ARIADNE.

———

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

———

O, thrice as swiftly as yon argent gull

On snowy pinions cleaves the azure sky,

Thy galley cuts the purple wave, and flies my eager, straining eye.

O, Thésëus, beloved and beautiful,

My lovely warrior, white-limbed, like a god,

Why hast thou left me on this desert isle, save by ourselves, untrod?

Immortal Jove, divine Progenitor,

Exert thy power; reverse his sails:—O, King

Of Gods and Men, why does the cup of love conceal the scorpion’s sting?

Like ghastly ghosts, with veiled and weeping orbs,

My hopes depart; cadaverous Despair

Sits glaring at me with his wolfy eyes: bid the foul thing forbear!

On yester-eve, at this forgotten isle —

Forgotten almost of gods—our storm-beat bark

Let fall its ponderous flakes; night, like a falcon, swooped, and all was dark.

Here, where this lonely palm expands its leaves,

Our couch was spread; yes, here, on Theseus’ breast

I laid my head, and, like a love-sick dove, sunk meaningly to rest.

My sleep was restless: from the Realm of Dreams

Came changing shadows: I beheld my home —

Our hills, like wrinkle-faced, white-headed men—our cataract’s snowy foam.

I saw myself a merry, mad-cap girl,

Dancing along our glades, with laughing eyes;

Light-footed as our deer—free as the birds that filled our happy skies.

And then a woman, still most happy, though

A shadow rested on my sunny brow,

Such as a wintry cloud, when all is light, throws faintly over snow.

My step, too, had less lightness, and my breast

Throbbed quickly, while my heart beat, and my brain

Ran round and round, delirious with delight, so deep, it seemed like pain.

I left the song, the dance, my maiden mates —

An endless yearning filled my craving soul,

Which sadly walked apart from them toward some unknown and glorious goal.

One day, when thus depressed, I stood, in thought,

Beside a babbling brook, whose tinkling fall

Among the mossy rocks, from stone to stone, made silence musical.

Contemplating the beauty of the scene,

Imagining me the Naiad of the stream,

I grew the spirit of the place, and stood the deity of a sylvan dream.

Just then, a being, much more god than man,

Fell at my feet: I had no power to fly,

No wish, no thought; the serpent’s fabulous spell spoke in his eloquent eye.

He prayed; I listened, for his words were song,

Drowning my heart; like surf along a strand

Their melody rose and rolled, wave following wave, covering the helpless land.

Even then he vanished; but his image filled

The void that, hitherto, my spirit felt;

I stood erect—a loving woman, Jove—there, where, before, I knelt.

And all things passed; a dull and opiate blank

Fell, like Nepenthé, blackly on my brain:

I was a living corpse, insensible to pleasure, dead to pain.

I dreamed again: a glorious city rose,

Like Aphrodite, on a summer strand;

Palaces, pyramids and temples stretched away on either hand.

Its harbor, guarded by two massy towers,

Was filled with ships, whose plethoric pinions bore

The treasures of an hundred sister lands to her heroic shore.

Even while I gazed, slowly along the quay,

Moving in melancholy march, to strains

Of heavy harmony, whose solemn sounds made pity in my veins,

A long procession, like a funeral,

Approached the shore. There, moored, a galley lay,

Black as the wings of night, like an eclipse blighting the light of day.

The crowd closed round: some stood, with lifted hands,

Adjuring heaven; some turned aside to hide

Their streaming tears, while others dumbly gazed on the receding tide.

With downcast eyes, seven youths, seven maidens passed

On board the galley, when my Cretan eyes

Saw Niobe-like Athens mourn her sons, passing to sacrifice.

The raven bark unfurled its ebon wings

And like a bird, flew lightly from the strand;

While, far behind, in distance growing dim, declined the cloud-like land.

Away, away, across the billowy sea,

The galley flew: night came and went again,

When, with the rising sun, Crete’s porphyry walls rose from the crimson main.

—I sat beside my sire: around us stood

The wise, the brave, the lovely of our land,

When, led by Thésëus, Athens’ offspring came, a self-devoted band.

I sat entranced: the lover of my dreams.

He, to whom nightly I had poured my sighs,

The ideal of my soul, stood visibly before my waking eyes.

Calmly the Self-Devoted stood and smiled, —

Thésëus, king-born, with his radiant face

Flushed with the glory of a fame which pierced the ultimate star of space.

My heart waxed sick, for I was woman, Jove:

I saw the grim and ghastly Minotaur

Move through the Cretan labyrinth—his deadly, ponderous jaws ajar.

I saw my brother fall by felon hands;

I saw my father’s galleys sweep the seas,

And humbled Athens, cowering like a slave, ask mercy from her knees.

Minos pronounced his doom: the morrow morn

Beheld the sacrifice. I would have wept,

But could not: in their heated cells the sought for tears in silence slept.

I pitied him; I could not see him die;

I loved—was woman; though my brother’s blood

Cried out for vengeance, still I pitied him: pity was passion’s food.

My soul sat in his shadow: like a babe

Beneath an oak it sat, and smiled, and crowed,

And lifted up and clapped its happy hands, and wildly laughed aloud.

That night I sought his cell: O, happy night,

O, night of light and life: the magic clew

That Dædälos wrought was in his hands; I drank his red lip’s nectarous dew,

For he, too, loved! O, Jove, my long-caged heart

In that mad moment felt its shackles riven,

And soared and soared and soared, till, like a star, it coursed the heights of heaven.

Next day I prayed—O, how I prayed: the gods

Were merciful: that night—O, night of nights,

For in its hours the Past became entombed—O, realm of dead delights,

We fled from Crete, and, steering out to sea,

I dreaming always on his manly breast,

At last made land—a desolate wave-worn strand, the sea-gull’s sandy nest.

I seemed to wake, and found the traitor gone:

I stood in anguish, desolate and lone,

Wasting my wailings on the flinty rocks whose hearts (like his) were stone.

But still I dreamed, and once more Athens rose

Before my eyes. Upon a beetling rock

That overhung the sea—a cliff, whose crags throbbed in the ocean’s shock —

Ægéus stood and gazed athwart the wave.

Then I remembered me how Thésëus swore

(Such was his tale to me,) that, ere he sailed from Athens’ sorrowing shore,

Hopefully trusting in the awful gods,

If he returned, his canvas, changed to white,

Should mark his triumph, but did raven sails meet Athens’ weeping sight,

Then he had fallen. How the old man gazed,

With moistened eyes, toward the horizon’s verge,

While, far beneath, the chanting surf sent up its melancholy dirge.

I also gazed—when, where the sea and sky

Blended in mist, a speck—a spot—a nail —

Came with the wind: Ægéus stood erect, convulsed and deathly pale.

Closer and closer, where the shadow lay

Across the distance, like a misty cloud,

The galley came: the mute, expecting king tottered and sobbed aloud.

Stretching his thin hands toward the shadowy bark,

So distant still it seemed to float in air,

The aged monarch, with his marble eyes, personified despair.

It passed the gloom, and glided into light,

When, like a raven drifting down the skies,

The black, unaltered galley, ebon-sailed, met my astonished eyes!

A piercing shriek appalled my ears: I turned

And saw the aged king spring toward the steep —

And leap—and fall: no human sound arose from the tumultuous deep.

Anon came other dreams—Arcadian vales,

With Pan, oblivious Satyrs, and a throng

Of Fauns and Nymphs who made the burthened air reel with its weight of song.

Bacchus rode next: how like a god he looked,

The vine-leaves adding whiteness to a brow

Already snow; his large eyes small with mirth; his dimpled cheeks aglow.

Silenus, with two Nymphs on either hand

Supporting him, uncertainly pursued —

To amorous passion for the purple grape yielding, though not subdued.

And after came a laughing, dancing rout,

Making the air insane with bacchanal cries;

Some bearing grapes which others stole and ate, with ruddy, twinkling eyes.

The eye of Bacchus drew me toward his car,

And stooping, he embraced, then lifted me

Beside him, with a kiss: the route rolled on capricious as the sea.

I was his bride: his love, always a god’s,

Saw not my state, nor asked from whence I came;

With him the passion was a living thing and not a naked name.

I was again a wife: my days were spent

In waking dreams of uncontrolled delight;

The light expired in feast and song and dance, unheeded in its flight.

And Night, with Venus sparkling on her brow,

Sat on the mountain top; the nightingale

Breathed an undying hymn to deathless love from every silent vale.

Anon the feast was spread: from leafy nooks

The blushing Dryad came; the amorous Faun

Stole from the laureled hill, returning not until the crimson dawn.

O, I was happy, very happy, Jove,

When, like thy lightning, day broke on mine eyes!

Beneath me was the sand; before, the sea; above, the threatening skies!

There, like a vulture frightened from his prey,

Flew Thésëus, while, Cassandra-like, I stood

With streaming hair and flashing eyes, and hurled prophetic curses on the flood.

Are dreams the messengers of gods to men

Foretelling facts? If so, then I await,

Not trembling, but proudly, the decrees of an unerring fate.

Let him depart: I scorn the traitor, Jove —

The parracide: still blacker grow his sails;

Favor his bark, Poseidon; Eölus, bestow him flavoring gales:

So swifter comes my vengeance. For the tears

He made me shed, make him rain tears of fire,

As from this desolate isle I point him to the cold corpse of his sire.

And if the links of love’s decaying chain

Remain united in his hollow heart,

That chain be as a serpent, dragging flame to its secrétest part;

So, when he sees me lie on Bacchus’ breast,

Lip glued to lip, eye flashing into eye,

He may lift up his hands and curse the Gods, and cursing, waste and die.

——