University of Virginia Library

SECOND MOVEMENT.

The Slopes of Helicon. Nimue and Taliesin.
Nimue.
No further alone will the dream-mighty magic prevail
Of the lightnings that lurk in my girdle. Do thou too put forth
The flash of thy will and the jar of thy striving, and climb.
Though I leave thee, I do not forsake thee.

Taliesin.
Nay, leave me not!
Thy kiss throbs through me yet. My brain is like
The beat of aching music, rhythmical,
But groaning to be free. ... Oh, I grow faint!
The glow in me, like moonlight seen through clouds,
Pales!

Nimue.
They to whom I bear children, the birth-throes feel
In spirit and brain, though I, the immortal, impassive,
Suffer only, indwelling the dark of their being, in them.
Lo, the earth is my womb, and the air is the door of my womb,
And the domed sky is big with the births of my teeming. Be calm.

[Floating in the air between the two appears a strange, elf-like Child. It is uncouth and hairy, and like a being of the woods, but there is yet a wild, unhuman charm in its look and smile.
Taliesin.
Mine! Mine!
Dragon-fly darting
Hither and thither,—
Blue smoke of wings;
Bee buzzing movelessly
Over a blue-bell;
Cloud in the sun,
Clad with a gleam
Glad as the clay-red
Blaring of battle-horns!
Mine, thou art mine!
I demand thee!

Child.
I am a hedgehog;
I am a burr;
'Ware prickles! Touch me not!
Krr! krr! krr!

Taliesin.
Fairy or child;
Elfin or human;
Light on the tarn,
Escaping the hollow hand,
Scooped in the water,
Eluding, alluring,—
How shall I seize thee?

Child.
I'll dare you like a dare-dog;
I'll haunt you like a witch;
I'll lead you like a tanglefoot,
And leave you in the ditch.

Taliesin.
Only one lure,
Only one call for a lure!
Hear! hear!
Dark in the heart of the deep,
Far in the speed of the stars,—
Throb, throb,—
Rune of the spheres!

Child.
Bells in the blue sky,
Birds sing in June;
I am a stickleback,—
Tickle me with tune.

Taliesin.
Under the moss,
Under the dream of the moss!
Near, near!
Dark in the sleep of the grass!
Chime in the rumor of Time!
Beat, beat,—
Croon of the years!

Child.
Cricket in the grass cries;
Bees buzz, buzz;
I am a thistle-bloom,—
Take me by the fuzz.

Taliesin.
Little ones know,
Little ones know without knowing,
(Dear, dear!)
Dark in the guess of their hearts!
Joy, my little one, joy!
Leap, leap,
To the tune of the world.

[The Child settles in Taliesin's arms.
Child.
Grasshopper jumping
In the early morning dew!
Teach me how to dance so
And I'll play with you.

Enter above, at the top of a steep ascent, three Damsels, having their garments curiously embroidered, one with bells, another with precious stones and metals, the third with flowers. They come, dancing.
The Damsels.

Taliesin
(playfully).
Joy for my joy, and flowers for my flower!
I'll have them, though I climb for 't.

[Begins lightly to climb the slope.
Nimue.
Fare thee well!

[Disappears.
Child.
Up we go, long legs,
Up to the top!
When we get there, will
The blue sky drop?

Damsels.
Bring the boy to us. Look, this tree
Silver-glittering with the morn,—
We will make him as fair to see.

[Taliesin and the Child reach the level, on which the three Damsels await them.
Child.
Pretty things, pretty things,—
What can they be?
Pretty toys, and pretty noise,—
Give them all to me.

Taliesin.
That was an easy climb, and yet I hardly
Can get my breath. You are not a light load,
Youngster, for all you're but a morning old.

First Damsel.
Bells I bring, that your steps may chime!

Second Damsel.
Jewels, every eye to spell!

Third Damsel.
Flowers, to girdle you with sweet air!

Child.
Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes,
Garlands of daffodil, lily, and rose!
She shall have music wherever she goes,
And hands to hold up in a beautiful pose,
And a very sweet smell in her nose,—her nose,—
A very sweet smell in her nose!

[A dance, in which the Child is passed from damsel to damsel, with a gay song; in the dance, they cover him with garments richly ornamented with bells, gems, and flowers.
Damsels.

[They dance away, leaving the Child covered with a profusion of ornaments.
Child
(still dancing).
Oh, see the pretty spangles
And hear the pretty jangles!
From every corner dangles
A garland to and fro!
I love the silver tinkling,
I love the starry twinkling,
Although I've not an inkling
Of what the garlands know.

Taliesin.
Beauty, but not the beauty of the soul
I see dim-glowing like a coal the wind
Fans till it kindles. Let the bells be bells,
The roses breathe their rose-thought out in odors,
The opal-passion through the opal sing;
Thy loveliness is other. Come, away!

Child.
You sha'n't have my pretty things, I say.

[Darting off.
Taliesin.
Nay, keep them, till you yield them of yourself.
... Higher to climb looks not so light a task
As this first hillock. No ascent I see
But up sheer heights and over rocky ways.
But on the summit see I not afar
Soft slopes and pleasant woods, and 'neath the boughs
Calm goddesses whose moving, even here,
Seems like a solemn music? ... I will climb!

[Climbs up and out of sight with the Child. The scene changes to the summit of Helicon. The nine Muses are moving through an intricate and stately dance, in the intervals of which they sing. A simpler movement of the dance continues through the singing.
The Muses.

Enter Taliesin and the Child.
Taliesin.
O benign goddesses, be gracious now
To me who call upon you, ignorant,
Unskilful, but my heart is set to sing.

Urania.
What gifts, then, dost thou bring, invoking goddesses?

Taliesin.
Joy, and a gift of praise, and sacrifice.

Urania.
Approach and offer these upon the altar, then.

Taliesin.
The sandals wherewith to this height I climbed,
These for a pledge of years and weariness;
The harp I play on, for a token of awe,
Praise and the utter yield of all my song
To your divine dominion, dames serene,
Daughters of Wisdom; last of all, I give
The song, the rapture of my heart, the love,
The lyric joy, the child that made me glad.
[He leaves the Child and the other gifts on the altar.
O splendors of the eternal, hear my prayer!
Teach me the knowledge of your ways, till what
I feel in all my veins, I may declare
In all my voices; what I know at heart,
In speech incarnate; what my soul desires,
Show forth in all the passion of my flesh.
Divinities of light, oh, hear my cry!

Urania.
In the beginning is the Word; God, perfect Spirit,
Eternally reveals himself. To Space he speaks
And clothes himself in thunders of orchestral stars.
He calls aloud, and Time grows rhythmic with the breath
Of life. The grappling of the spheres declares the might
Of his dominion, and their paths its perfectness.
Lo, he hath builded the foundations of the world
In night, and vaulted its blue dome with fire. His speech
Is in the carved work of its walls, and where his hand
Hath laid its floors in beauty. Very light of light,
Behind the drench and dream of color lurks his love.

Clio.
Empires, migrations, battles, thrones, democracies,
Wharves and adventuring sails, and clamor of fierce desires,
Cities and priesthoods,—so the spirit of man is clay
God moulds into the mighty image of his dream.

Urania.
The universe is his garment.

Clio.
And the soul of man
His image, triune, sense and thought and love, full-sphered.

Terpsichore.
Last through the body, one with Man and Nature,—a speech
Itself and mother of all speech else,—wherein the earth
Takes on the likeness of divinity,—he shines.

Taliesin.
Ay, but the blind world sees not, till the artist
Reverbs the messages. The myriad-wrought
Harmonies of design and color fade
For very intricacy of eloquence
Into an indistinguishable gray.
But bit by bit if disentangled, held
Apart, and shown to men, their eyes, once seeing
The broken beauty isolated, turn
Back to God's work to find it there forever;
So God makes use of poets. Teach me, then,
To fashion worlds in little, making form,
As God does, one with spirit,—be the priest
Who makes God into bread to feed the world.

Urania.
The body is a form, with line and tone and tint
And hue and texture, light and shade; and talks as clouds
And mountains do, and oaks and grass and starry nights;
And in its features what man is, is charactered.
Nor may he change his nature but sure Time inscribes
The record of the change upon that palimpsest.

Terpsichore.
Form is the subsidence upon the shores of Time
Left there by motion of forgotten seas. Not form
Alone, immutable and sterile diamond,
The body is, but vibrant, pregnable, a harp
Whereon the spirit plays innumerous melodies
Of motion,—chords, progressions visible,—wherein
Gather and fade the myriad unrecurring dreams,
Passions and ecstasies that sweep like shadows o'er
The prairies of man's heart.

Polyhymnia.
Nor this alone; without,
An instrument whereon the harmonies of light
And movement rise, within it is an organ wrought
From crown to midriff for the wonder of tone. And so
Man's life goes out in music.

Terpsichore.
Praise the body, then,
A loveliness itself and twofold lyre to call
New loveliness to being. Praise the blazon of flesh
That like a clarion sunburst trumpets to the night
The universe of soul: valley and peak and still
Woodland and quiver of the universal air
Leap from the silence, and the dead is made alive.

Euterpe.
Lute, viol, trumpet,—as a conquering king the soul
O'ersteps the realm ancestral, fills dead Africas
With colonies of music, multiplies its throne
In empired harmonies. The forest yields its trees,
The caverns of the earth their ores, and man creates
A thousand throats to speak through. Oh, the wondrous frame
The soul shall fashion for itself in that vast life
God keeps for it in heaven! Speech of the yet unshaped,
Dream of the yet enwombed and unborn in man's heart,
He gropes for in the shudderings of the air.

Erato.
And last
Man names the world, himself, and all that is therein,
The incantation of the word calls from the dark
The phantoms of the mind, insights, analogies,
Conceptions, ratiocinations, memories,—
Bodiless wizardries whose air-drawn lineaments
Compel the ages.

Calliope.
Word, tone, gesture, color, shape,
I sum them in the deed. Man, Master of an Act,
At last and only finds whole utterance. Poet, sing
The Hero, then, the man whose work the Lord of Worlds
Confirms coeval with his peaks and stars.

Melpomene.
All speech
Made one to voice the strife irreconcilable
Of Will and Doom, of man and his relentless births
Rending the spirit that engendered them, the war
Of thunders in mid-air, battling if earth shall be
Blasted, or filled with foison more divine,—for this
Body and vesture, sound, speech, color, deed, inwrought
In harmonies of harmonies!

Thalia.
All language, too,
For joy, for reconcilement! God is a merry God;
And from their lofty seats the laughter of the gods
Goes up like crackling smoke of mighty forest fires.
For mirth, the child, and reconciling love, a tall
Young angel, and the calm of slow full-statured joy,
These three stand nighest about the throne of God; and these
Man utters and arouses when I come.

Taliesin.
I reel,
Drunken with vision. Enter into me,
Ye voices, and become my life, my soul!
Or how shall I become what I discern?

Terpsichore.
Attend; and take the meaning of the signs you see.

[A marvellous dance of the nine Muses. Terpsichore, approaching the altar, takes therefrom the Child, who, as he joins in the dance and repeats the beautiful, mysterious motions of the goddesses, is transformed from stage to stage of stature and loveliness, until he appears a youth, tall and slender and of perfect beauty. He is completely naked, all his ornaments having fallen from him in the dance. But the Muses gather up and restore to him a few, of such a nature that they enhance rather than cumber the lithe grace of his figure. The dance finished, the Youth turns to Taliesin. As he does so, Taliesin is aware that Nimue is again standing by his side; and with her the presence of two of the gods, which are Hermes and Apollo.
The Youth.
Below
The city waits with garlands, and I go;
The city waits with garlands like a bride.
Now with the joy still in that look of hers,
I must go to her. Not a sea-breath stirs
Across the gardens where she waits and dreams
Of one whose coming shall be like a tide
Of day, flooding the marsh-long loops and gleams
Of sunrise heavens in midsummertide.
I am her lover; it is I she waits.
Farewell; I go like summer to her gates.

Hermes.
Stay for a moment. If you go into the city
With no more raiment than you need on Helicon,
You'll hardly get the kind of welcome that you look for.
Put on this mantle; it is the prevailing fashion,
And has a magic virtue. All to whom you speak
Will listen while you wear it. Should you strip it off,
Beware! men stone the fool that jargons in their ears,
... And, since you seem to be in something of a hurry,
Here, take my sandals (you observe the wings on them);
Be off; you need winged sandals when a lady's waiting.
Only, be sure, next time you are passing by Olympus,
Leave them with Ganymede; I do not wish to lose them.

[Apollo stretches forth his hands upon the Youth.
Apollo.
When thou wast still blown through the leaves at the will of the air,
I was with thee!
And when thou wert gathered in sleep in the womb of the dark,
I was with thee!
Look on me! Dost thou know me, who I am?

The Youth.
Brightness of God, bless me and set me free!

[Apollo breathes upon his forehead, and the face and the whole body of the Youth send forth a glow as of flame seen through a veil.
Taliesin.
These be the gods, in truth.

Nimue.
And I, a god,
Am with thee forever.

Taliesin.
I fear the gifts of gods.

Nimue.
The gifts of the gods are twofold,—death and life,

Taliesin.
Come death then, so they give me life indeed.

The Youth.
O World! O Life! O City by the Sea!
Hushed is the hum
Of streets; a pause is on the minstrelsy.
I come, I come!
The sunlight of thy gardens from afar
Is in my heart.
A girl's laugh dropt from heaven like a star
Leads where thou art.
The old men in the market-place confer,
The streets are dumb;
The sentinels await a harbinger—
I come, I come!

[He leaps downward through the air, and his song is heard dying in the distance. Taliesin kneels before Apollo, about whom the Muses gather.
The Muses.

Apollo.
Give ear to their teaching, O thou who wouldst take fire and beacon with me!
As wood or as brass they shall fashion thee; yea, as a lyre they shall frame
Thy heart, and thy lips shall be moulded as the lips of a trumpet are wrought.
They are cunning artificers; they are the makers of lutes for the gods.
But, behold, I am he that shall smite into music the lutes they have strung;
I am he that shall breathe through their trumpets; I am he that shall burn in their lyres.
Ere thou lifted thy face for my seeking, ere thou wert, ere the world was, or these,
The Nine of the secrets of wisdom, I was, and my song was, with God;
And through me and the sound of my singing they were made, and all things that were made.

The Muses.

Apollo.
Greaten thyself to the end, I am he for whose breath thou art greatened;
Perfect thy speech to a god's, I am he for whom speech is made perfect;
And my voice in the hush of thy heart is the voice of the tides of the worlds.
Thou shalt know it is I when I speak, as the foot knows the rock that it treads on,
As the sea knows the moon, as the sap knows the place of the sun in the heavens,
As the cloud knows the cloud it must meet and embrace with caresses of lightning.
When thou hearest my voice, thou art one with the hurl of the stars through the void,
One with the shout of the sea and the stampede of droves of the wind,
One with the coursers of Time and the grip of God's hand on their harness;
And the powers of the night and the grave shall avail not to stand in thy path.

The Muses.