Amenophis and Other Poems Sacred and Secular :: :: University of Virginia Library

Pausanias, Regent of Sparta, after commanding his countrymen in the victory of Plataea, was corrupted by sight of Persian luxury and despotism, and began to act the tyrant, notably in his conduct to a free maiden of Byzantium, where he was in command of the Greeks allied against the King of Persia. They, disgusted, withdrew from him, who, meanwhile, tormented by the shade of the maiden, whom he had slain in error, after vain efforts to appease the spirit, was recalled to Sparta. His treasonable offers to Persia being now betrayed by a slave, he was starved to death by order of the citizens in the Brazen House of Athena.

These events fell between 479 and 466 B.C.

I

By the wine-dark Euxine sea,
Where Second Rome once lifted high
Her pomp of marble majesty,
An earlier city clothes itself in glee.
—Megarian Byzance!—for Plataea's plain
Soaks with Persian gore;
Hellas breathes once more;
Pausanias' arm has won; the land is free again.

131

II

Let the triumph then flame out
Along her terraces and towers,
The curved sea-wall, the cypress bowers,
In lights and altar-fires and song and shout:
For golden-panoplied Masistes lies
Naked 'mong the dead!
Artabazus fled!
Pausanias' name goes up in hymn and sacrifice.

III

Peace in all her sweetness hail!
No more the clarions ravish sleep;
Red rust-stains o'er the lances creep;
Gray spider-meshes gather on the mail:
Glad youths with girls the Comus-carols share;
In our feastful bowers
Song puts forth her flowers:
Peace with thy children, hail! Hail, Wealth and Order fair!

A splendid fragment, from a Paean by the lyrical poet Bacchylides,

Τικτει δε τε θνατοισιν Ειρανα------

is here paraphrased.

IV

Why, with envy of his name,
Should Spartan hands the tale erase
From the tall Delphic tripod-base?
—The day was thine,—and thine must be the fame!
Pure hero, brave and pure, for such alone
God with glory crowns;
Bulwark of our towns,
Byzantium welcomes thee, and calls thee now her own!

132

V

—Vain the welcome and the praise!
Unconscious irony of man!
Not knowing how the God His plan
By evil tools works out, and hidden ways:
For He with lightning eyes the secret heart
Searches through, while we
Guess from what we see,
And coarsely, by success, define the hero's part.

VI

Sparta's life and lore forgot,
He that was once Pausanias, now
Before the King he smote can bow,
Swine-changed as Circe's herd, and knows it not!
Traitor to Hellas and Heraclid name,
Despot, in his lust
Hardening, to the dust
Men, women, all, he hurls, the victims of his shame.

VII

—Fairest of Byzantine maids,
Fair Cleonicé, pure and sweet,
With downcast eyes and modest feet
Moving as Leto through Gortynian glades;
Heart of thy mother's heart from infant years
As the gentle face
Rounds to maiden grace,
And she through very love thy beauty sees with tears.

133

VIII

As the dearest nymph of all
Who bend round Artemis in the dance,
When eyes with star-like rapture glance,
And silken waves on ivory shoulders fall,
Lips part for joy, not breath,—she stands upright,
Like the Delian palm,
In her maiden calm,
Whilst all the air around trembles with beauty's light:

IX

—For thy mother best, and thee,
If thy last breath had been the first!
This day the tyrant's greedful thirst
For his foul harem claims thy purity:
Sure sign of baseness at the heart, he deems
Woman slave and toy;
Cast aside, when joy
Sickens the sated sense;—forgot with morning dreams.

X

Midnight as a robber's mask
Now muffles close o'er town and sea:
Now force and fraud and sin are free
To lurk and prowl and do their wolvish task:
Now tow'rd the tyrant's spear-encircled bed,
Tow'rd Pausanias' tent,
Lo, white footsteps bent,
So shame-struck soft, her heart speaks louder than her tread!

134

XI

Helpless, hapless victim-maid!
Not first nor last, I ween, art thou,
Thy gentleness coerced to bow,
Losing thyself to lust,—and nothing said!
Only a girl! only one more, abased,
While man's tyrant-might
Boasts thee frail and light,
And thy creation mars, to his desires disgraced!

XII

Now the brutal couch she seeks
Through blinding night—for, at her prayer,
The odorous lights extinguish'd are—
To hide from self her horror-kindled cheeks:
Ghost-like with vagrant steps she threads the camp:—
Labyrinth-like the shade
Of that tent:—the Maid
Strikes down with clanging fall the lightless golden lamp.

XIII

Sudden from the darkness wide
As some blue trenchant lightning-flame
That seams the cloud, a scimitar came,
And Cleonicé by Pausanias died!—
Dead!—for the traitor deem'd himself betray'd!
Dead!—The Persian sword,
Slavery's sign abhorr'd,
From worse than death, by death redeem'd the Dorian maid.

135

XIV

Morning comes; and with the mo.
The timely bird, the clarion-cry,
The crowding sailors' glad ‘Hy—hy,’
The jostling galleys in the sun-gilt Horn:
But all the happy music of the day
O'er her went in vain,
Where upon the plain
Like some young palm, in all its promise fell'd, she lay.

XV

Morning comes: And he who wrought
The shame, as one refresh'd awakes,
And lust's remorseless counsel takes,
And names another victim in his thought;
‘But if our citizens fret, and 'gainst my sway
With the allies combine,—
Persia's King is mine!
Europe to Asia yoked shall soon my will obey!’

XVI

‘Go where blinded Insolence
And selfish Lust, her child, lead on!’—
O voiceless Voice, to him alone
Whisper'd within, unfelt by mortal sense!
Aye whisper'd!—And a Presence now is by;
Ever at his side
Seems unseen to glide;
A clinging second self; a Shade he cannot fly.

136

XVII

As the fever-feeble wretch,
With lidless eyes and stirless head
Sees a gray ghost beside his bed,
And in the vision knows his fated Fetch:
Or gaunt Orestes, when the deed was done,
Queen and co-mate slain,
Full requital ta'en,
Winning his game, himself found by the Furies won;

See the terrible υμνος εξ'Ερινυων in the Eumenides of Aeschylus.

XVIII

In his ears the frenzying song,
That chain'd the soul and dried the flesh,
And flung a close air-woven mesh
Around its prey, while wingless serpents throng
Draining him to a shadow; and his brain
Maddens with the sting,
As the Erinnyes sing
The songless chaunt of Hell, the soul-corroding strain.

XIX

Yet the Loxian gave him peace!
And to the Hill of War the fair
Athena bade the youth repair,
And purged his guilt, and voted him release;
For he repented of parental gore,
Of that double stroke;
And the Just Ones' yoke
Was lighten'd from his neck, and he breathed free once more.

137

XX

—But the God-abandon'd chief,
By his own passions lash'd and whirl'd,
To deeper depths each day was hurl'd,
Yet from that haunting Voice found no relief:—
‘Where Insolence and Lust drive down their prey,
Go, Pausanias, go!’
—Doom'd to sink more low
Then e'er his glory soar'd, on red Plataea's day.

XXI

Sparta, from his place of pride
Reclaims her King: he must obey!
Through wild Arcadia runs the way,
Arcadia, land of song and mountain-side;
Where Phoebus o'er his favourite valley reigns,
Bassae green and deep;
And white columns peep
Nymph-like amid the trees, fairest of Grecian fanes.

XXII

There athwart the rock-wall white
The long fir-files their spires lift,
Upclimbing dark from rift to rift,
Till snow and azure crown the dazing height;
There, as Pan sleeps below the zenith sun,
Silence only stirs
Where the grasshoppers
Chirr their dry chaunt, and streams with summer music run.

138

XXIII

O'er the vale the Mount of Light,
Lycaeus, lifts his holy head,
One shadeless silver pyramid,
O'ertowering Hellas with Olympian height:
There, Neda and Theosöa, nymphs divine,
Nursed the rocks among
Zeus, when earth was young;
And yet the Lord of Lords finds here his best-loved shrine.

XXIV

Pure in heart and conscience-whole
O they should be, who dare to come
Within dread Nature's secret home,
And nought 'twixt us and her to mask the soul!
As the proud despot treads the vale alone
Fiercer in his ear
Burn the words of fear,
And all that ambient air is Cleonicé's moan!

XXV

Whither from this gad-fly sting,
This coward-making conscience fly?
—He sees Phigalia's rampart high,
And Neda flowing from her mountain-spring
Past Lycosura;—There, as legends said,
Huge Lycaeus hides
In his rifted sides
The Callers-forth of Souls; the Summoners of the Dead.

139

XXVI

Eastward up the vale he turns,
Where walls of rock to left and right
Flicker with living tapestry light,
Aconite, and green mist of feathery ferns:
There, jasmine-stars and golden cistus beam,
While the waves below
Pearl and sapphire flow,
Deepening their voice, as near their birthplace still they stream.

XXVII

Rushing waters, could ye not
Far sea-ward bear the damning cry?—
But now the journey's goal is nigh,
Where one dark pool marks out the fountain-spot:
With lichen-gilded layers and splinter'd steep
Arching high and wide,
Springs the mountain-side,
And the black mirror lies in marble stillness deep.

XXVIII

Sad, as one himself compell'd
The spirits to compel, uprear'd
His grayness the Soul-summoner weird,
And pray'd, and by the hands Pausanias held,
Bending him o'er the mirror blank, and said
‘In the Absolver bold,
Whom thou wouldst behold
Name in thine heart; nor wilt thou vainly seek the dead.’

140

XXIX

Shuddering o'er the shuddering pool,
He sees the Face, not maiden-bright,
But ring'd with blue unhappy light,
And, starting, gazed around, and called her:—Foll!
For she, not here, but where pure souls abide
In the eternal day,
Innocently gay,
Is what she was on earth, transfused and glorified.

XXX

Fled the vision: and alone,
—As when the storm-clouds leeward-go,
Faint flashes broad and reddening glow,
And far horizons mutter undertone,—
These words around the cavern flit, no more,
‘Hence to Sparta flee;
There, release will be:’
And, as he stood, the rock and waters flared with gore.

XXXI

‘Fly!’ the Soul-evoker cried,
‘The God has spoken! Only, know
His message sounds for weal or woe
As the heart is, or is not, purified:
The Soul is its own Fate.’ Pausanias groan'd,
Frown'd, and groan'd again:
—'Twas one moment's pain!
Pride's icy heart grew big; the guilt was unatoned!

141

XXXII

Therefore, O just Gods below,
When hollow Sparta he retrod,
Ye smote him with your Fury-rod
That smites but once, and needs no second blow!
For lust breeds lust, treasons on treasons call,
Till a servile mouth
Tells the shameful truth:
Plataea's victor now is Persia's friend and thrall.

XXXIII

By the temple brazen-wrought
Lo! his own mother's hands begin
To pile the stone and wall him in,
Captive to famine, where he safety sought.
Unhappy Chief! traitor to God and Greece,
Now on Spartan ground
He the end hath found!
But only where thou art, Cleonicé, there is peace.