Lyrical Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lyrical Poems

By Richard Watson Dixon

Dixon, Richard Watson (1833-1900)

[dedication]

[section]

VLYSSES AND CALYPSO

MERCVRY TO PROMETHEVS

THE MYSTERY OF THE BODY

A COVNTRY PLACE REVISITED

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

VLYSSES AND CALYPSO

Night held her middle course,
The Bear had turned the Pole:
The Pleiads to their source
Beneath the Ocean stole.

There swept along the wave
Fair sound and odorous light,
From where in secret cave
Calypso watched the night.

And still with hands and feet
A golden thread she wove,
While in sad strain and sweet
She sang her absent love.

“Vlysses, thou art gone,
Thou sailest on the sea:
Colder thy heart than stone,
Heavy is mine in me.

“Thou camest through the gate
Of the wide open main,
Whose valves of mist so late
Have closed thee hence again.

“That night the great winds blew,
Though high the sky and bare:
The smitten billows flew
Like monsters half in air.

“I saw beneath the moon
The breaking waters shock:
The sheeted white lay strewn
About the battling rock.

“But whiter than the spray
The cloudless moon shone o'er
A naked man there lay
Vpon the ghostly shore.

“Senseless he lay for dead:
The heavy swinging wave
Flew out beyond his head,
And clothed him with his grave.

“I took him from the brine,
I bore him to my cell:
Fed him with bread and wine,
And wreathed my gentlest spell.

“I called the dreams from heaven
To hover round his bed;
Bade each appointed sweven
Nurture and solace shed.

“I sang within his sight,
Sitting within the grot:
Sang from the far far hight,
Where he beheld me not.

“I promised him to shew
The sights the gods hold dear:
That all of weal and woe
To him might changed appear:

“That more than gold to him
The gleam of gold might be:
Or grass, that wild winds skim,
Than corn-choked granary:

“That joy's quick smile might mock
Joy's joy: that strength might rob
Pain of her scaith, and rock
Heart with exultant throb:

“That so, the world around,
Might death seem fair and gay:
Jocund the tiger's bound,
Merry his bleeding prey.

“Echo and Iris both
From cloud and cavern came,
The wandering air to clothe
With laughter and quick flame.

“Echo made earth to ring
With voices of delight;
And Iris spread her wing
Sevenfold of colours bright.

“Echo laughed through the land,
Iris came o'er the sea;
Her grey-winged dove in hand
Amid the clouds smiled she.

“I sang with tingling strings,
And set within his range,
How bright the life of things
Lifted o'er mortal change.

“How rich the taste of bliss
The reckless gods enjoy,
Because the cup they kiss,
Not drain it to annoy.

“How he with me might gain,
Through high resolved power
Loosing the mortal chain
Scaithless, the airbuilt tower.

“Alas! the man I loved,
The man I sang so fair,
Along the shore still moved
With downcast eyes of care.

“Mortals with mortals mate:
This law, since Zeus began
From gentler Saturn's date,
Divides the gods from man.

“Across the sea he sent
A long and wistful gaze:
And sighs of discontent
His stormy breast would raise.

“Ah, then I changed my song:
Woe's me! to weave delay
I did the gods this wrong
Their secret to betray.

“I told that in the hight
The gods, no more than man
On earth, do hold delight
In caption, neither can:

“That in the doublest knot
Of cloud, or fold of foam,
Or light that flies the grot,
Some nymph's extremest home,

“What glinted seems to be
Fairest to mortal eyes,
E'en of the eyes that see
Partakes the maladies:

“That Zeus himself makes quest
For ever, winning nought;
And, if there be a best,
'Tis still for ever sought;

“That things the most unknown,
In silence as in sound:
That things the rarest shewn,
O'erpassing mortal bound:

“Like things to man that fall,
And his full knowledge own;
They have one lot in all,
But happiness is none:

That gods but gaze and guess,
Marvelling that they create;
Not theirs, beneath fate's stress,
To enjoy, but contemplate:

“That what gods hide is pain,
Though men believe it bliss.—
This said I: and in vain,
Nor made my sorrow his.

“Vlysses, thou art gone:
Thou sailest on the sea:
Colder thy heart than stone,
As heavy mine in me.

“A stone? That is thy heart:
That stone may we divide:
The heaviness my part;
The coldness, that I chide.

“But if with heaviness
Coldness doth make a stone,
This without that is less.—
Stone-heart, thou heart hast none!

“For, as the time went on,
He wept with many a tear,
Still grieving to be gone:
I could not hold him here.

“My wood, that waved so fair,
To make his raft I felled:
For sails I did not spare
My woven stuffs to yield.

“And, though so late he sighed,
Now, as he shaped his raft,
He smiled, all eager-eyed,
And talked of sailor craft.

“His arms were rough with scars,
With toil his sinews wight;
He spake of works and wars,
As I spake of delight.

“He spake of mortal love
Made more by mortal care,
When each with other strove
The heavier load to bear:

“Of children known more dear
By helpless infancy:
Of virtue proved to cheer,
When gods send misery.

“Vlysses, thou art gone,
Thou sailest on the sea:
I sought thee for mine own,
But thou hast conquered me.

“For now I feel within
Both human thought and care:
Now cold is grown, and thin
And wonderless the air.

“And now I long to fix
In some poor cot my rest:
With mortal care to mix,
And nurse perturbed breast:

“And gradually to grow
Older, more weak and blind,
Till Death should bid me go
To join my buried kind.

“Now all the gods above
Behold me with disdain,
Where in their clouds they move
Still pitiless of pain.

“For when my hand was lent
To aid thy building craft,
From out the clouds they bent,
And at my labour laughed.

“And when from off the shore
Thy finished skiff was cast,
Their laughter rose the more
Along the glittering vast.

“Over the sea went'st thou,
Never regarding me:
Ah, would that I were now
But thy Penelope.”