart most worthy of thy hate.

Be thou, then, one among mankind
Whose heart is harder not for state,
Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
Amid a world of hate;
And by a slight endurance seal
A fellow-being's lasting weal.

For pale with anguish is his cheek,
His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim,
Thy name is struggling ere he speak,
Weak is each trembl...

Every day is Judgment Day,
Count on no to-morrow.
He who will not, when he may,
Act to-day, to-day, to-day,
Doth but borrow
Sorrow.

He only sees both sides of that dark vail
That hangs before men's eyes--
He only. It is well!
Hope ever stands unseen
Behind the screen,
For knowledge would bring Hope to sudden death,
And cloud the present with the coming ill.
I would lie still, Dear Lord,
I would lie still,
And stay my troubled heart on Thee,
Obedient to Thy will.

Fat trains go down loud tracks
Past houses, which are like coffins.
On the corners wheelbarrows with bananas squat.
Just a bit of shit makes a tough kid happy.
The human beasts glide along, completely lost
As though on a street, miserably gray and shrill.
Workers stream from dilapidated gates.
A weary person moves quietly in a round tower.
A hearse crawls along the street, two steeds out front,
Soft as a worm and weak.
And over all lies an old rag -
The sky... pagan and meaningless.

Because God put His adamantine fate
Between my sullen heart and its desire,
I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,
Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.
Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,
But Love was as a flame about my feet;
Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat
Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry.

All the great courts were quiet in the sun,
And full of vacant echoes: moss had grown
Over the glassy pavement, and begun
To creep within the dusty council-halls.
An idle wind blew round an empty throne
And stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.

There was an Old Person of Tartary,
Who divided his jugular artery;
But he screeched to his wife,
And she said, "Oh, my life!
Your death will be felt by all Tartary!"

    I follow, tottering, in the funeral train
    That bears my body to the welcoming grave.
    As those I mourn not, that entomb the brave,
    But smile as those that lay aside the vain;

    To me it is a thing of poor disdain,
        A clod I would not give a sigh to save!
    I follow, careless, in the funeral train,
        My outworn raiment to the cleansing grave.

    I follow to the grave with growing pain--
        Then sudden cry: Let Earth take what she gave!
        And turn in gladness from the yawning cave--
    Glad even for those whose tears yet flow amain:
    They also follow, in their funeral train,
        Outworn necessities to the welcoming grave!

The sun said, watching my watering-pot
"Some morn you'll pass away;
These flowers and plants I parch up hot -
Who'll water them that day?

"Those banks and beds whose shape your eye
Has planned in line so true,
New hands will change, unreasoning why
Such shape seemed best to you.

"Within your house will strangers sit,
And wonder how first it came;
They'll talk of their schemes for improving it,
And will not mention your name.

"They'll care not how, or when, or at what
You sighed, laughed, suffered here,
Though you feel more in an hour of the spot
Than they will feel in a year

"As I look on at you here, now,
Shall I look on at these;
But as to our old times, avow
No knowledge - hold my peace! . . .

"O friend, it ...

When God drave the ruthless waters
From our cornfields to the sea,
Came she where our wives and daughters
Sobbed their thanks on bended knee.
Hidden faces! there ye found her
Mute as death, and staring wild
At the shadow waxing round her
Like the presence of her child
Of her drenched and drowning child!

Dark thoughts live when tears won’t gather;
Who can tell us what she felt?
It was human, O my Father,
If she blamed Thee while she knelt!
Ever, as a benediction
Fell like balm on all and each,
Rose a young face whose affliction
Choked and stayed the founts of speech
Stayed and shut the founts of speech!

Often doth she sit and ponder
Over gleams of happy hair!
How her white hands used to wander,
Like a flood of moonlight ther...

'T is not alone that black and yawning void
    That makes her heart ache with this hungry pain,
But the glad sense of life hath been destroyed,
    The lost delight may never come again.
Yet myriad serious blessings with grave grace
Arise on every side to fill their place.


For much abides in her so lonely life, -
    The dear companionship of her own kind,
Love where least looked for, quiet after strife,
    Whispers of promise upon every wind,
A quickened insight, in awakened eyes,
For the new meaning of the earth and skies.


The nameless charm about all things hath died,
    Subtle as aureole round a shadow's head,
Cast on the dewy grass at morning-tide;
    Yet though the glory and the joy be fled,
'T is much her own endurance to hav...

The Desert sands are heated, parched and dreary,
    The tigers rend alive their quivering prey
In the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary,
    Too gorged with living food to fly away.

All night the hungry jackals howl together
    Over the carrion in the river bed,
Or seize some small soft thing of fur or feather
    Whose dying shrieks on the night air are shed.

I hear from yonder Temple in the distance
    Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled,
Reiterated with a sad insistence
    Sobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.

Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper,
    Are consummated in the river bed;
Parias steal the rotten railway sleeper
    To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.

But yet, their lust, thei...

She walks in a lonely garden
        On the path her feet have made,
With high-heeled shoes, gold-buckled,
        And gown of a flowered brocade;

The hair that falls on her shoulders,
        Half-held with a ribbon tie,
Once glowed like the wheat in autumn,
        Now grey as a winter sky.

Time on her brow with rough fingers
        Writes his record of smiles and tears;
And her mind, like a golden timepiece,
        He stopped in the long past years.

At the foot of the lonely garden,
        When she comes to the trysting place
She knew of old, there she lingers,
        With a blush on her withered face.

The children out on the common:
        They climb to the garden wall;
And laugh: “He will come to-morrow!”
      ...

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her ...

And they have drown'd thee then at last! poor Phillis!
The burthen of old age was heavy on thee.
And yet thou should'st have lived! what tho' thine eye
Was dim, and watch'd no more with eager joy
The wonted call that on thy dull sense sunk
With fruitless repetition, the warm Sun
Would still have cheer'd thy slumber, thou didst love
To lick the hand that fed thee, and tho' past
Youth's active season, even Life itself
Was comfort. Poor old friend! most earnestly
Would I have pleaded for thee: thou hadst been
Still the companion of my childish sports,
And, as I roam'd o'er Avon's woody clifts,
From many a day-dream has thy short quick bark
Recall'd my wandering soul. I have beguil'd
Often the melancholy hours at school,
Sour'd by some little tyrant, with the thou...

    Between two common days this day was hung
    When Love went to the ending that was his;
    His seamless robe was rent, his brow was wrung,
    He took at last the sponge's bitter kiss.

    A simple day the dawn had watched unfold
    Before the night had borne the death of love;
    You took the bread I blessed, and love was sold
    Upon your lips, and paid the price thereof.

    I changed then, as when soul from body slips,
    And casts its passion and its pain aside;
    I pledged you with most spiritual lips,
    And gave you hands that you had crucified.
    You who betrayed, kissed, crucified, forgot,
    You walked with Christ, poor fool, and knew it not!

The Master stood upon the mount, and taught.
He saw a fire in his disciples’ eyes;
‘The old law’, they said, ‘is wholly come to naught!
Behold the new world rise!’

‘Was it’, the Lord then said, ‘with scorn ye saw
The old law observed by Scribes and Pharisees?
I say unto you, see ye keep that law
More faithfully than these!

‘Too hasty heads for ordering worlds, alas!
Think not that I to annul the law have will’d;
No jot, no tittle from the law shall pass,
Till all hath been fulfill’d.’

So Christ said eighteen hundred years ago.
And what then shall be said to those to-day,
Who cry aloud to lay the old world low
To clear the new world’s way?

‘Religious fervours! ardour misapplied!
Hence, hence,’ they cry, ’ye do but keep man blind!

CHTHONOË    MYRTILLA
RHODOPE    PASIPHASSA
GORGO    SITYS

**    *    *    *

SCENE

The women's house in the House of Paris in Troy.

TIME.--The Tenth year of the War.

**    *    *    *

Helen's women are lying alone in the twilight hour. Chthonoë presently rises and throws a little incense upon the altar flame. Then she begins to speak to the Image of Aphrodite in a low and tired voice.


    CHTHONOË

Goddess of burning and little rest,
By the hand swaying on thy breast,
By glancing eye and slow sweet smile
Tell me what long look or what guile
Of thine it was that like a spear
Pierced her heart, who caged me here
In this close house, to be with her
Mistress at once and prisoner!
Far from earth a...