EURIPIDES.
I.
ALCESTIS RETURNING FROM THE GRAVE.
“How strange are things divinely wrought!
The Gods have means beyond our thought;
Expected ills they turn aside,
Beyond all hope a way provide.”
Termination of the Alcestis.
As often in the visions of our sleep
Semblances blend of life's realities,
And images of truth therein are found,
Confus'd and intertwin'd with dreamy thoughts
And empty shadows; and oft-times therein
Spirits of good and ill contending seem
More vividly than in our waking life;
That meditative wisdom oft may find
Broken reflections and stray shapes of truth
Set forth at random beneath fancy's garb.
And oft we listen when the dream is o'er,
As one who some sweet music would recall,
Labouring the scattered fragments to retain,
If it might give forth aught of prophecy;
For while it blended with the things of sense
It seem'd to hold a commerce with the Unseen,
And Nature spake therein more than she knew,
While Faith is her divine interpreter.
Thus in poetic legends of old time
All strangely intermingling may be seen
Dreamlike similitudes of truth divine;
Wherein man, waken'd in the Christian morn,
May 'neath the tangled web of true and false
Unravelling find broken celestial forms,
Though interrupted oft and lost in clouds,
Yet phantoms and resemblances indeed,
Vision-like and unreal, and yet true,
As shadows in a mirror, though themselves
But airy nothing and an empty shade.
Before our eyes in this our living world
Hath Christ set forth on earth the scatter'd signs
Of Resurrection, when His Voice and Hand
Brought from the silent regions of the dead
Those who this life had left,—the youthful child
Of Jairus, coldly laid on bed of death,—
Or from his bier before the Nain gate
The widow's son, who heard His voice and lived;—
Or Lazarus from the darkness of the grave.
Such preludes of the Resurrection's power
Stand forth as pillars of the Truth of God
Till the last Resurrection of the Just.
Compared with these realities divine
Those mythic fables old and Paynim tales
Are but as mirrors seen upon the clouds,
Aerial phantoms of a coming form;
Or shadowy dreams compared with things of life.
Yet sweet is Resurrection's power pourtrayed
In that fair story of Admetus' bride,
Brought by Alcides in the veil of death
From the dark regions of the place of souls;—
Alcides—that mysterious hero-god,
Himself encountering and o'ercoming death;
And who that dreaded serpent slew of old.
Mantled she stands, and waiting the third day
When after her lustrations she may speak;
Fair as the veilèd form of coming Spring,
At whose approach Nature breaks forth in song
And gratulation, with instinctive joy
Unconsciously divining deep within
Of something better than a fading spring,—
A new Creation which shall not see death.
Alcestis, noblest woman, worthy found
In dying resurrection to attain,
Who for another dared herself to die;—
Admetus too, that good Thessalian king,
Albeit not unmeet for such a boon;
Who even now his deeply-rankling grief
Had cover'd with a show of courtesy
To entertain a stranger, and thereby
Had unawares receiv'd a saving God.
And I would in my heart engrave his words,
In this unlook'd-for blessing from the grave,
Beyond all thought to life and light restor'd.—
Adm.—
“Now we will set in order and remould
“Our lives, far better than they yet have been,
“For great I own is this my happiness
.”
II.
THE GARLAND OF HIPPOLYTUS.
Thou Maid of maids, Diana, the goddess whom he fears,
Unto thee Hippolytus this flowery chaplet bears;—
“From meadows where no shepherd his flock a-field e'er drove,
From where no woodman's hatchet hath woke the echoing grove,
Where o'er the unshorn meadow the wild bee passes free,
Where by her river-haunts dwells virgin Modesty;
Where he who knoweth nothing the wisdom of the schools
Beareth in a virgin heart the fairest of all rules;
To him 'tis given all freely to cull those self-sown flowers,
But evil men must touch not pure Nature's sacred bowers.
This to his virgin mistress a virgin hand doth bear,
A wreath of unsoil'd flowers to deck her golden hair;
For such alone of mortals can unto her draw nigh,
And with that guardian Goddess hold solemn converse high.
He ever hears the voice of his own virgin Queen,
He hears what others hear not, and sees her though unseen;
He holds his virgin purpose in freedom unbeguiled,
To age and death advancing in innocence a child.”
Chaste Hippolytus thus spake upon the Attic stage,
And worthy were the story of Christian pilgrimage,
Though hated by the many
the tale is half divine,
And his death not all unmeet 'mong martyrdoms to shine.
'Mid Nature's hid recesses, 'mid unshorn meads and woods,
Where broods an unseen Presence o'er sacred solitudes;
Where stars are wildly silent in watches of the night,
And the virgin moon comes forth all like a vestal white;
When awful hangs the stillness upon the earth and sky,
Man's spirit longs to mingle with purer things on high.
When wean'd from earthly longings it hears the voice of God,
Who in that solemn evening in Eden's garden trod.
It is an awful converse, it is a holy time,
When the soul awakes to wisdom majestic and sublime,
Like an effluence divine that rests on virgin youth,
Ere tainted breath hath passed on the mirror of its truth.
And well the tragic bard hath blended that high tale
With the Venus and her loves and Phædra waxing pale,
Incestuous passion mad upon her like a spell,
The scorpion that awakens with foretaste of its hell;
Things noblest thus shine forth by contrast base and vile,
The star for clouds seems fairer in its cærulean Isle.
Is this that gentle love-god of which the poets speak,
Which sheds light upon the eyes and bloom upon the cheek?
Is this that love of woman that like the evening star
Fills up the skies around us with tender thoughts from far?
Or is that fabled Venus upon her car of gold
But form'd of painted splendours which earth-born mists enfold?
What seems so fair to glisten is but a thundercloud,
And leaves a tale of vengeance that speaketh clear and loud.
What wish could parent cherish for most beloved child,
But to walk before his God a virgin undefiled?
While others train their children to graceful arts and dress,
And all the worldly ways that wait on loveliness;
That they in nuptial brightness might walk like ladies fair,
And in their hands bear garlands, and garlands in their hair,
To wed with wealth and station, and walk in high degree,
With Christ's own virgin poor lest they should number'd be;
Their first thoughts thus to marry or be in marriage given,
Their second for God's Church and for the things of Heaven.
Far other thoughts and training, my dearest child, be thine,
Rear'd in that low simplicity which nurtures faith divine;
A virgin through thy life, angel-like spirit blest,
The more to love thy Saviour and on His love to rest.
Not as the untaught Heathen the tragic buskin bore,
Conversing with the Goddess in woodland, grove, or shore:
But with those saintly spirits that wean'd their hopes from earth
That they might have in Heaven a yet more glorious birth:
With Daniel, man of loves, who saw beyond the tomb;
And John in trance beholding the Judgment yet to come;
And with good Ken, the Witness of this our later day,
From whom his Church hath learned her morn and evening lay.
There's found in life no sweetness like the awakening soul
Which to God's love in childhood devotes the being whole.
The bloom it has upon it is of eternal youth,
Though with the thorns encompass'd which shelter heavenly truth.
The spring it hath no fragrance which doth such freshness bear,
No sight or sound hath nature which can with it compare.
When Satan and the world our course aside have driven,
To that bright spot turns Memory as to a gleam of Heaven.
