APOLLO
And then stood forth
The last of the gods I saw, the first in rank
And dignity and beauty, the young god
Who grows not old, the Light of Heaven and Earth,
The Worker from afar, who sends the fire
Of inspiration to the bard and bathes
The world in hues of heaven—the golden link
Between High God and Man.
With a sweet voice
Whose every note was sweetest melody—
The melody has fled, the words remain—
Apollo sang:
"I know how fair the face
Of Purity; I know the treasure of Strength;
I know the charm of Love, the calmer grace
Of Wisdom and of Duteous well-spent lives:
And yet there is a loftier height than these.
There is a Height higher than mortal thought;
There is a Love warmer than mortal love;
There is a Life which taketh not its hues
From Earth or earthly things; and so grows pure
And higher than the petty cares of men,
And is a blessed life and glorified.
Oh, white young souls, strain upward, upward still,
Even to the heavenly source of Purity!
Brave hearts, bear on and suffer! Strike for right,
Strong arms, and hew down wrong! The world hath need
Of all of you—the sensual wrongful world!
Hath need of you, and of thee too, fair Love.
Oh, lovers, cling together! the old world
Is full of Hate. Sweeten it; draw in one
Two separate chords of Life; and from the bond
Of twin souls lost in Harmony create
A Fair God dwelling with you—Love, the Lord!
Waft yourselves, yearning souls, upon the stars;
Sow yourselves on the wandering winds of space;
Watch patient all your days, if your eyes take
Some dim, cold ray of Knowledge. The dull world
Hath need of you—the purblind, slothful world!
Live on, brave lives, chained to the narrow round
Of Duty; live, expend yourselves, and make
The orb of Being wheel onward steadfastly
Upon its path—the Lord of Life alone
Knows to what goal of Good; work on, live on:
And yet there is a higher work than yours.
To have looked upon the face of the Unknown
And Perfect Beauty. To have heard the voice
Of Godhead in the winds and in the seas.
To have known Him in the circling of the suns,
And in the changeful fates and lives of men.
To be fulfilled with Godhead as a cup
Filled with a precious essence, till the hand
On marble or on canvas falling, leaves
Celestial traces, or from reed or string
Draws out faint echoes of the voice Divine
That bring God nearer to a faithless world.
Or, higher still and fairer and more blest,
To be His seer, His prophet; to be the voice
Of the Ineffable Word; to be the glass
Of the Ineffable Light, and bring them down
To bless the earth, set in a shrine of Song.
For Knowledge is a barren tree and bare,
Bereft of God, and Duty but a word,
And Strength but Tyranny, and Love, Desire,
And Purity a folly; and the Soul,
Which brings down God to Man, the Light to the world;
He is the Maker, and is blest, is blest!"
He ended, and I felt my soul grow faint
With too much sweetness.
In a mist of grace
They faded, that bright company, and seemed
To melt into each other and shape themselves
Into new forms, and those fair goddesses
Blent in a perfect woman—all the calm
High motherhood of Heré, the sweet smile
Of Cypris, fair Athené's earnest eyes,
And the young purity of Artemis,
Blent in a perfect woman; and in her arms,
Fused by some cosmic interlacing curves
Of Beauty into a new Innocence,
A child with eyes divine, a little child,
A little child—no more.
And those great gods
Of Power and Beauty left a heavenly form
Strong not to act, but suffer; fair and meek,
Not proud and eager; with soft eyes of grace,
Not bold with joyous youth; and for the fire
Of song, and for the happy careless life,
A sorrowful pilgrimage—changed, yet the same
Only Diviner far; and keeping still
The Life God-lighted and the sacrifice.
ZEUS
And when these faded wholly, at my side,
Tho' hidden before by those too-radiant forms,
I was aware once more of her, my guide
Psyche, who had not left me, floating near
On golden wings; and all the plains of heaven
Were left to us, me and my soul alone.
Then when my thought revived again, I said
Whispering, "But Zeus I saw not, the prime Source
And Sire of all the gods."
And she, bent low
With downcast eyes: "Nay. Thou hast seen of Him
All that thine eyes can bear, in those fair forms
Which are but parts of Him and are indeed
Attributes of the Substance which supports
The Universe of Things—the Soul of the World,
The Stream which flows Eternal, from no Source
Into no Sea, His Purity, His Strength,
His Love, His Knowledge, His unchanging rule
Of Duty, thou hast seen, only a part
And not the whole, being a finite mind
Too weak for infinite thought; nor, couldst thou see
All of Him visible to mortal sight,
Wouldst thou see all His essence, since the gods—
Glorified essences of Human mould,
Who are but Zeus made visible to men—
See Him not wholly, only some thin edge
And halo of His glory; nor know they
What vast and unsuspected Universes
Lie beyond thought, where yet He rules, like those
Vast Suns we cannot see, round which our Sun
Moves with his system, or those darker still
Which not even thus we know, but yet exist
Tho' no eye marks, nor thought itself, and lurk
In the awful Depths of Space; or that which is
Not orbed as yet, but indiscrete, confused,
Sown thro' the void—the faintest gleam of light
Which sets itself to Be. And yet is He
There too, and rules, none seeing. But sometimes
To this our heaven, which is so like to earth
But nearer to Him, for awhile He shows
Some gleam of His own brightness, and methinks
It cometh soon; but thou, if thou shouldst gaze,
Thy Life will rush to His—the tiny spark
Absorbed in that full blaze—and what there is
Of mortal fall from thee."
But I: "Oh, soul,
What holdeth Life more precious than to know
The Giver and to die?"
Then she: "Behold!
Look upward and adore."
And with the word,
Unhasting, undelaying, gradual, sure,
The floating cloud which clothed the hidden peak
Rose slow in awful silence, laying bare
Spire after rocky spire, snow after snow,
Whiter and yet more dreadful, till at last
It left the summit clear.
Then with a bound,
In the twinkling of an eye, in the flash of a thought,
I knew an Awful Effluence of Light,
Formless, Ineffable, Perfect, burst on me
And flood my being round, and take my life
Into itself. I saw my guide bent down
Prostrate, her wings before her face; and then
No more.
But when I woke from my long trance
Behold, it was no longer Tartarus,
Nor Hades, nor Olympus, but the bare
And unideal aspect of the fields
Which Spring not yet had kissed—the strange old Earth
So far more fabulous now than in the days
When Man was young, nor yet the mystery
Of Time and Fate transformed it. From the hills,
The long night fled at last, the unclouded sun,
The dear, fair sun, leapt upward swift, and smote
My sight with rays of gold, and pierced my brain
With too much light ere my entrancèd eyes
Could hide themselves.
And I was on the Earth
Dreaming the dream of Life again, as late
I dreamed the dream of Death.
Another day
Dawned on the race of men; another world;
New heavens, and new earth.
And as I went
Across the lightening fields, upon a bank
I saw a single snowdrop glance, and bring
Promise of Spring; and keeping my old thought
In the old fair Hellenic vesture dressed,
I felt myself a ghost, and seemed to be
Now fair Adonis hasting to the arms
Of his lost love—now sad Persephone
Restored to mother earth—or that high shade
Orpheus, who gave up heaven to save his love,
And is rewarded—or young Marsyas,
Who spent his youth and life for song, and yet
Was happy though in torture—or the fair
And dreaming youth I saw, who still awaits,
Hopeful, the unveiling heaven, when he shall see
His fair ideal love. The birds sang blithe;
There came a tinkling from the waking fold;
And on the hillside from the cot a girl
Tripped singing with her pitcher. All the sounds
And thoughts which still are beautiful—Youth, Song,
Dawn, Spring, Renewal—and my soul was glad
Of all the freshness, and I felt again
The youth and spring-tide of the world, and thought,
Which feigned those fair and gracious fantasies.
For every dawn that breaks brings a new world,
And every budding bosom a new life;
These fair tales, which we know so beautiful,
Show only finer than our lives to-day
Because their voice was clearer, and they found
A sacred bard to sing them. We are pent,
Who sing to-day, by all the garnered wealth
Of ages of past song. We have no more
The world to choose from, who, where'er we turn,
Tread through old thoughts and fair. Yet must we sing—
We have no choice; and if more hard the toil
In noon, when all is clear, than in the fresh
White mists of early morn, yet do we find
Achievement its own guerdon, and at last
The rounder song of manhood grows more sweet
Than the high note of youth.
For Age, long Age!
Nought else divides us from the fresh young days
Which men call ancient; seeing that we in turn
Shall one day be Time's ancients, and inspire
The wiser, higher race, which yet shall sing
Because to sing is human, and high thought
Grows rhythmic ere its close. Nought else there is
But that weird beat of Time, which doth disjoin
To-day from Hellas.
How should any hold
Those precious scriptures only old-world tales
Of strange impossible torments and false gods;
Of men and monsters in some brainless dream,
Coherent, yet unmeaning, linked together
By some false skein of song?
Nay! evermore,
All things and thoughts, both new and old, are writ
Upon the unchanging human heart and soul.
Has Passion still no prisoners? Pine there now
No lives which fierce Love, sinking into Lust,
Has drowned at last in tears and blood—plunged down
To the lowest depths of Hell? Have not strong Will
And high Ambition rotted into Greed
And Wrong, for any, as of old, and whelmed
The struggling soul in ruin? Hell lies near
Around us as does Heaven, and in the World,
Which is our Hades, still the chequered souls
Compact of good and ill—not all accurst
Nor altogether blest—a few brief years
Travel the little journey of their lives,
They know not to what end. The weary woman
Sunk deep in ease and sated with her life,
Much loved and yet unloving, pines to-day
As Helen; still the poet strives and sings.
And hears Apollo's music, and grows dumb,
And suffers, yet is happy; still the young
Fond dreamer seeks his high ideal love,
And finds her name is Death; still doth the fair
And innocent life, bound naked to the rock,
Redeem the race; still the gay tempter goes
And leaves his victim, stone; still doth pain bind
Men's souls in closer links of lovingness,
Than Death itself can sever; still the sight
Of too great beauty blinds us, and we lose
The sense of earthly splendours, gaining Heaven.
And still the skies are opened as of old
To the entrancèd gaze, ay, nearer far
And brighter than of yore; and Might is there,
And Infinite Purity is there, and high
Eternal Wisdom, and the calm clear face
Of Duty, and a higher, stronger Love
And Light in one, and a new, reverend Name,
Greater than any and combining all;
And over all, veiled with a veil of cloud,
God set far off, too bright for mortal eyes.
And always, always, with each soul that comes
And goes, comes that fair form which was my guide,
Hovering, with golden wings and eyes divine,
Above the bed of birth, the bed of death,
Still breathing heavenly airs of deathless love.
For while a youth is lost in soaring thought,
And while a maid grows sweet and beautiful,
And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth,
And while a child, and while a flower is born,
And while one wrong cries for redress and finds
A soul to answer, still the world is young!
THE END
