Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lady Venus on the land
Of Ætolia laid her malison erewhen,
Cast her curse upon its women and its men,
From the mountains on the skyline to the strand;
For that wroth she was with those who dwelt therein
And that, when uplifted 'twas to punish sin,
Hard and heavy, even as lovely, was her hand.

Now the sin, that had been done
'Gainst the glory of the Goddess and her praise
And the usance long established of old days
For the worship of her whiteness, was that one,
Hight Harpalycus, a native of the parts
Of Beth Shemesh, whence the sun at morning starts,
His accustomed course from East to West to run,

At Cyrene by the sea,
In his travel from the Mountains of the Moon,
Whence Selene walks the world with shining shoon,
Taking ship and faring thence to Sicily,
Wrecked and ruined was and with his fellows four,
In the desert parts of Dyme came ashore,
Where none other folk there were than they and he.

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Waste the land was and the clime;
Not a house, a fold, a field there was to spy:
But a temple on the heights there stood hard by,
Whither folk in April gathered, at the time,
Called and sacred after Aphrodite's name,
When the fields with roses rathe are all aflame,
To do homage to the Lady of the Prime.

Now mid-March was not yet o'er
And the temple still of men deserted stood;
But the doves, that in the sacred olive-wood
Dwelt and nested, seeing folk upon the shore
And unfearful, never doubting they were some
Who to feed them for their Lady's love were come,
Thither flew and lighted down their feet before.

But the strangers, knowing nought
Of the puissance of the Lady of the Loves,
Nor the sacredness of those her darling doves,
And by hunger unto madness wellnigh wrought,
Slew the silly birds and roasting them with fire,
Ate them, doubting not of Aphrodite's ire
And the ruin on their heads that thus they brought.

Now from high Olympus hall
Cytherea spied the sacrilegious deed
And her turtledoves belovèd seeing bleed,
Cried so loudly that the heavens were like to fall;
Then, athirst for vengeance being on the churls,
Took the thunderbolts, which Jove her father hurls,
And with flaming arrows smote and slew them all.

There their bodies days and nights
Lay and withered in the wind, until the Prime
Of the year came and the customary time
When the people to the temple on the heights

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Thronged for worship; who, unwotting what had past
And the dead for seamen taking, storm-upcast,
Burned and buried them with due funereal rites.

Now to Cypris, prone to ire,
As the jealous Gods were ever and are still,
This an outrage seemed against her sovereign will;
And she sent upon the land a plague of fire
And a pestilence, through hut and hall that flew
And the terror-stricken people smote and slew,
Youth and elder, mother, daughter, son and sire;

Neither slackened in her rage,
Till the folk, unknowing how they had misdone,
On the high Gods' temple-altars, all as one,
So their wrath they peradventure might assuage,
Offered sacrifice and supplication strait
Made for guidance how the plague they might abate
That with blood and fire went blotting out Life's page.

Long for answer nothing came,
Though with sacrifices still the altars smoked,
Till, at last, unto her priests, for aid invoked,
Venus showed herself, in raiment robed of flame,
And implored of them to help their innocence,
Gave them knowledge of the cause of the offence
And the outrage 'gainst the glory of her name.

Then, besought of them to tell
How her wrath might be assuaged, so from the pest
Yet delivered might they be, the living rest,
Nor ensue their stricken brethren down to hell,
She made answer that nought else might her appease
But that, even as the offence came by the seas,
Whence she rose to birth and beauty in the shell,

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So each year upon the strand
They the fairest, featest maid, that was to find
In the whole Ætolian land, should bring and bind
And there, naked, fast and fettered foot and hand,
Leave her lonely at a certain day and hour,
For a monster from the sea-deeps to devour,
Which Poseidon should despatch, at her demand.

And the first, (the Goddess said,)
Whom to sacrifice it thus behoved them bring,
Was Hippolyta, the daughter of the King,
Who, of all the Ætolian damsels yet unwed,
Was the fairest. “Her, then, offer ye to me
“First,” said Venus, “for the purging of the sea;
“And my wrath shall leave you living, in her stead.”

When the folk this dire decree
Heard, they flocked to Cypris' altars, as one man,
And with tears and prayers and sacrifice began
To beseech her of her ruth on bended knee:
But the Goddess, in her anger and her pride,
To their prayers and supplications nought replied
But that so, as she had said it, must it be.

So Hippolyta the fair
They, with wailing and with weeping and lament,
To a spot on the seashore, where, being spent,
Dry the billows left the shingle, bore and there,
Loath and lingering, as of Venus it was said,
Left her lonely in her misery and her dread,
Vestured only in her glittering golden hair.

There she stood against the rock,
Bound and fettered, felon-fashion, hand and foot,
With her ivory breasts, like globes of ripening fruit,
Hewn and moulded from a milky marble block,

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With her lovely piteous face to Heaven upturned
And her slender shape half-hidden, half-discerned,
Through her golden hair, down-streaming, lock on lock.

Now the sun had lost its heat
And the sea before her shimmered, fold on fold,
Like a swelling, smiling plain of gaufred gold;
Whilst the world-heart in its pulses seemed to beat
And the ripples in the forefront of the tide,
That began now for the ebbing to subside,
Lapped and lingered at her little silver feet.

The vesper-tide was nigh;
The drowsing world disposed itself to sleep;
The sunset-glory lay on height and deep;
All smiled before her, sea and shore and sky;
Nought in earth below there was or heaven above,
Nought but peace, and all things looked on her with love,
Wretched maid that on the morrow was to die.

The sun into the West
Sank down and as a blossom droops and dies,
The colour paled and faded from the skies;
No spray there was on ocean's slumbering breast,
No sound of song on earth or pipe of bird;
No windwaft o'er the wave the stillness stirred;
There was nothing in the weary world but rest.

Then came the waxing moon:
Like a bubble floating up from the sky-line,
Through the pearly heavens she rose and rose, divine,
Shedding silence with the silver of her shoon.
From the waters, in the footsteps of her beams,
Rose the road, whereby they seek the world of dreams
More than Life can give who ask of bliss and boon.

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Then the maiden slept, outworn,
And in sleep, thrice-blessèd sleep, awhile forgot
All the terrors, past and present, of her lot,
All the horrors of her coming fate forlorn:
And the night, when she awoke, was nigh to death:
Chill the air was with its cold departing breath
And pallescent was Selene's silver horn.

But a narrow band of grey
Told the tale in the far East of coming dawn
And the curtains of the darkness half-withdrawn
Now began to be from earth and sea away.
Chill, the breeze, that tells of daybreak, on her blew;
And she shuddered, as she felt its breath and knew
That she looked upon the dawn of her last day.

Straying streaks of pearl and rose
In the Orient grew and gathered for the Morn,
And half-hesitating Day seemed to be born,
For that all things shun the birth and dying throes:
And as, mounting high, the first rays of the sun
O'er the ocean slid and lit the darkness done,
A sight she saw, the blood in her that froze.

Black and buoyant as a cork,
Something floated on the waves far out to sea.
As a dragon's head high-horned it seemed to be
And about its neck a lizard's lambelled torque.
But anon, above the waters, scale on scale,
In the sun she saw upheaved a bifid tail
And the tiger of the sea-deeps knew, — the Orc.

As the sunlight on it smote,
All the terrors of its aspect came to view.
Full five fathoms long and glistering black of hue
As the seaweed was its body broad and bloat:

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As a crocodile's its snout was and its teeth:
Mailed and armoured it above was and beneath
And with horns its head was horrent, like a goat.

Ever greater grew the light,
Till the monster, as it seemed, from sleep awoke.
As the sun on him, insistent, stroke by stroke,
Laid its load of radiance new, the lazy might
Of his fins he stirred and woke the affrighted air
With a bellow, as he slowly made for where
On the shore she stood, a flame of gold and white.

Wellnigh palsied, in her fear,
Was Hippolyta the fair, as, in the dawn,
O'er the pathway on the waters new sun-drawn,
Came the horror ever nearer and more near:
Nothing lived within her brain but deathly dread;
Life and thought and sense, it seemed, in her were dead;
Dumb her tongue was, blind her eye and deaf her ear.

Then a ray of hope divine
Through her being thrilled and casting off the spell,
On her knees upon the silver sand she fell
And her piteous arms uprearing to the shine,
With her heart and soul for succour, ere she died,
To the Lord of Light and Life in Heaven she cried,
To the tutelary God of all her line.

And sudden, as she prayed,
The air shone round about her with a sheen
That was nowise of the sun; for of the screen
Of the mists his rising radiance yet was stayed;
And looking up in wonder, at her side
One of bright and shining countenance she spied,
All, from top to toe, in golden mail arrayed.

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A helm of gold be wore,
As red of sheen and radiant as the Day,
With wings thereto of no less glorious ray,
And in his hand a silver lyre he bore.
A sword upon his hip sinister gleamed
And bright as any diamond it beamed;
And a silver bow there showed his shoulders o'er.

Bright his weapons were and bright
Was the glittering golden mail his limbs that clad;
But brighter far his face was and more glad;
And the radiance of the dawn was not more white
Than his forehead fair and broad; nor morning-red
On the waking earth, from dark delivered, shed
Greater gladness than his presence nor more light.

Immortal radiant youth
In his aspect was, and from his starry eyes,
That the sapphires put to shame of summer skies,
The unsleeping splendour shone of stainless truth:
And as down upon that lovesome maid he smiled,
The glory of his countenance all mild
And softened was with sweet celestial ruth.

As the damsel on him gazed,
Fear and horror of a sudden her forsook;
For that that was in his mien and in his look
From her thought which all foresuffered things erased:
All that had till then befallen her was not;
Nay, the plague, the curse, the doom, were all forgot,
And in her heart the pitying Gods she praised.

Meanwhile that hateful beast,
Slow-steering through the waters to the shore,
The spaces of the seas left not to oar,
Nor e'er with sluggish fins from travel ceased

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Till, come at last to land, along the beach
His loathly length he dragged, intent to reach
The maid, that stood with face toward the East.

Nor noted he the knight,
With drawn and shining sword for him that stayed,
But ran with gaping jaws upon the maid;
For whom swift intervening, that fair wight
In the beast's accursed vitals plunged his sword;
Whereat, though not death-stricken, loud he roared
And ocean-ward betook himself in flight.

But, before he had o'erwon
The shallows and to his accustomed caves
For shelter plunged beneath the whelming waves,
His silver bow unslung, that shining one
A shaft into his brain drove through the eye;
And bellowing, on his back he turned to die
And floated, belly upward, in the sun.

Then, returning to the maid,
The stranger with his sword the galling bands
And chains smote off that bound her feet and hands
And looking on her, smiling, thus he said;
“Now, sweet one, is thy danger done away
“And I, my task fulfilled, farewell may say
“And leave thee to thy kinsfolk, unafraid.”

His speech, as 'twere a knell,
Smote shattering on her hopes; her hands upraised
Appealing-wise, without word said, she gazed
With eyes on him, wherein the tears did swell.
Looks looks encountering, Love, that unto none
Belovéd pardoneth loving, in each one
Love lit; and in each other's arms they fell.

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All through the summer day,
Through the morning and the sultry noontide hours,
On the wild sea-beach, transformed to Paphian bowers,
In loveliking close-linked, those lovers lay,
Till, what time the westering sun began to sink,
From about his neck her arms he did unlink
And arising, said, “Fair maid, I must away.

“Nay, I may not tarry here;
“For that Phoebus of the Sun I am,” he said,
“And must back unto my sphere, ere day be dead.
“But, my sweetest, for the future have no fear,
“For that I will with my sister Venus plead,
“So the doom she for the sacrilegious deed
“Shall remit and all be joy again and cheer.

“And now, belovéd one,”
And he kissed her, whilst she wept upon his breast,
“Hence must I; for the sun is in the West.
“Sweet maid,” he said, “my time on earth is done.
“Farewell!” And as he spoke these words, there came
All about him as the flowering of a flame
And the God soared back in glory to the sun.

On the morrow, with the day,
Came Hippolyta her kin, unhoping more
Than to find her dead and mangled on the shore
And with rites funereal bear her bones away.
But what words can tell their joy, when safe and sound,
Freed of fetters and of bonds, the maid they found
And the monster on the billows dead that lay.

So, with rapture and acclaim,
Her, whom thither, for the stricken folk's relief,

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They had brought with lamentation and with grief,
To her father back they carried; and Love's Dame,
Being sated of her wrath, her vengeful hand
Stayed and lifted, so the plague from out the land
And the people stinted sudden as it came.

From the loves of God and maid
Sprang a son, the shining face and eyes of fire
Who inherited for birthright of his sire.
Phoebogenitus they named him, as she bade,
Fair Hippolyta; and he th' Ætolian land
Many happy years, with right and royal hand,
To his grandsire dead in due succession swayed.

Back contentment, as of old,
To the land came and to those therein that dwelt,
And the Gods Etern, by Phoebus' favour, dealt
Ever kindlier with the folk. The age of gold
Come again seemed and the soft Saturnian reign
Of the older milder Gods. — But dreams, you'll say?
Nay, what are we all but dreams? The tale is told.