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49

THE ISLAND OF THE BLEST.

A variation on an old theme.

This Lucianic study, now printed for the first time, was written in 1879, and then seen by a few friends. To this fact I owe the honour which Mr. Andrew Lang has done me to inscribe with my initials his treatment of a part of the same theme in The Fortunate Islands (Rhymes à la Mode, 1884). The lines particularly addressed to me in this beautiful poem I take the liberty of transcribing here, as a comment:—

Each in the self-same field we glean
The field of the Samosatene,
Each something takes and something leaves
And this must choose, and that forego
In Lucian's visionary sheaves,
To twine a modern posy so;
But all my gleanings, truth to tell,
Are mixed with monrnful asphodel,
While yours are wreathed with poppies red,
With flowers that Helen's feet have kissed,
With leaves of vine that garlanded
The Syrian Pantagruelist,
The sage who laughed the world away,
Who mocked at Gods, and men, and care,
More sweet of voice than Rabelais,
And lighter-hearted than Voltaire.

Moreover, in the interval between the writing and the printing of my verses, a second Oxford poet, without any relation to Mr. Lang or myself, has gone to the Vera Historia for his theme. I permit myself the indiscretion of saying that the delicate romance called “In Scheria,” which is to be found in the anonymous volume by three friends, entitled Love in Idleness (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1883), is the work of Mr. J. W. Mackail.

I

Three days beneath that hurrying storm we flew,
With eyes that ached within the flashing gloom,
With ears that, muffled in our mantles, knew
The shriek and clangour of the whistling spume,
With hearts that ceased to quail at any doom;
No respite had we for one moment's space,
But heard the winds pipe and the waters boom,
Nor through the darkness saw a kindly face,
Nor dared to let one hand a brother's hand enlace.

II

Till, the fourth morn, when from a swoon we waked,
Around us lay a cool and quiet sea,
50

Ringed by a dead grey sky enstarred and flaked
With cloudlets still as any cloud can be,
All pointing, like trim pennons, to our lee,
Where broke a light on the horizon dim,
So soft and luminous and deep that we,
Like men from shipwreck saved, pealed forth a hymn
To that first gracious Good that saved us, life and limb.

III

Towards this fair light our helm we would have set,
But that the compass of our ship was crazed,
For that strange storm had taught it to forget,
And round from south to north it quivered, dazed;
But brighter that great lamp of dawning blazed,
And of herself our bark turned round her head,
And onward every weary seaman gazed,
As o'er the opal glistening wave we fled,
And marked an island rise out of the ocean-bed.
51

IV

A craggy isle it seemed, of wanton shape,
Rounded with woodland, scarped by peaks on high,
With many a curve of brave fantastic cape,
And bright bare ridge of rock against the sky;
Straight towards it less we seemed to float than fly,
Like those swift barks that spread their ample sail
To catch the side-winds as they wander by
O'er Russian lakes when frosty moons prevail,
And skim the shining flats before an icy gale.

V

But ever as we neared that land of light
An odour broke upon our ravished sense,
A mingled perfume deep and exquisite
More cool and soft than burnëd frankincense,—
Like many a summer flower, but more intense,
The thrilling jonquil, the rich rose, were there,
The tender smell of a thick myrtle-fence,
Scents of young grapes, and budding leaves, and air
Through which from dawn to dusk the hurrying bees repair.
52

VI

And breathing deeply of this atmosphere,
We smiled, and gazed each on his comrade's face,
And found the skin that was so parched and sere
Had straight recovered each accustomed grace,
As if our feet stood on some holy place;
Though we had toiled so long upon the deep,
And all grown old and worn in piteous case,
That odour fine had cleared our eyes like sleep,
And smoothed our faded hair and taught our hearts to leap.

VII

And now beneath the magic isle we came;
Full of fair havens was it, blue and wide,
With iron promontories fit to tame
The wildest storm and make a calm inside,
Where gentlest birds might plume themselves and ride;
White cities nestled under every hill,
Stretching their marble feet to touch the tide,
And shallops driven by more than mortal skill,
Meandered here and there, or cleft the wave at will.
53

VIII

Down coverts thick with cedar and with pine
Sonorous waters dropt their silver shafts,
And through the woods we saw the temples shine,
Around whose portals many a priestess wafts
The incense of the island's handicrafts;
The morning broke upon a people's prayer,
We drank the odorous wind in deeper draughts,
And seeing the land so pure and void of care,
Our very hearts were touched, and we grew gentle there.

IX

Meanwhile our helmless vessel cleft the sea,
Following, we knew not how, the piercing sound
Of some high flute or pipe that seemed to be
Blown by a mouth beyond the utmost bound
Of this sweet island that our fate had found;
At last we neared a headland grey and hoary,
And like a living thing our ship veered round,
Past the firm granite of that promontory
Into a bay profound that flashed with light and glory.
54

X

We shot to right and left amid a fleet
Of ships of fairy trim and build antique;
Until below a stately marble street
Our prow against the quay began to shriek;
The forms that crowded round us all were Greek,
Yet by some marvel of the shifty brain
Their tongue seemed ours when they began to speak,
And ours seemed theirs when we replied again,
And words fell thick and fast in showers like summer rain.

XI

For these grave strangers marvelled at our dress,
Our Northern faces and our wondrous ship,
And more and more around us all would press,
Nor let us from their curious questioning slip,
And weighed our answers, lest our tongues should trip;
Nor could our smiles and honied speech assuage
The darkening eye and lip on hard-pressed lip,
They doubted lest our band had come to wage
Fell war with sylvan peace, their island-heritage.
55

XII

So for a while they whispered in a ring,
Taking deep counsel in their urgent case,
Then seemed to judge that none beside their king
Could truly tell if we were brave or base,
Then, child-like, said so to our very face,
And then with many a threat of pains and blows,
In quaint procession led us from that place,
Bound three by three in chaplets of wild rose,
Since no severer chain that happy island knows.

XIII

Far up the hot white streets of their great town,
Past cool arcades well-trellised round with vines,
Our genial captors, feigning many a frown,
Conducted us, and by their words and signs
Would fain have had us dread their deep designs;
We smiled and nimbly followed, as seemed best,
Till soon, beneath some solitary pines,
We halted meekly at their chief's behest,
And learned their land was named the “Island of the Blest.”
56

XIV

Then while we rested there, he taught us, too,
That Cretan Rhadamanthus was their king,
And that before his judgment-seat he drew
All that offended right in anything,
Or had a question of the law to bring;
Then we and they arose again, and sought
The highway where the parched cicalas sing,
And while we went, our courteous leader taught
The order of that state to us with minds distraught.

XV

But when at last before the King we stood
Deep in a temple built above the town,
After some brief delay we understood
Three cases must be tried before our own,
Whereat our captors, smiling, sat them down,
And we, in patience, watched that bright-eyed king
Stroke his white beard and shake his massy crown,
And saw the swift obsequious usher bring
The persons of each suit together in a ring.
57

XVI

But first a soldier of heroic mould
Threw on each side the pressing populace;
He wore a bright cuirass of beaten gold,
Fitting the captain of a kingly race,
But there was madness stamped upon his face;
Up to the throne he darted and stood still,
A monument of shattered power and grace,
Shouting, “I am Telamonian Ajax! Will,
O King, that I my place among my peers should fill!”

XVII

And Rhadamanthus bowed above his beard;
And some came forth who of Cassandra spake,
And of his own mad death; but all men feared
Those wandering eyes and lip-line like a snake;
Nor loved an answer from his lips to take;
So, after many words, the King decreed,
That he his thirst with hellebore should slake,
And after, in the bath awhile should bleed,
Till the great leech of Cos pronounced him sane indeed.
58

XVIII

Then, loudly wrangling, in the court upsprung
Theseus and Menelaus; by their side
Came Helen blushing; to her maids she clung,
But let her purple eyes roll far and wide,
And watched the monarch while her cause was tried;
Since each would have her for his wife, yet she
Her lovely hand to neither had denied,
Nor blushed she when the King's supreme decree
To Menelaus gave her loveliness in fee.

XIX

And close to us their bright procession swept,
As Atreus' son led off his beauteous prize,
But Theseus glowered as one who would have wept,
Had not his pride sealed fast his iron eyes;
Slowly he rose, burdened with many sighs,
While down the steps he watched her twinkling feet,
Then, like a warrior just before he dies,
Wrapped close his mantle round his heart's defeat,
And vanished like a ghost far down the glittering street.
59

XX

Then Hannibal with Alexander strove
For precedence, and many a cunning saw
Each quoted to the King, who dreamed above
Like some old incarnation of the law;
His judgment, like a lot, we saw him draw,
And he that conquered India proudly won;
The other knew that judgment had no flaw,
And like a sulky lion sought the sun,
While Rhadamanthus turned and eyed us one by one.

XXI

There in a group our crew together stood,
Whispering light whimsies or fantastic quips,
All fellows of the same quaint brotherhood,
Pale Vannus mourning still time's long eclipse;
And bearded Paradox, with laughing lips,
Murmuring strange verses;—Bion, like a wind,
Thin, dark and keen, whose speech so nimbly trips
That, like the hart, it leaves pursuit behind;—
And gentlest Horace swayed by his uncertain mind.
60

XXII

And many more were there; to whom, struck dumb
By all his majesty, the judge began:—
“Say who and from what unknown realm ye come,
To us who never yet saw living man?
Long years ago our feverish mortal span
Was ended, and this sacred land is given
To us, a little, but immortal clan,
From whom the bands of fleshly birth are riven,
Who know no life nor death, and taste nor hell nor heaven.

XXIII

“Ye men in whom the pulse of life yet runs
Have nought to do with us or we with you;
We envy not your swift-revolving suns,
Your headstrong hopes and summers cold and few.
Frail, captious creatures are ye, who pursue
An aim we know to be too high for us;
When all the world is yours to battle through,
Why come ye, strangers, uninvited thus,
Of our unsullied peace so coarsely amorous?”
61

XXIV

Then of our voyage to the King we spake,
And all the horrors of that later time,
And how our hearts with fear were near to break
When we encountered this delicious clime,
And how that we were guilty of no crime;
So Rhadamanthus having searched us through
A long while with those piercing eyes sublime,
At length, persuaded that our speech was true,
Relented of his wrath, and suavely gentle grew.

XXV

And smiling, warned us that one man's offence
Against their innocent island-polity
Would be enough to make him drive us thence,
However pure and still the rest might be;
Then, lifting up his voice, declared us free;
Whereat the chains fell straightway from each limb,
And all the strange fair faces we could see
Were smiling through the shadows deep and dim,
And each of us was touched by one who greeted him.
62

XXVI

And as I stood abashed and flushed, one came
Who took my hand within his grasp and said,
“Wilt thou that I should call thee by thy name,
Stranger? my name among the holy dead
Was Myron, and for home and Greece I bled.”
I answered him, and then with hand in hand
We downward went, I following where he led,
To view the splendours of that magian land,
By beauty so caressed and by such odours fanned.

XXVII

My tall companion was of aspect grave,
His features moulded in a form severe,
The locks that round his forehead loved to wave
Were like an autumn leafage, richly sere;
Stern was he, but the trembling heart of fear
Took comfort at the light in his young eyes;
Little he said, but spoke out firm and clear,
As one whose hands had taught him to be wise,
And from his robe I marked a dust of marble rise.
63

XXVIII

So, each by his own guide, we all were brought
Into a palace where the heroes sate,
And airy ministrants more swift than thought
Took off the garments of our former fate,
And clothed us in thin purple robes of state;
Then washed our feet in bowls that smelt of myrrh,
While to the couches where we lay and ate,
On printless feet that made no sound or stir
Came bearing food and wine each gentle minister.

XXIX

The banquet done, with Myron at my side,
I wandered out to see the town at ease;
It hangs above a champaign green and wide
Close moulded by the tumbling azure seas;
Across the fields of flowers a fresh'ning breeze
For ever lifts the glowing atmosphere;
Within that city fruits and blossoming trees
Ripen and bud with leafage never sere,
And burn in tender green down many a courtway clear.
64

XXX

At topmost of the town a stately hall
Lets through its portico the clear blue light;
Hither at noon of day the townsmen all
In public gatherings take their chief delight,
And wrangle till the dewy fall of night;
To Artemis the island-peoples pray,
Or dance in chorus when the moon is bright,
For where the Stoa lifts its pillars gray
Her statue crowned the street, a beacon far away.

XXXI

And Myron's work it was, in glowing bronze;
Beneath the figure stood the sacred name;
Serene she seemed as when her godship dons
The woodland dress that wrought Actæon shame;
One hand she held her bow in, and the same
Pressed back her foolish hound; the other passed
Behind her neck to lift one shaft of flame
Out of her quiver; from her eyes she cast
A glance to outstrip in speed the quarry flying fast.
65

XXXII

All this and more my grave companion showed;
The fountains pulsing in each street and square,
The marble dyke through which the river flowed,
The temples of the immortal gods of air,
And their clear-carven images and fair;
The bright Lyceum to Apollo vowed,
Where many an athlete strove, shining and bare,
Vast halls from which a noise of tambours loud
Came moduling the dance of footsteps in a crowd.

XXXIII

No night there is within that island fair;
But when the twilight threw its pearly veil
Across the azure of the blinding air,
And far away to sea each twinkling sail
Was lightly dyed with crimson faint and pale,
And all the world grew like an opal-stone,
Fit for the prelude of the nightingale,
Tall Myron turned and said “The day is done,
'Tis time that each of us to his own home was gone.”
66

XXXIV

With that we left the town and climbed the hill,
Along a path that led through orchard-slopes,
Fenced from the browsing creatures' wanton will
By thornless cactus, set to mar the hopes
Of idle goats and truant antelopes;
From all the branches flowers of radiant hue
Hung down in long festoons and flying ropes;
Through which with labouring flight a dusky crew
Of strange sweet songsters passed and warbled as they flew.

XXXV

At last we took a path high up the steep,
That brought us out before a house of stone;
This dwelling looked out eastward o'er the deep
And heard the loud waves' rounded monotone,
Too sweet and far that, like a human moan,
Their sound should breed a conscious melancholy;
Around it spread a garden green and lone,
Given up to insects fair and blossoms wholly,
With beds of sacred herbs, rue, balsam, vervain, moly.
67

XXXVI

“This house is thine,” said Myron, “all the while
That thou art with us.” At the open door
There sat a woman with a weary smile,
Spinning, and gazing down upon the shore,
Where skiff by skiff came landwards evermore,
As though she looked for one that never came.
About her arms and down along the floor
The masses of her hair in golden flame
Fell, shedding round a light no shadow of night could tame.

XXXVII

I watched her in deep silence, for her eyes
Troubled my pulse with beauty; but we stirred,
And as she turned, I saw the soul arise
Within her, and the bliss of hope deferred;
Her noble arms she spread without a word,
A living colour glorified her face,
And, ere a sound from those fine lips I heard.
Most virgin-like and with a queenly grace,
She rose and locked my form in her divine embrace.
68

XXXVIII

Long time I hung in that ambrosial dream,
And when I waked, I found there none but she;
Slowly our arms untwined, like some twin stream
That parts at last in hastening to the sea,
But knows that soon united it must be
For ever; as I waited flushed and dumb,
Across the threshold-stone she passed from me,
Then turned with passion-laden eyes that swum,
And held the curtain back, and smiled, and whispered “Come!”

XXXIX

In such beatitude our days passed by,
So that the wintry wave we quite forgot,
Nor ever recollected with a sigh
That boreal country where our sires begot
Children predestined to a weary lot;
Beauteous and young we grew, and fit to tread
Beside the immortal shapes that faded not
In this old island of the lovely dead,
Our minds on glorious dreams and fair romances fed.
69

XL

And Myron was my counsellor and guide,
Who taught me patiently all sacred lore;
With him I loved to climb the mountain-side,
Or ride along the margin of the shore,—
In his wise voice contented evermore;
Swift through the waves our racing limbs we flung,
Chased the wild roe across the moorland hoar,
Or, braced for speed, above the footline hung,
In those Olympian games, by lyric Pindar sung.

XLI

So I and so my former shipmates lived
Lighthearted as the summer birds that sing;
If ever in our thoughtful hearts revived
The solemn warning of that ancient king,
We smiled, for we were pure in everything;
Guiltless we moved under his easy yoke,
Safe in the shelter of his kindly wing,
Nor ever seemed we tempted to provoke
The wrath that on the heads of impious sinners broke.
70

XLII

But one was there, the stripling of our crew,
Cynthius by name, a tall and nimble wight,
Most indiscreet he was, though kind and true;
In strange adventures both by day and night
This restless being took his sole delight;
And oft we quaked to mark his aspect sly,
As hand on hip, deep in the evening light,
He taught those townsfolk with an earnest eye
Of things that never were in earth or sea or sky.

XLIII

Little he loved the quiet Dorian ways,
To plastic beauty he was somewhat blind;
The luscious stillness of those blissful days
Hung like a cloud upon his cheerful mind,
Nor pleasure in processions could he find;
Nor blew the flute, nor plucked the lyre-string tense,
No fillet round his temples would he bind,
But lashed the poets for their lack of sense,
And rated with his tongue the athlete's indolence.
71

XLIV

Yet was he, for all this, the chief delight
Of racer, bard, artificer and sage,
Who clustered round their captious favourite,
And smiled to hear the youthful stoic wage
Fantastic war against a nobler age;
But we, who knew him best, shuddered to see,
Like some fierce creature in a feeble cage,
His twinkling eye, grown restive, long to be
Alert on some new scheme of daring devilry.

XLV

Deep in the boscage, high above the town,
Some ancient king has cleared a cirque of grass,
So large that many guests can sit them down,
And stretch their limbs and drain a joyous glass;
From this fair banquet-hall of leaves there pass
Winding arcades amid the sparser trees,
And, after feasting, many a lad and lass
May tread these paths in noisy twos and threes,
Lost and regained to sight in verdurous slow degrees.
72

XLVI

And daily at the hour that brings the dew
We gathered there with guests of stately mould,
Once known to sight by such as wandered through
The Dorian valleys in the age of gold,
All young as gods, yet all divinely old;
With these we lay on couches of cool moss,
While round us waves of wondrous converse rolled,
On which our mortal spirits seemed to toss
Like some frail shallop borne where ocean-currents cross.

XLVII

But while they spake and wrangled of the wars,
I marked that Helen sat and only smiled,
Nor glanced aside to mark the flushing scars
Of heroes whom the grape made nobly wild;
Like a ripe rounded peach, downy and mild,
Her cheek lay cool under her watchful eye,
And Menelaus by her calm beguiled,
Shouted the old Hellenic battle-cry,
And laughed and swung his cup to see the Trojans die.
73

XLVIII

But soon I marked that Cynthius ceased to fret,
And lost the bright impatient glance he had,
So we, rejoiced to think he could forget
His mundane pleasures as a mortal lad,
In this new birth grew confident and glad;
His slim and personable form was seen
Each evening at the feast, when we were bade,
Most gravely hastening o'er the shaven green,
To take the seat that brought him nearest to the Queen.

XLIX

And when the talk grew hottest of the fight,
And maids and boys had leave the feast to quit,
Helen and he would rise in all men's sight,
To wander in the forest glades, and flit
Around the circle in a pensive fit,
No harm being thought, where all could see them plain
Deep in the shadow, and through the heart of it,
As through the shafts of the straight summer rain
We see the bending woods and waves of shining grain.
74

L

So now we seemed secure of endless joy,
And quite forgot the sword above our head,
Nor dreamed that sin of one man could destroy
The innocent quiet of the lives we led;
One morn I rose up timely from my bed,
And, wandering through my garden o'er the sea,
Paused, full of marvel, as with all sail spread,
A fleet below me scudding on the lee
Seemed banded in pursuit of some swift enemy.

LI

And far before them on the round sky's rim
I saw a pinnace ploughing through the main,
And though the foamy air around was dim,
I marked two figures that the plunging strain
Of the loud breaker struck and shook amain,
So that the sun-bright hair of one of these
Broke from the fillet where its coils had lain,
And blew around her in the salt-sea breeze
Or fluttered thread by thread across her quivering knees.
75

LII

But more and more their crazy bark began
To sway and toil within the labouring deep,
And faster ever the pursuers ran
Like wolves upon a lost and foolish sheep,
Made swifter still to see their quarry creep;
The mainmast of the boat snapped in the wind,
I saw the master in his anguish leap,
And the loose canvas from its wreck unbind,
Then sink with hanging hands as one to fate resigned.

LIII

And on they swept; but I, oppressed at heart,
Turned to my own familiar door, and spake
To her who loved me; and I saw her start,
Troubled, as one that dreams and would not wake;
But soon my anxious voice had power to break
The tissue of light dreams, and she arose;
Smiling she came, and for her slumber's sake
Craved sweet excuse, the rosy-tinted snows
Upon her cheeks still flushing from her pure repose.
76

LIV

I tried to smile; but prescience and despair
Weighed on me with a keener pain than death;
Beneath the river of her rippling hair
I wound my arms, and fed on her sweet breath,
Teaching her lips the secret that he saith
Who could not pour his heart out otherwise;
But waits that love may see he sorroweth,
And read the story at his brimming eyes,
And on his breaking heart grow pitiful and wise.

LV

So she divined that all was done at last;
The pleasant mornings that we sat together
Under the deep pomegranate-tree, and cast
Its unripe fruits far down our slope of heather;
The starry nights of high untroubled weather
When through the trees we wandered hand in hand;
Watching the ghostly birds of drooping feather
That made a singing glory through the land,
Or with our twining arms each other's bosom spanned.
77

LVI

Then rose a clamour at the stricken gate,
And in there rushed on us an angry crowd;
“Too late to fly!” they said “too late! too late!”
And railed on me in accents vague and loud;
Over her knees one moment's space she bowed,
Then stood upright and faced them at my side,
Until, like hounds a master's voice hath cowed,
That horde fell back, and when their shouts had died,
Their captain to my voice in quavering tones replied.

LVII

The curse was brought by that most wanton hand
Of Cynthius; he, with foolish love enflamed,
Had striven to steal in secret from the land
Bright Helen, of her sorceries unashamed;
The careless shaft thus in the darkness aimed
Had stricken all strangers in the happy isle;
Cynthius had pleased his own wild heart untamed,
And now to chasten his unholy guile
The King must drive us thence as men abhorred and vile.
78

LVIII

They urged us on, and pushed us to the town;
At every path fresh fugitives we met,
For to the sea-board all were hastening down,
Some laughing, some with faces hard and set,
Some on whose cheeks the starting tears were wet,
While as we passed the Stoa void and wide,
Myron, with eyes not fashioned to forget,
Darted between our captors to my side,
And silently we passed down to the water-side.

LIX

There dead upon a scaffold Cynthius hung;
Our own black ship was moored against the quay,
And underneath that body as it swung
They forced us with a swift discourtesy
To climb her sides, hoist sail, and put to sea.
But Myron and my lost beloved stood
Tall, pale and silent, watching us, till we
Passed far away upon the glimmering flood,
And round us broke a light of vengeance and of blood.
79

LX

Then switly through that crimson atmosphere
We hastened, with no help from wind or oar,
While sorrow pierced us, and the pangs of fear
O'erpowered our mortal spirits more and more,
Despair behind us and the storm before;
With that into the realm of gloom we fled;
A tempest broke us like a sullen shore;
And stunned with awe and hopeless as the dead,
Through the loud zone of night our elfin vessel sped.
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