University of Virginia Library

High on the lone and wave-scarred porphyry,
The promontoried porch of Attica,
Past evenfall, sat he whose reverend hair
Down-glittered with the breaker's volleying foam
Visioned before him in the level dark:
Ægeus, of wronged Pandion heir, and king.
And round about his knees, and at his feet,
In saffrons and sad greens alone bedight,
Sat, clustered in dim wayward sidelong groups
Sheer to the ocean's edge, those liegemen fond
Who with him wished and wept. As thro' the hours
Of ebbing autumn, on a northward hill,
Lies summer's russet ruined panoply,
Knotted and heaped by the fantastic winds
Hap-hazard, while the first adventuring snow
Globes itself on the summit; so they clung
Secure among the rangèd crevices,
Month after month, and wakeful night on night
Vigilant; ever neighbored and o'ertopped
With that white presence, and the boding sky.

And Ægeus prayed: ‘O give me back but him!
My desert palm, my moorland mid-day fount,
My leopard-foot, in equal tameless grace
Swaying suavely down cool garden-paths
Or into battle's maw: my lad of Athens!
With bronze and tangly curls a-toss, to show
Infancy's golden-silken underglow;
The glad eye dusking blue, as is the sea
Ere fiery sunset tricks it; and the lashes
In one close sombre file against his cheek,
Enphalanxed in perpetual trail and droop,
Wherethro' gleams laughter as thro' sorrow's pale,
And anger's self doth tremble maidenly;
The massy throat; the nostril mobile, smooth;
The breast full-orbed with arduous large pride,
As I so oft have marked, when from the chase,
The witness-dropping knife swung with the bow,
Heading the burdened company, he came,
Aye vermeil with the wholesome wind, outwrestler
Of storms and perils all. High-mettled Theseus!
Keystone of greatness, bond of expectation,
Stay of this realm! in his strong-sinewed beauty
Dear unto men as Tanais bright-sanded
Whose flood harmonious lapses on the ear,
And makes for hearts yoke-wearied, thither roaming,
Thrice feastful holiday. Ah, righteous gods!
Forasmuch as I love him and await him,
Who from my youth have been your servitor,
Yield my old age its boon of vindication:
Haven the happy ship here, ere I die.’

Still heedlessly the hushed moon bent her bow
Over the unshorn forest oakenry
And the dense gladiate leaves of Thoræ's pine:
The cold and incommunicable moon,
Waxing and waning thro' the barren time
That brought not Theseus' self, nor of him sign,
Nor any waif of rumor out of Crete,
Whereto, a year nigh gone, the ship had sped
Forlorn; her decks enshrouded in plucked yew
Strewn to the mizzen; and her oary props
And halyards all with blossomed myrtle twined,
And every sail dark as from looms of hell,
In token of the universal dole.
And on her heavèd anchor and spurred keel
Cheers none, but protest, moans, and ire attended,
When from the quay, in melancholy weather
Forward she sobbed on black unwilling wing.
But ere that going drear, one foot ashore,
Theseus with his mild comrades hand in hand,—
The seven maids and boys to bondage sealed,
Lifted his head, and met his father's eyes,
And out of morning ardor made this oath:
‘My people, stand not for our sakes in tears!
No shape of ill shall daunt me; I will strike
And overcome, Heaven's favor for my shield.
And when engirt with conquest I return
(Or never else hies Theseus hitherward),
That ye may read my heart while yet at sea,
And know indeed that fate hath used me fair,
That these your lambs I shepherd and lead home,
Lo, I will set upon the central mast
The sky-sail white! white to the hollowing breeze,
White to that fierce and alien coast, and white
To your espial, from the horizon's brink
Unto the moored fulfilment of your joy.
Watch: you that keep your faith and love in me.’

And they believed and watched, albeit with dread,
Steadfastly without plaint, to soothe the king,
Who, taciturn and close-engarmented,
From his nocturnal towered station leaned
Pining against the unresponsive tide.
And thro' his brain, with hum processional,
Wheeled memories of Theseus, deeds of Theseus,
The race he won of yore, the song he sang;
His truth, his eloquence, his April moods,
And all his championship of trodden tribes,
Since first he lit on Athens, like a star.

For Ægeus, to the low-voiced Meta wed,
Thereafter to Rhexenor's daughter spouse,
Childless, and by his brethren's guile deposed,
Led by a last mysterious oracle,
Once, exiled, to Trœzene wandered down;
And there, accorded Aphrodite's grace,
To whom the sacrificial smoke he raised,
Atonement and conciliation sweet,
Begot to Greece her hero; and straightway
Bereavèd Æthra, of old Pelops' race
Forsook, by destined rumor summoned home.
But with the auroral kiss of parting, he
In the spring sunshine, on the mellow shore
Laid his huge blade beneath a caverned rock,
And both the jewelled sandals from his feet,
With lofty exhortation: ‘Bid my son,
When he, with strength inherited of mine
Can heave this boulder, take the sword and shoon,
And claim in Athens me his sire. Farewell!’
And Æthra bided, dreaming, at the court,
Till from her knee laughed back her own blue eyes.

And the young boy, loosed in sun-dappled groves,
Defiant, chased the droning harvest-fly,
Or nicked pomegranates with his ruddy thumb
Ripe from the bough; nor would his mother chide,
But with strange awe hang o'er him worshipping,
As one that turns with passionate-praying lips
East to the Delian shrine he shall not see:
Save once, when he a turtle-pigeon pent
In wicker-work of some swart soldier's skill,
With lisping promise aye to nourish it;
And stroked his plaining bird for one long day,
But on the morrow ceased his fostering,
And left his captive caged, the tiny gourd
Of water unreplenished. Then the child
Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute;
And Æthra held his innocent hand in hers
With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw
Remorse, and irremediable ache,
And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves
To the eased byways of forgetfulness.
She, his hot brows caressing, so besought
The weeping prince: ‘If thou, O little son!
Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself,
Stand mindful of them; all thy vows observe.
Be a trust broken but a small, small thing,
Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe.’
And ere the dial veered, did Æthra speak
His vanished father's name and gave the charge,
And led him to the rock, and in him fired
The aspirations of his godlike race.

Lost quite to former pastimes, thenceforth he
Brooded on her sweet chronicle; and oft
Burst thro' arcades and vaporous aisles of dawn,
And stood, flushed in the rubious dimpling light,
Straining his thews at sunrise, to cajole
The granite treasurer of those tokens twain:
With his young heel intrenched in faithless sand,
His cloud of yellow hair hanging before,
Tugged at the flint; or pressed his forward knee
With obdurate sieges, into its hard side;
Anon, with restful rosy stretch of limb,
Plunged to the onset, hound-like, on all fours,
Beating a moated way about that place
Where the grim guardian held a fixèd foot;
And ever, noon on noon, with petulant tears,
Stole back, o'ervanquished, to his quiet nooks.
There would he woo his mother's frequent tale,
And urge her gentle prophecy, that he
The kinsman of great Herakles, should too
Rise, mighty, and o'er earth's fell odds prevail.
Wherefore, at waking-time, he plucked up heart
To wrestle with the pitiless rock anew,
Season on season, patient. And behold,
When the tenth summer's delicate keen dews
Died from his shoreward path, at last befell
One sure petrean tremor, one weird shock
At his tense vigor; and ere twilight failed,
Clean to the sea's verge rolled that doughty bulk!
And Theseus, in his full inheritance,
In the superb meridian of his youth,
Sandalled, the great hilt hard against his breast,
Climbed to his mother's bower. Æthra laid
Her lips to his warm cygnet neck, and swooned,
Thereby apprised the destined hour had come,
And having sped her boy upon his quest,
Drooped, like a sun-void lily, and so died.

Then radiant Theseus, journeying overland,
All robber-plagues infesting those still glens
Physicianed, and redeemed all realms distressed.
Phæa, prodigious Crommyonian shape,
Apt Cercyon of Arcadia, he slew;
And of his dominant valor overcame
The smith-god's son, who with the mortal mace
Beleaguered travellers in Epidaur;
Unburied martyrs fitly to avenge,
He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb
Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs;
And him that thrust the lavers of his feet
Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served
By dint of hospitable precedent;
Wide Marathonia's lordly bull he led,
Engarlanded with hyacinth and rose,
To the knife's edge at bland Apollo's shrine;
Last, guided to a grove sabbatical,
Knelt to the chanting white Phytalidæ,
And in their midst was chrismed, and purified
From all the bloodshed of his troublous path.

On to the gate of Athens Theseus strode,
Docile to Æthra's warning, that unnamed,
And with strict privacy, he should seek his sire;
For fifty jealous sons of Pallas held
The city's sovereignty; and overruled
Their father's childless brother, Ægeus old:
The agile, able, proud Pallantidæ,
Whose wrath would rise against the tardy heir,
Tumultuous, and encompass Greece in war.
Therefore, unheralded, with wary step,
Chancing upon an open banquet-hall,
Preceded of his fame, came brave-arrayed
The stranger hero, but erewhile a boy;
And straight, along the heaped board glancing down,
Evil Medea, on her harmful track
From Corinth unto Colchis, intercepted.

This was Medea of the Fleecemen, late
Her tender brother's slayer, whose vile spells
Had promised Ægeus princes of his blood.
Stole from him, at the beck of that mock moon,
Honor, the flood august of all his life:
For he, distrustful of the oracles,
Inasmuch as Trœzene flowered no hope,
Now in the season of his utmost need,
Subservient to the sorceress and her whims,
Blasphemed, in slackened faith, and clave to her;
And strangling conscience, made his thraldom fine
With golden incident and public pomp,
Holding by night most sumptuous festival,
Feasting beside her, restless and unthroned.
Now Theseus knew that wily woman's face,
Who, reading her arraignment in his eyes,
Shrank close to Ægeus, voluble with fear,
And urged within his palm a carven bowl,
That he should bid the young wayfarer drain
Health to Medea! in one envenomed draught:
Which Theseus heard, alert, past harp and bell,
Past intervening hubbub of rich mirth,
And sprang to cower the temptress with a word.
But at the instant, sprang her minions too,
And riot and upbraidings dire began,
Conflict, and scorn, and drunken challenging.
Then leaped quicksilvered Theseus thro' the fray,
With love's suspicion kindling in his veins,
And gained that space before the startled host
Whence from her couch Medea shrieked away:
Limned beautiful and clear from front to feet,
Shod with the shoon Ægean; and his arm
Sabred with the one sword that Ægeus knew!
Who, blanching 'neath roused memory's ebb and flow,
Among the wrangling merry-makers all,
Clarioned ‘My own!’ and strained him to his breast.

Theseus, in those fresh days of his return,
Tarried not idle; but with warlike haste
Bore down on the usurping lords of state,
Juniors and kin of his discrownèd sire;
Them, ere the morrow dwindled, he beheld
Scattered as chaff from off the threshing-floor,
And Ægeus, o'er the wreckage of their reign
Exalted, with calm brows indiademed.
Then was the sacred and sequestered prime
Of liberation, benison, and peace;
When the round heaven, in summer's ministrance
Rolled on its choral axle; till, at end
Like to a cloudlet that assails the blue,
Comely and yet with rains ingerminate,
Minos the Cretan unto Athens sent
His nimble princeling. In a fortnight's span,
The island lad, competing in the games,
Won fairly; whereupon the envious mob
Made rude revolt, and took upon itself
The barbarous dishonor of his death.
And vengeful Minos sailed, and razed the town,
Laying the bitter forfeit in this wise:
‘Athens shall yearly proffer unto me
Her virgin tribute of patrician seed,
Seven youths, and maidens seven, as by lot,
Wherewith to feed the ravenous Minotaur.’
Athens the peerless bowed her ashen head.

So dragged the dreadful twelvemonth thro' the realm,
Aye of its dearest blood depopulate,
And losing grasp on life. The fourth weak year,
Youngest of all departed, full thirteen
Faltered aboard the deck calamitous;
And with them Theseus, best-belovèd Theseus,
The king's sole-born, whom last the doom befell.
But as no sister-galley e'er set out
To dolorous ports predestined, in due lapse
Returning with her steersman, went this ship,
Not hopeless; now her bravest made his vaunt
To thread the maze Dædalian, and destroy
The pampered monster, holding harm at bay
From the frail flock of Athens; and to flash
Homeward, to chime of oar-compellèd waves,
Signalling with the white exultant sail!
‘So that I live, this thing,’ he said, ‘is sworn:
Watch! you that keep your faith and love in me.’

Such tales of Theseus' youth his father's mind
Rehearsed, while at his vigil in the night,
Deep pondering on each noble circumstance,
As a man shifteth, thro' an idle hour,
Anon with hand in light, anon in shade,
The lustres of his one memorial gem.
And oft the king, with a foreboding throe
Called, urging eld's unserviceable sight:
‘Shines the white sail yet?’ Spake the murmurous ring:
‘Nay; but fantastic clouds low-wandering on.’
Then the fond voice of Ægeus, askingly:
‘Alcamenes! yield my sad heart a song.’
Rose kind Alcamenes, who from his birth
The king had cherished, from a mossy seat,
The anxious faces turned his happy way;
And with his pose quiescent, lyre in arm,
Breathed forth a simple ditty, sweet-sustained
Against the diapason of the sea.

‘Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces,
Thy silver-margined voice like the ample moon and free:
Ah, beautiful! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces,
The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee.

‘My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing
Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day!
And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging,
Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away.’

But the king hid his brow in both wan hands,
Sighing: ‘That song at her beguiling feet,
Out of my brief enslavement, did I make
The year that Theseus on our revels stole.
It sears me like a brand with fires o'erpast:
Be silent, my alcamenes! spare it me.
Thou rather, Theron, sing! Engird my pain
With some thrice-gallant catch, some madrigal
That sets the dull blood dancing.’ Theron smiled,
Masking suspense (for he was Theseus' friend),
Half-prone beneath his damask cloak, with chin
Hand-propped; and fixed his dark eyes on the king,
In trolling of an agitated lay.

‘I drowse in the grass, to the crickets' elfin strings,
With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book,
At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs,
Cydippe's hand in my hair. ... Ah, horrible thrill!
Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look,
My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill,
In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook:
Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill!
My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings,
Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there.
See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings
Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippe's hand thro' my hair.’

Again, with swift uneasy gesturing
Turned Ægeus, chiding, and protested ere
The whipped-up courage of that roundel's close:
‘Cease, Theron! this is but an ominous song,
A song of retribution.’ For he thought:
‘So retribution dogs my bruisèd age;
Still, still Medea's soft and deadly name
Stings all the leafy splendor of my life,
And daunts the morrow's bud. And if there be
A reckoning I must pay for follies past,
Must it be—O not that, not now, not here!’
And drawing to his height, he cried: ‘The sail?
Comes the sail from the south?’ They chorused: ‘Naught
Save argent flutterings of the shoreward gull.’
And Ægeus, craving solace, urged once more:
‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul,
In numbers honey-clear.’ Now Rhodalus
The poet, too, was loyal sentinel;
A fiery patriot, wont to domineer
The moods of Athens; very potent he,
And flexile-throated as the nightingale.
With all his fingers knit about his knee,
And head against a hoary pillar raised,
Dream-locked, upon the lowest sprayey ledge,
Riddling the unintelligible space,—
Void thrones, and filmy wakes of fugitives,
And interstellar agonies of midnight;
To him the king's voice throbbed a second time:
‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul.’
Who, grave with poesy's most candid mien,
Answered the summons softly: ‘Sire, I cannot.
The music of my brothers is amiss,
So mine would be. Our strings are jangled, wrested
From their discreet and silvern vassalage,
Snapped quite with languishment for Theseus' sake.
I cannot sing. But O you holy stars!
Stretching to us your tendrils of high glory;
Tacit compellers of our wayward spirits;
You domèd guardians of this tear-bound earth,
You rich-wrought visions, charioted thousands
Hale rank on rank, thro' warless cities riding!
Young semispheric moon, O burning Seven,
Hesper and Phosphor! blue hour-measuring orbs
That elsewhere look on Theseus! Speed his pinnace,
Bide thro' the watches with us; shine; exhale not!’
And the dense quiet bound them.
Cautiously,
In his far corner, one behind the king
At the dumb bursting-point of that weird hush,
With nervous finger twitched his neighbor's sleeve,
And strove to whisper him with palsied tongue,
And straight relaxed, and smiled; but new-convinced
Towards twilight's gracious advent, crept in awe
With arm extended, to his fellow's side;
And the two thrilled alike, immovable,
Each palm down-roofed above the frantic eye,
Froze at their posts: which eager Theron marked,
Piloting his keen sight across the main,
And smote his bosom with quick-smothered groan,
And, breathless, gazed and gazed. By twos and threes
The apprehensive company dropped aghast
Out on the reeling ragged precipice
Sparkled and shelled with the oncoming tide:
Till Ægeus, slow-divining dupe of hope,
Awoke, and knelt him down against his throne,
Faint with thanksgiving. And the moments creaked
In gyral passage, like Ixion's wheel,
Spoke on accursèd spoke, portending woe.
But he, athwart his lonely pinnacle
Called like a ghost from walled eternity:
‘What of the sail? What cheer?’ Their lips congealed
Nothing replied. The cruel hour rolled on.
Intolerable arid east-blown wave
Vaulting on wave thro' all her caverns loud,
Far upon Oliaros boomed the sea.

Then bearded Rhodalus, compassionate,
Spied leaning o'er the crags the frenzied king,
Rending his garment to the paling moon;
And yet evasive of those pleading eyes,
Knotting his arms against his breast, downcast,
Adjured him: ‘O most reverend, O most dear!
The heart of life is rotten; prayer is vain.
Stay up thy soul: for lo! the sail is black.’
And all the trancèd host burst into moan.
Old Ægeus, like a dreamer, muttered ‘Aye,’
Passive; and from his brain the fever fell,
And more than Zeus himself, he things unseen
Saw, and to unheard choirings lent his ear.
Theseus, truth-speaking, vowed the sky-sail white;
The sail was black: therefore was Theseus dead
In untriumphant state; his comrades, dead;
Dead, the emprise of Greece; her dynasty
Ungendered, dead; the very gods were dead!
And he alive, alive? a wind-worn leaf
All winter gibbeted upon that bough
Whence the last fruit was reft? O mockery!
Inert, of his own broken heart impelled,
From the steep, solitary trysting-place,
King Ægeus, like a stone, dropped in the sea.

A wraith of smoke, fast-driven against a flame,
Yon by the crimsoning east the dark ship moved,
Her herald noises strangely borne ashore:
‘Joy, joy!’ and interlinked: ‘O joy, O joy,
Athens our mother! joy to all thy gates!’
And thunderous firm acclaim of minstrelsy,
Laughter, and antheming, and salvos wild
Outran the racing prow. But mute they lay,
The blinded watchers, spent beyond desire,
Wounded beyond this wonder's balsaming.
Yet ever, thro' the trembling lovely light,
Known voice on voice re-echoed, face on face
Uprose in resurrection. They were safe,
And Athens, hark! from her long thraldom free!
And Theseus, victor, sang and sailed with them,
The pale unsistered Phædra for his bride,
For whom was constant Ariadne cast
On Naxos, where a god did comfort her.
Theseus! who when his bark the shallows grazed,
Leaped in the gentle waves for boyish glee,
Gained the thronged highway, crossed it at a bound,
Scaling the cliffs; and stood among them there,
Clausus, and his dear Theron, and the rest,
Nodding upon the clamorous crowd below;
But they, as soon, had turned them blunt away,
In hot resentment of that false one. He,
O'erbrimming with frank welcomes, in dismay,
Stricken with sight of unresponsive hands,
Scenting disaster, reining up his tongue,
Asked sharply for the king.
He understood
After mad struggle and bewilderment,
And gloomy gazing on the absent deeps.
Down on the penitential rock he sank,
All his fair body palpitant with shame,
Syllabing agony: ‘Ægeus, Ægeus! ah,
Glory of Hellas! dead for trust in me.
Life-giver, irrecoverable friend,
My father! ah, ah, loving father mine,
Ah, dear my father! ... I forgot the sail.’

And the great morn burst. On a hundred hills
The marigold unbarred her casement bright.