path: root/75533-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75533 ***





                            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”



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75533 ***