University of Virginia Library

Phœbus Apollo, Zeus and Leto's son,
Whose throne is set in heaven: whose earthly fame
The incense altars of a hundred fanes
Acclaim with cymbal clash and choral song,
Of the Olympian princedoms not the least:
Whose green Pierian laurel for reward
Crowns the dead poets, crownless till they die,
With pale fruit ripe too late and tardy leaves:
Patron of all whose weary craft it is
To teach the deaf to sing, the blind to see:
God of the healer, god of the nine wise maids:
Helmer of that huge planet, in whose beam
The Earth as some great rose at spring-coming
Opens her leaves and laughs—This orient lord,
Clear as the crystal of his Hippocrene,
In old-world meadows asphodelian once
Found Clymene, the gracious, the amazed,
A trembling snow-drop of the silver foam,
Belated in those amber meads, whereon
She came to gather tulips, unattended;
Because her sister Oceanides
Held their sea-flowers the best, and her grey sire
Hated the earth. Old King Oceanus,
Blue-eyed, and wrinkled as the sand is wrinkled,
A fair wide face, hoary and ample-browed,
Smiling a sort of helpless animal smile,
And whispering in the tangles of its beard
Of intervolving sea weeds: a vague bulk
Of humid godship, whom the fisher-folk
See floating, like the limpet-crusted oar
Of some old Argosy wrecked long ago.

Whose child Apollo met among the flowers,
And fell, ah, well-a-day, enamouring
With such white heat and storm of love desire
That he must win her, lest the god in him
Should pine into some spectre like a cloud,
Or dwindle to a phantom of himself
Waving its frustrate wings too weak for heaven,
Through the intensities of longing starved
Into a thing of air, its essence gone,
A waif upon the winds, rocked in the rain;
Forlorn, dishevelled, unimmortalised,
Its crown unworn, its empty throne forsaken!
Can Love do this? he has done this in Heaven.
Who shall contend with Love? Not Phœbus then;
God as he was he paid obedience sweet,
And the adored in adoration knelt
To Clymene, chosen of Love for him.
And day by day with burning lips he came,
Pining he came in those ambrosial meads
To woo her. Morn by morn, he made her songs
To win her fancy—things all dew and flame,
Winged with the blush of sunset and gold of dawn,
Flame music to the dew of earnest words.
As when the spring sweeps out in wild desire
Weeping and panting o'er the unmelted snow,
And the red orchards blossom all too soon:
Ice at the root and rose leaves on the bough,
The world blood fighting with the frozen grave,
And Love flies over the blue fields of ice
With laughter and with perfume. From whose wings
The rain-drops in immeasurable gold
Sheet the cold, aching winter under him;
And all the birds begin—ah, God, what bard,
Piecing his petty syllables aline,
Dare croak where Phœbus sings, dare lift his voice
To catch a shadow of the song of heaven,
Dare in the weakling words at his command
To give the passion of a god, and pour
Immortal wine into an urn of clay,
Or light his lantern at the bolt of Jove?
Ah, fool! fling down thy lyre; what bard shall live
When Love makes poet of the poet King?
Lay down thy lyre and watch. And if so be
Some inkling reach thee of Olympian tones,
Be thankful in thy sorrow and very glad,
Albeit thou shalt never render them
Again unto thy fellows, for thy hand
Is weak as palsy and thy mouth a babe's.

So Phœbus sang to sweetheart Clymene;
And at the wonder of his lovelorn chords
The nightingales were silenced and ashamed
And knew their master, dumb, nor sang again
That spring-time. And the glamour of his song
Tingled the doubting wood-tips into bloom.
And she, yet virgin of all lovers, heard
The enchantment. On her face his fragrant breath
Came, in her ears that miracle of music,
Wonder of sound whereat her spirit died
Fainting. His eyes burnt on her quailing lids,
Burning around her his immortal hands!
What marvel that she gave him his desire,
Bride in the daffodils, weepingly gave
Herself to the fierce Sun, bedewed with tears—
As one of these poor amber blossoms flags
Moist with the morning's drops, as Phœbus beats
His sudden-risen rays all merciless
Against her petal curtains, flame in flame.

Some gods kiss once and never come again:
Not Phœbus thus. No nymph of dale or down,
No silver Naiad of the sedge, no pale
Oread with acorn garland, not his old
Daphne, ere she unwomaned into leaves—
Seemed to Apollo half as beautiful
As Clymene his treasure lately found,
His long to be beloved. Her love was gold
Untarnished in the lapse of light and rain.
Her love was wine whereof a man may drink
And thirst again unwearied. Years went on,
And still Apollo, in her loveliness
Constantly joying with a spousal joy,
Left for her arms the throned queens of heaven,
Sole in the icy splendours of their thrones,
And found his sea-girl sweeter than them all,
Her yearlong husband. Fickle are the gods;
After the brief night of their favour done,
They do arise, and with one cold farewell
Sail cloudward: and the wan white victim weeps
For aye a broken lamb, wounded and mazed
Upon the altar of their amorousness.
But the Olympian lover melts in air.
His bright ascent a leaning rainbow tracks,
Dædal with argent amethyst and tinged
In avenues of the marmoreal dawn,—
Hard-eyed, immortal, griefless, loveless, lost!
But Phœbus loved not as these godlings use;
He needed in the garden of his soul
No lovelier roseleaf. Clymene alone
Wrote in his absent fancy pictured loves.
She rode in spirit thro' the cloud with him.
He heard her footstep in the halls of heaven,
Her smile made pale his father's starry lamps,
In heaven he hungered for his earthly spouse;
And all the glorious precinct of his birth
Palled like a prison on his weary eyes.
And those Titanic palaces of dreams,
Golden, auroral, built for god desire
To sun itself in gardens of content;
Where the eternal lily never fades,
And there are no graves, no vicissitudes,
No sighs, no cypress: but the splendid groves
Murmur with happy May beyond the stars—
All these sweet places sickened on his soul,
Empty of love, empty of Clymene,
Most joyless desolations full of joy,
Unparadised, insipid, tearless heaven.
Then as a lark tired with the steadfast sun,
Or solitary singing to the cloud,
Reseeks with joy his lowly nesting tuft
And dreams beside his mate no more of stars,
Perfectly homed and utterly content—
So Phœbus down the blue lake of the air
Back to his nest of love and Clymene
Descended. Like some meteor shining mild
In autumn skies, when shadowy reapers set
Their upward sheaves against the harvest moon,
Slides down the milky arc of spangled heaven
And seems to meet the ground a mile away—
So to his earthly hymeneals sank
The great sun-god. Love quenched his fiercer beams,
Love softened all his burning lineaments,
And made the ardours of that visage mild,
Whereon the eagle sole of mortal sights
Can rest his aching orbs. A rosy veil
Robe-like o'ershadowed his effulgent form,
Disguising in his aspect half the god,
Ungreatening all this sunny emperor
Into the beauty of some warrior king,
Chosen of men, heroic flower of fame,
Who from the tent and camp of his high deeds
Comes to his lady's bower. So Phœbus came.

Years rolled away: the scytheman laggard Time,
Whose slow swift feet roam on for evermore,
Moving athwart the lights of night and morn,
A dream between the cradle of the day
And the dull urn of midnight, deaf to hear
The lute of love, blind to the rose in bloom,
The terrible, the merciful, grey Time,
Who like a thirsty raven ever tracks
The blood drops of the wounded western sun;
Beneath whose ebon wing the world grows old—
Time in his flight came by. The stars arose,
And the wild winds roared and again were mute,
And leaves were born and yellowed and Time went on.

So years slipt by to Phœbus and his spouse,
And children in their bridal bowers arose.

Ah! Phaethon, unhappy Phaethon!
How shall I tell thee next? In what lean words
Set down for other men and other days,
When Time is old and grown unbeautiful,
And all the gods are dead or sealed away
In dusty tomes despised and clean forgot
In this cold northern corner of the world
Beyond the grey seas misty. O Arcady,
O flute of Tempe frozen these thousand years,
O sad great voice of Pan! I see the maids
Pierian weeping round their Hippocrene.
The ploughshare of this sordid Present cleaves
And cuts the sacred well, and boorish feet
Crush in its sides. I think, that never more
Can one stoop down and drink: and rising up,
Flushed with a tingling inspiration, sing
Beyond himself, and in a huckster age
Catch some faint golden shadow into his page
From that great day of Hellas and Hellas gods;
Which these wise critics of the city of smoke
Sneer at as wrack and lumber of the tombs.