University of Virginia Library

THE LAMENT OF ECHO

Sole in the vale, along the shelving crags
By lone reverberant quarries and deep scaurs,
Where the full river, coiling like a snake,
In loop and reach reverted on itself,
With long meandering desultory march,
Pushes its languid current towards the sea
And trifles with the flowers upon its rim,
Loosestrife and kex and spear grass, cliffs above
Rearing their cumbrous woods o'er dark ravines;
There along shelf and gallery I pass
With foot as light as the dew-spider's thread,
And listen, listen, listen, ah! for whom?
I lean my ear against the rifted side
Of granite chasms, porches of Acheron.
My feet fear not the crumbling gray defile,
They clamber where the mountain breaks in shards
And tumbles all in weathered fragments down.
I wind, light-footed as the mountain goat,
By slippery tracks and sheep-cotes tenantless,
Once walled, now broken and ruined long ago,
Built by the herdsmen of the dawn, whose dust
Is scattered on the hills: primeval folds,
Whereat once bleated Sire Deucalion's sheep,
I thread them like the shadow of a dream.
I search the clefts and crannies of the rocks,
I search and yet I find not, woe is me!
Hera has laid this curse upon my lips,
That I am dumb until one speaks to me.
I, Echo most forlorn and shadowy nymph,
Abiding in my whispering solitudes,
Lovelorn and broken with stern Hera's hate,
Consume my barren prime, which bears no bud.
I pass, the glitter of a half-seen robe,
I pass, the whisper of a half-heard voice,
An ineffectual cuckoo of the rocks,
Here, there, close to, then half a vale away.
I pine and wane in my decrepitude,
Sick with a wasting flame that dries my soul,
Sick with the haunting face of the hill-boy,
Whom I pursue with yearning infinite,
And wither for his beauty and his grace.
He is beyond the hyacinth and rose
In loveliness: such clustered ringlets hang
Around his brow ambrosial: such a flush
Mantles the flower-like burnish of his cheek.
O my Narcissus, never to be mine!
Immeasurably barriered from my love
By the half childish vengeance of this god,
Who plays with wreck and ruin, as a boy
Delights to break the plaything of an hour.
And me the slow death of long love-despair
Wastes with insidious poison to a shade,
And he disdains me and I pine disdained;
For to the solstice beam of my desire
He is cold and wintry, as the turbid wave,
Wherein his sire Cephisus, king of floods,
Holds oozy state and sun-sequestered rule,
Under his palace roof of floating weeds.
Me such a net of vengeance Hera weaves,
And Fate has made Narcissus this award,
Lovely she made him with a lavish hand,
Loveless she made him with an iron heart.
His eyes are keen to track the hunted roe,
But to the colour of all love are blind.
Love may not whisper in his dullard ear,
And kisses wander from his perfect lips
In an eternal exile far aloof.
I hear thy horn thro' dewy valleys wound,
Far in the distant morn: I hear thy voice
Calling thy hounds to breast the roe-buck's trace.
I hear and I reply, for my sealed lips
Are given the power to mimic with their sound
Thy mountain music. O my hunter love,
The gods who grudge me much at least give this,
And to the challenge of thy ringing shout,
The sudden-noted bugle at thy side
I can flute back a tender weird reply.
This is the only talk allowed my love;
When other maids can interchange long vows,
And know the taste of kisses, I know none.
O! were I but a fleet-foot hunting hound
To be thy patient comrade of the chase,
To dog thy active steps from dawn to dusk,
As thy poor shadow, and thou my Phœbus fair,
The darkness I, projected in the beam
Behind the splendid footsteps of my lord,
Shade of thy path, hound—anything with thee,
To do thee humble service as a dog,
And watch thine eyes for fragments, till thou toss
Some careless crumbs of favour to my mouth,
And I would guard thy worn and wearied sleep,
Tired with the rapture of the long wet glades.
Beautiful love, breathe on my anguished heart,
Which pines as droughty fallow for the rain,
As faint the larchwoods for ambrosial dews;
Renew me with thy love so long withheld.
Why should stern Hera gloom with fateful brows,
And curse me for Olympian jealousies?
If Zeus grow weary of her hateful arms,
Why should I pay the forfeit, love-amerced?
If thou wilt love me, all her anger fails,
And rosy days replace her baffled ire.
If thou art obdurate and scorn me still,
Some Nemesis will seize thee in its toils;
For not on me alone this bolt will fall.
And if I pine and wither and fade away,
If as a floating wreath I haunt these hills
And melt a phantom voice on eddying gale,—
Lo, I predict, for my great sorrow and doom
Unveil the future's landscape partly clear,
And they who die speak with prophetic truth,
I can discern from dayspring realms remote
Drifted to thee a cloud of death so strange
As never ended love and lover yet.
Such Até from my ashes will arise,
And all my beauty will be as a curse
To drag thee down to Acheronian doors.
I know not how, yet surely this shall be.