University of Virginia Library

As fair Eurydice, with footfall light,
Roved the Thessalian woods one moonlit night,
Singing amidst the gentle Naiad throng,
Who ranged attentive to her voice, a song
That her own Orpheus taught her; suddenly
Aristæus, hot with honey-wine, comes by,
Follows the music ardently, and ere
The singer and the listening nymphs are 'ware,
Leaps in their midst, and, kindling to her charms,
Clasps at Eurydice with eager arms.
She, the sweet melody on her lovely lips
Snapt with a scream, from his embraces slips,
And crying: “Orpheus, Orpheus!” swift as light,
Flies from the woods, he following, through the night;
Until, escaped from the pursuer's hand,
O'er the full Hebrus she has swum to land.
When, through the shelter of the sloping sward,
A hooded snake that haunts the river ford
Shoots its lithe length to meet her from the ground,
And, ere she sees it, darts a deadly wound.
She still would flee, if but she still may reach
Her home, now nigh, and find a friendly leech,
Or die at least in her dear love's embrace.
But the black poison runs a swifter race!
Her footsteps fail, her limbs their force forget,
Her fluttering sighs came fast and faster yet;
The landscape swims around—she falters, falls—
Thrice strives to rise, and thrice on Orpheus calls,
Each cry a fainter echo of the last,
And murmuring “Orpheus” still, the gentle spirit passed.

Then Aristæus, stricken with remorse,
Braves the loud flood, and kneels beside her corse,
And chafes her hands, and every art essays
From her last sleep the lovely nymph to raise.
But all in vain, and, turning with a tear,
Slow he retraces his too swift career.

Anon the Naiads from the general flight
Toward their Hebrus one by one unite;
And when—ah! woeful hap—they see her slain,
Beat their white breasts, and lift the cry of pain.
Woods, vales and mountains mingle in the dirge,
The desolate river sobs from verge to verge;
And Night herself, veiling her starry eyes,
Leads the lament with long-drawn tempest sighs.

O, say not that two sympathetic souls
Can only mix as outward sense controls.
Far off the mother of an only daughter,
Pierced with her pangs, has tremblingly resought her;
The absent brother feels the fatal power
That strikes the partner of his natal hour;
And the fond youth, beneath far distant skies,
Knows the sad moment when his mistress dies.
Thus Orpheus, who had left his lovely spouse
For Delphi's steep to pay his filial vows
To King Apollo, starts from sleep to hear
His name thrice shrieked with anguish in his ear;
To earth he starts—a weapon wildly snatches—
Hies through the hall, the darkling door unlatches,
And stands bewildered in the moonlight clear,
Crying, “Eurydice, your love is here;”
Till the night air on his uncovered brows
Blowing awhile his woe-stunned wits arouse.
But sense no solace yields, and, as he flies
With homeward haste, still dark and darker rise
Death's phantom fears, till on the dewy lea
Orpheus has clasped his cold Eurydice,
And laid alone by her with weeping strong
And sobs tempestuous tosses all day long.

Then King Apollo pitying the pain
Of his dear son, whom most he loved of men,
Stands by his side, his awful beauty veiling
In softest cloud, and thus rebukes his wailing:
“Rise, Orpheus, rise, infatuate with grief;
Orpheus arise, Apollo brings relief;
For not in vain hast thou required my favour
With filial vows and first fruits sweet of savour;
Nor idly did thy docile genius follow
The magic music of thy sire Apollo.
No Marsyas thou, but reverently mute
To hear and learn the language of my lute,
And therefore thou of living men alone
Canst charm all cruel force with music's moan.

“For this did Jason, warned of Chiron old,
In choice of Questers for the Fleece of Gold,
Prefer thee helmsman of the hero crew
Of Argo, wisely yielding thee thy due;
Else had they never rowed to Colchian seas
Past those gray cliffs, the dread Symplegades.
For, as with oars that to thy harpening clear
In cadence dipped, the desperate course they steer,
From the almost shock the shores resilient flew
Rapt to thy lay and let the Questers through.

“Thou too, when far upon the Western Main
Fierce thirst possessed the Heroes, with thy strain
Alone could'st win from the Hesperian Maids
The golden offspring of their orchard shades;
And after, when the Argonautic oars
Approached too near those bark-beguiling shores,
Where bleach the bones of many a music-slain
Mariner—and the Siren Sisters' strain
Was with its amorous enchantment stealing
Each Quester's soul, thy heavenly pæan pealing,
Struck dumb the weird witch-music, and reclaimed
Their service due, who else The Quest had shamed.”

“And what avails that skill,” the mourner sighs,
“Oh! father mine, when low my mistress lies;
Though, when I luted, love stole softly o'er her,
The song that won her never can restore her.”
“Orpheus, I heard you once, when stars were clear,
Echoing the strains that thrill from sphere to sphere;
You sang, whilst Argo o'er the ocean hoary
Leaped to thy lay, Creation's awful story.
Softly you sang, and though you knew it not,
Nature was tranced around in troubled thought,
Fearful lest thou should'st wake that louder lay
Intolerable, that shook her natal day.
Idly she feared, for I of gods and men,
Save Love alone, have knowledge of that strain,
And I but once its music can recall.
Yet, for I love thee, Son, yea more than all
My children, and now pity bride-bereft,
Thee I endue with my transcendent gift,
The song of songs, to whose ecstatic strain
Informing Love from Chaos' dread inane
Called the young Cosmos. Lift that psalm again,
And earth shall quake, the Empyrean lower,
Seas rage, and at the last the Infernal Power
Ope to thy lay the inexorable door,
And thy lost mistress to thine arms restore.”

He said, and vanished, whilst a rosy source
Of sudden sunset, flowing, found the corse,
Kissed her cold feet, suffused her bosom's snow,
Blushed in her cheek, and melted on her brow.
Then Orpheus: “For the dim discoloured light
Of Hymen's torch upon my nuptial night,
This radiant omen, Phœbus, I accept;”
Whilst o'er the lute his eager fingers swept,
Preluding softly to that mystic strain,
Which he but wakened once, and none shall wake again.

Then the sphere-music stole upon the harp,
Pregnant with rapturous pain and pleasure sharp.
All things that are, enchanted, paused to hear,
Save the small growths that sprang to be more near,
For Joy and Sorrow, Love and Life, and Death
Trembled together in that tuneful breath.

Anon the wild sphere-music louder grew,
Loud as when first the parent atoms flew
Of air and water, fire and formless earth,
Each seed to share an elemental birth;
For to that cadence arched the skyey dome,
The soft soil hardened, Ocean sought his home,
While shapes of sea and landscape loom around,
Till sun and moon and stars the night astound,
With living lustre leaping to the sound;
And verdure springs, and with the breathing form
The earth and air and ocean sudden swarm;
And last of all, to crown Creation's plan,
Awakes to life the myriad-minded man.

But, on the even of that natal day,
Love's louder song had died into the lay,
That, all too subtle sweet for mortal ears,
Thrills with eternal music through the spheres.
Orpheus alone had caught that softer strain,
And, as he wakes it now, his eager brain,
Inspired by Phœbus, links the sound subdued
To its loud, long-forgotten parent mood.

So lutes he, and so sings, with flashing eyes
And dark dishevelled locks that fall and rise
O'er his rent vesture to the cadence wild.
Eve fades—night blackens—and Apollo's child,
Unseen as Philomel, pours his passionate thought;
Whilst round him all the universe, distraught
By the fierce frenzy of his awful lyre,
All breathing forms; Earth, Ocean, Air and Fire,
Hear and make moan, as each indwelling essence
That forms them feels the old Creative Presence
Maddening their rest, and drawing them to mix
In other moulds, and all that is perplex.
Till at the sphere song, out of centuried sleep
Old Chaos rears her from the utmost deep,
Deeming perchance that erst obnoxious hymn
Favourable now unto her empire dim.
Then rocked the earth for fear, the vaulted heaven
Thundered aghast, far leaped the affrighted levin,
Shook the deep sea dismayed, and, at the last,
Through the song-severed gates of hell the poet passed

Hard by the hideous porch a spectral crew
Deform first meet the minstrel's anxious view;
Grief, Labour, Care, Disease, and tristful Age
And Fear and Famine, War, Revenge and Rage;
But shape most dread of all the demon Death,
With infant face distort, a maid beneath,
Yet with lean palsied arms and locks of eld,
Who first from far the approaching bard beheld
And fain to startle him to swift retreat,
Begins: “O fool, what strain to Death is sweet?
Essay no further, lest this countenance
In wrath revealed consume thee at a glance.
Or canst thou, front to front opposed, outstare
Her whose fierce eyes' intolerable glare,
Spite all the horrors of her serpent brow,
And hellish aspect, laid Medusa low!”
She said, but Orpheus struck his saddest chord,
Wept the fell fiend, and past her haunt abhorred
The youth unhurt pursued his darkling way,
Till at his feet the Stygian river lay,
And rustling round him stole those bloodless ranks
That wait expectant on the oozy banks
For Charon's bark; but that grim senior rowed
Toward the further shore his goblin load.
Then Orpheus for Eurydice the lost
Eager pursues all that phantom host,
But vainly, when outspake a giant ghost,
Whose shoulders topped the crowd, “O comrade dear,
Orpheus divine, what quest has led thee here?
Alive! O strange, as first I sought this shore,
Admetus' bride, Alcestis to restore,
And with these hands, how forceless now, alas!
Fettered the Triple Hound all fear to pass.
Surely some bitter cause thy suppliant dress,
Dishevelled hair, and downcast eyes confess?”
Then Orpheus weeping, “Ah me! grief on grief,
No woe is single, thou too here, my chief,
Whom yesterday sang Victor! Then she crossed
The Ninefold-Stream before thy life was lost,
For, by a serpent slain, Eurydice,
My bride is hither borne. Oh! woe is me!
Her now I seek; but what fate forced thee here,
Whom of old Argo's crew I loved most dear?”

Then great Alcides tells the jealous wile
Of Deianeira by the Centaur's guile
Malignant fraught with poison pain and fire
Life-ridding on his self-sought funeral pyre.
“Console thee, Herakles, my comrade dear;”
Orpheus presaged, “For short space art thou here.
It only needs to expiate the ire
Of Dis, conceived what time his hell hound dire
Thy might o'ermastered, that, as you weak ghosts,
As forceless thou awhile should'st range his coasts.
Right soon from Hell exempt, with honours meet,
Thee Gods shall welcome to a heavenly seat
Constellate in their midst, and, for the love
Of woman, bless with Hebe's bower above.”

Now Charon brings his boat once more to land,
And Orpheus hastes his service to demand;
But with a hateful scowl the ferryman
In scornful answer to his suit began:
“Back, rash intruder in the realms of dark,
For, long as I direct the Stygian bark,
No sprite embodied enters it again,”
He said; but Orpheus woke a soothing strain,
So sweet, so softly wildering the brain,
That all his grisly length old Charon slept,
Then lightly to his seat the poet stepped,
And, singing, o'er the stream with easy oarage swept.

Stretched on the further shore the Triple Hound
Owns with a troubled voice the magic sound,
Whom Orpheus passed, and through the palace-gate
Of Hell still presses on with hope elate,
Until at last before the dusky throne
Of Dis and Proserpine he casts him down.
Whom, sternly eying, Pluto straight addressed:
“Stranger, declare thy name and what thy quest.
No Tityos sure, nor with Alcides' might
Hast thou approached the realms of Nether Night;
My minions have been mocked with panic error,
If thou, effeminate form, hast caused them terror.
Speak, but expect no grace.” Then Proserpine
Broke in, “My Lord, 'tis Orpheus, the divine,
Offspring of Phœbus and Calliope,
Who, when the Fleece-quest neared sweet Sicily,
His descant tuned, till e'en the sea-beach smiled,
To bright-eyed blossom by his song beguiled.
Then Orpheus, with fresh heart, awoke this litany wild.

“Not out of impious lust, O! Nameless Name,
Nor friend for friend, as Herakles hither came,
Have I adventured to thine Empire dread.
No might of mine—ay, well this downcast head
And feeble limbs provoke thy sharpest scorn.
Not his poor prowess hath thy servant borne
Thus strangely past thy guardian forms of fear,
Charon and Cereberus, and set unscathed here.
A Power Eternal bears me from above—
Now, in my need, forsake me not, O Love!”

On whom so crying bitterly a great change,
With tremor fierce and sighing thick and strange,
Smote suddenly—his labouring limbs assume
Stature divine, his front immortal bloom;
Erect he starts, a sudden halo bright
Burns from his brow, beneath whose living light
His eyes, bright stars in bluest heaven, shed
Ethereal influence through that palace dread,
Whilst his sweet voice divine rings forth amongst the dead,
Singing the lives of those two lovers fond,
How dutiful in youth, then how beyond
Compare in piety; and how they loved
A long, long love, that but the purer proved
By bitter ordeal; their brief nuptial bliss
And latest parting; last the envenomed kiss
Of the fierce serpent, when with flying foot
Scarce had Eurydice foiled the vile pursuit
Of Aristæus, and how she failed and fell
And made her death-bed in the asphodel.

Here paused the voice awhile, but soon again
Awaking, poured a most enchanting strain
Of a fair goddess in Sicilian meads,
And Eros charioting those dusky steeds
Soft o'er the lily leaves and grasses green,
And to the King of Night bearing his beauteous Queen.

Last the voice sang how that deep love divine
Had never quenched in Dis or Proserpine,
Or failed in anywise of Eros' aid,
For which dear services that sweet voice prayed
Eurydice's reprieve with its last breath,
Then on the darkness died a most delicious death.

The bold song ceased; but, ere its echo died,
Pluto repents him, and to Minos cried:
“Eurydice is free, 'tis thine to fix
The law that leads the lovers o'er the Styx
Unto the Upper Light!” Whose stern decree
Bids Orpheus lead his dear Eurydice,
But not to turn, nor look upon his love,
Till they have safely reached the realms above.

Then forth they fare, the living and the dead;
He first, she following with painful tread;
Till every peril passed and ghostly dread,
Upon the very threshold of the day,
Fearful lest that dear shape had gone astray,
Orpheus looks back. O, fool! for close behind
His love still followed with a faithful mind;
But scarce had turned him, when that well-known form,
Half-spectre still, yet momently more warm
With waking life, dissolves with shrill despair
And looks of anguish on the nether air.
Rose as she sank a universal knell,
And leaped together the loud gates of hell.

Seven days and nights he strives, but strives in vain,
Once more to wake that elemental strain,
Nourished the while on nought but tearful sorrow;
But with the eighth inexorable morrow
He sadly rose, one look of longing cast
On Tænarus, and sighing Thraceward passed.
And three long years, amidst the lost one's bowers,
Wandered, wild warbling to her favourite flowers
Laments more melancholy sweet than ever
Echo had answered by the Hebrus' river.

Thus on Eurydice his constant thought
Still fixed, no solace of fresh love he sought;
Till as he sleeps outworn within that wood
Whence she whilere had flown towards the flood,
Exasperate each at Orpheus' slights of love,
A Mænad troop steal on him through the grove,
Of whom one snatches swiftly from the ground
His lute, low-shivering with ill-omened sound.
“Io,” exultant! “Io!” through the brakes
The Bacchants shout, and shuddering Orpheus wakes,
But helpless quite, as of his lyre forlorn,
By the wild women limb from limb is torn.
“Eurydice!” the passing spirit cries;
“Eurydice!” the troubled vale replies;
“Eurydice!” afar, each snowy summit sighs.

For a minute or more we sat holding our breath
In our Shenachus circle, as silent as death;
Till a colleen cried out “Ah, why wouldn't he wait
Till he'd passed the poor dear through that pitiless gate,
Before he looked back and so lost her sweet life?
Behaving as badly, all out, as Lot's wife,
And deserving, as well, for his desperate fault,
To be struck where he stood to a statue of salt!”
“Tut, tut, my dear girl,” answered sly Shiel O'Farrell;
To The Black Powers alone he gave cause for a quarrel—
Or, to make the distinction a notion more nice,
He looked back upon Virtue, but she upon Vice;
And besides to his sweetheart he proved himself true,
Till his death at the hands of that Bacchanal crew.
May young poet McArt there preserve his limbs sound,
For I'm told some wild women are running around,
So bitterly bent upon making our Laws
That Prime Ministers, even, ar'n't safe from their claws.”
“Now, now, Shiel O'Farrell,” An Creeveen spoke out,
“By our Gaelic League law, which you've studied no doubt,
I protest that you've crossed the Political Border,
And, therefore, must rule you as clean out of order.
But instead of a proper pecuniary fine,
If the Sex you impugn to support me incline,
I pronounce that you purge yourself clear of your crime
By relating some countryside story in rhyme,
For a packfull you've got, 'tis well known, of the best!
By your wonderful fiddle charmed out of the West.”
And the ladies all clapped to acclaim his behest.
So the Doctor breathed deep till he'd filled up his chest,
To the Chair and the Fair bowed long and bowed low,
Then took up his tale of The Colleen na Mbo