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 | The poems of Trumbull Stickney |  |
249
VIII
THE DEATH OF AISCHYLOS
(A HEADLAND NEAR SYRACUSE. WILD STORM)
The wind walks wildly in the trees to-night.
I feel mine age. Like this Sikelian day
From gold faded to Erebos, so I;
My triumphs like clouds I gather round me, and
Sink now. The travail of the storm-scourged sea,
The windy rack, the thunder's vivid leap
Where the slit-lightnings ope their ghastly lips,—
It merges all, and from ten thousand worlds,
Sucked in the caves by slimy shores, I hear
Only the windy sough of Acheron!
There 's storm in heaven, the wroth gods threaten war,
And Zeus in agony hurls on the impotent world
His foamy spleen. Our 'lated end has come,
Tho' the Earth start up Promethean to rebel;
She shudders, and her bowels, gouged and rent
By the fell tempest's horns, shall lie like dust
Distracted thro' the oblivious universe.
The Erinys range abroad: of old they worked
On men—thieves, liars, adulterers, parricides,
The horde of crime; on nations—Lydian wealth
And Persia's loud-mouthed greed; to-day, the world!
For there are world's Erinys even as men's,
And on her bloody track they follow. Now the worlds,
Hellas and all that is not Hellas, pay. ...
I feel mine age. Like this Sikelian day
From gold faded to Erebos, so I;
My triumphs like clouds I gather round me, and
Sink now. The travail of the storm-scourged sea,
The windy rack, the thunder's vivid leap
Where the slit-lightnings ope their ghastly lips,—
It merges all, and from ten thousand worlds,
Sucked in the caves by slimy shores, I hear
Only the windy sough of Acheron!
There 's storm in heaven, the wroth gods threaten war,
And Zeus in agony hurls on the impotent world
His foamy spleen. Our 'lated end has come,
Tho' the Earth start up Promethean to rebel;
She shudders, and her bowels, gouged and rent
By the fell tempest's horns, shall lie like dust
Distracted thro' the oblivious universe.
The Erinys range abroad: of old they worked
On men—thieves, liars, adulterers, parricides,
The horde of crime; on nations—Lydian wealth
And Persia's loud-mouthed greed; to-day, the world!
For there are world's Erinys even as men's,
250
Hellas and all that is not Hellas, pay. ...
Hellas—Athenai! By the immortal gods,
Athenai, thou shalt die. Like some light girl
She shook her tresses to the Ægean wind,
Where on the listless shore playing she dipped
Her pink foot in the foam-hemmed sea and smiled.
Wet were her asking eyes; and fresh her arms,
Rhythmic with dull repose; her naked side
Quivered, touched by the feathery wind,—O Zeus!
Lustful and fickle! From the unvenged dead
Helen is come, and fronting Salamis
Takes up her fatal dwelling!
Athenai, thou shalt die. Like some light girl
She shook her tresses to the Ægean wind,
Where on the listless shore playing she dipped
Her pink foot in the foam-hemmed sea and smiled.
Wet were her asking eyes; and fresh her arms,
Rhythmic with dull repose; her naked side
Quivered, touched by the feathery wind,—O Zeus!
Lustful and fickle! From the unvenged dead
Helen is come, and fronting Salamis
Takes up her fatal dwelling!
Thou 'dst not hear
My sober voice. The rigid days are gone.
Virtue, austere and pale, is gone. Thou list'st
The wanton poet; thou lov'st the unmanly plays,
The gilded talkers; lapp'st thy youth in vice,
Musics lascivious, vile philosophies;
Hugg'st in thy warm embrace the ignobly born,
Slaves, and slaves' children come from barbarous loins;
Fooled by a trinket, lazy, irreverent
Of all the gods; and scorn'st with ribald lips
The eternal prophesies. Athenai! aye,
Heinous indeed is thine unending crime,
And in thy fresh girl's side the serpent sword
Churns thy red life blood into black, stark death!
Zeus, bear me hence! Forefend my scanty hair,
Blessed with the endless kisses of the Muse,
Should clot with dust of earth. Forefend my lips,
Withered with singing too sublime a song,
Should eat vileness; these eyes, now pale with age,
Scorched with long searching of thy Heavens and shot
That on the irradiate spasms of morning light
Round thine Olympos fixed, should from their holes,
Where stretched I lie, downward my livid face,
Stare stark into the worm-begrovelled earth!
Oh, bear me hence! Great Zeus, I cannot die,
I cannot live. Oh, rend the impassioned storm,
Pierce my huge breast with lightnings, strew my corpse
Like ashes on the world-encircling stream!
Shred me like fleeces, and dismembered lay
Upon thine altar that is all the world.
[A pause.]
My sober voice. The rigid days are gone.
Virtue, austere and pale, is gone. Thou list'st
The wanton poet; thou lov'st the unmanly plays,
The gilded talkers; lapp'st thy youth in vice,
Musics lascivious, vile philosophies;
Hugg'st in thy warm embrace the ignobly born,
Slaves, and slaves' children come from barbarous loins;
Fooled by a trinket, lazy, irreverent
Of all the gods; and scorn'st with ribald lips
The eternal prophesies. Athenai! aye,
Heinous indeed is thine unending crime,
And in thy fresh girl's side the serpent sword
Churns thy red life blood into black, stark death!
251
Blessed with the endless kisses of the Muse,
Should clot with dust of earth. Forefend my lips,
Withered with singing too sublime a song,
Should eat vileness; these eyes, now pale with age,
Scorched with long searching of thy Heavens and shot
That on the irradiate spasms of morning light
Round thine Olympos fixed, should from their holes,
Where stretched I lie, downward my livid face,
Stare stark into the worm-begrovelled earth!
Oh, bear me hence! Great Zeus, I cannot die,
I cannot live. Oh, rend the impassioned storm,
Pierce my huge breast with lightnings, strew my corpse
Like ashes on the world-encircling stream!
Shred me like fleeces, and dismembered lay
Upon thine altar that is all the world.
Athenai! How thou shamed'st me! me, ye gods!
Who sweat and bled for liberty, threw my life
Before thy feet and went to Marathon,
By lordly Salamis' acanthine dawn
Ploughed up the sea and in the furrows sowed
Persians, a sterile crop! And if in song
I picked His leavings, yet the Nine vouchsafed
Some glory, by the gods, that yet shall wind
Its clarion down the building aisles of time.
Yet oh! the shame when to belittled singers
Thou gav'st thy prize! Within mine ear yet crawls
His voice, puny and weak, who grimed our Muse
252
Who danced by Victory's torchlight, glistening-limbed.
His body wet with music, the ivies black
Plaited in honey-hair, and his lithe skin
Laughing with subtle fires of blood—a shame!
And he rose up from the uninspirèd throng
To win, to snatch thy prize, Melpomene.
I had sung with all the voices of the world;
Thunders I knew; the primal gods revealed
Their forces, secrets; and I made them rise
Out of the chaos of legend, stand and speak,
Moving their shadow past our little life.
Yet him, who figments of the ignoble day
Made over into rhythms, him they preferred
And crowned, the beardless Sophokles! And I
Slunk homeward, soiled my brow, my better art
Defaced.—O Zeus! too many, many days
I have lived, beyond my setting striven to hold
The sky, outlived myself. Fulfil thy vow!
Remember! when I stood white-robed, black-locked,
Beneath thine oaks, thy wind ran on the leaves
And like a hurricane's song, thou swor'st: “Thy death
Comes by my tortoise from my dog.” Then come!
No fitter storm shall yelling hound this earth.
Strike my thin breast—I bare it, supplicate
A rending of my being; lo! here my head!
Rack my dry skull and let me, let me die!
[A long pause. He descries an eagle.]
253
Feathers unshrivelled by the lightning, skim
The wrathful breaker on Sikelia's shore.
Like a black dream, thy frown slips thro' the night!
Thy sprayed wings fan the windy black. He seeks
The march. For prey? What miserable torn life
Shall his clawed beak pierce?—Gone! Folded tonight!
Fly on to Zeus, black bird, fly on, remote,
And house thee in the abode of hurricanes—
Stay, gods! great gods! Hither and hither still
He flies. His stinging eye flames thro' the dusk.
Away! His hooked mouth holds—away! How grim
His stiff, iron feathers near me! Lightnings, blast
His flight! ye gods, avert! How close he skims!
O, shrivelling terror of the cloudy god,
Be gone, black—
[The tortoise falls on his head. He sinks to the
ground.]
He flies. His stinging eye flames thro' the dusk.
Away! His hooked mouth holds—away! How grim
His stiff, iron feathers near me! Lightnings, blast
His flight! ye gods, avert! How close he skims!
O, shrivelling terror of the cloudy god,
Be gone, black—
Death. Alas! Alas! Alas!
My prayer was heard! My brow clotted with wet—
How comes it? Shattered by a fall of stone—
Or—agonies! wild pain! horrible night!
Mother, what wretchedness thy youth brought forth,
My lot of crazèd suffering, exile, death!
Stupours enshroud—gray morning, wilt thou ne'er
Shudder into the East; gray dawn, of gray,
Here is thy wonted throne Athenai, here;
Quit thy bed, tangled in the Cyclades,—
Gray dawn—dream—dulness—gray, gray, gray, how gray.
Alas, what sick, slow pain—my brain! my brain!
[He dies.]
My prayer was heard! My brow clotted with wet—
How comes it? Shattered by a fall of stone—
Or—agonies! wild pain! horrible night!
Mother, what wretchedness thy youth brought forth,
My lot of crazèd suffering, exile, death!
Stupours enshroud—gray morning, wilt thou ne'er
Shudder into the East; gray dawn, of gray,
254
Quit thy bed, tangled in the Cyclades,—
Gray dawn—dream—dulness—gray, gray, gray, how gray.
Alas, what sick, slow pain—my brain! my brain!
[1894]
| The poems of Trumbull Stickney | |