THE TWENTY-FIFTH PAPYRUS

The Hora Eirene, warden of the gate, challenged us: whom Golden Helen answered, giving the password, demanding free passage as a daughter of Great Zeys. But Hermes, my grandsire, and the Great Twins, and boldly-steadfast Herakles, stood within the gate ready to greet us. Moreover, the golden streets were thronged with the beautiful children of gods and heroes, scattering amaranthine diadems. Thus, we went to the palace and the areiopagos of the immortals.

But King Zeys, the father of gods and men, sat on his clouded throne, with Queen Hera of the white arms (the most righteous of goddesses) who had hundred-eyed peacocks about her. But, on the right and left, were other thrones inhabited by all the gods and goddesses, whose courtiers were immortal youths innumerable having limbs of flaming whiteness and rayed hair. There, was Pan the lord of woodlands, and loose-haired Iakhos Dionysos the son of fire washed by water-nymphs, and Phoibos Apollon lord of the silver bow, and Artemis beautiful queen of arrows, and tameless Pallas Athene of the dark Aigis, and blameless Aphrodite of the violet crown, and silver-footed Thetis unhappy mother of the noblest son, and even King Poseidon of loud-roaring white horses: but shady King Hades (the most righteous of gods) was absent for reasons of health, and his black throne gaped void. But my heart was leaping for joy in my dear breast: for I was aware that the fifth prediction, which innocent Thalos made when he looked into the palm-mirror, was in fact being realized. For indeed the silver god and the golden goddess were standing before many gods and goddesses.

But astute Hermes, the yellow-wanded luck-bringer and soul-guide, signed me with silence. He rose in his place among the glorious immortals; and began to expound my cause. Thus, then, he spoke: “O Father and King of gods and men, before this conclave of divine ones stands the steadfast goodly Odysseys, the much-enduring contriver of innumerable wiles, who claims as a sweet guest-gift the hand of Golden Helen, the exiled daughter of Thee the Swan, in honourable nuptials.”

To whom Great Zeys responded, saying: “Odysseys, we know; and Helen, we know. But never before has one of the sons of men aspired to lead in open marriage a goddess, daughter of the race of the Kronides. Hitherto, indeed, passing (but none the less vehement) passions, or transient (but none the less perfervid) affections, have been the utmost relations between immortals and mortals. For we gods are severe, envious above others; and we grudge that immortals shall mate with mortals, when anyone shall take a dear wife or a husband: as when rosy-fingered Eos took Orion (that stalwart hunter), so long the gods who lived easily envied her, until chaste Artemis of the golden throne slew him, attacking him with her mild weapons. Moreover, the thing also is new: for, whereas, heretofore, gods and goddesses have loved mortal women and men in secret, now, this Odysseys, boundless in audacity, openly demands a goddess-bride before all the court of heaven. Wherefore, lest we be captured in some snare of this notoriously-wily one, we require that eloquent Hermes (his sponsor) shall give good and sufficient reason for such artless candour, such ingenuous presumption.”

Hermes came down from his own throne among the divine immortals, passing the throne of radiant Phoibos Apollon, the bright one, the pure one, crowned with the sun in his splendour; and he took thence the lyre which he himself had made for the master of the music, fashioned out of the hollow shell of a crab like polished translucent amber and obsidian, from which sprang the silvery horns of unicorns to the olive-wood cross-bar, pegged, and fitted with nineteen strings.

He came down, to the clear blue ætherial floor studded with golden stars, in the sight of all, like a princely youth in youth’s full bloom whose youth is very graceful, the largest and lithest and loveliest and wisest and most innocent ever seen, smooth and lissome and gleaming as living ivory, and his bare head crowned with clusters of honey-hued curls and a nimbus of sunbeams.

He came down; and cast (to the floor, by his feet) his purple mantle,—by his agile feet, shod with golden-winged sandals,—and laid his golden wand upon it, he lightly standing poised on one fair foot; and he rested the other on a stool, bending his sprightly knee.

He held the heavenly lyre on his thigh with his hollowed arm, leaning toward till it could not help kissing his beautiful youthful breast; and with a quill, he tried it note by note: but it sounded, deeply thrumming beneath his hands. And the young god sang under the notes of the lyre, a doubly-thrilling intonation, making an extemporaneous attempt, as full-grown boys at feasts sing with different voices, rivalling one another in turn.

He sang; and, at his song, my spirit reeled, so strong and passing sweet the strain. One universal smile it seemed, of joy beyond compare, unutterable gladness, imperishable life of peace and love, exhaustless wealth, illimitable power, the cup of health brimful, and bliss immeasurable. Such was his tone.

He sang; and, at his voice, my spirit lived again, that youthful heavenly sunny voice, which welled from his open well-sunned throat, not shrill like a boy’s nor clogged like a man’s, but full and vibrant, true as a bell, loud as gigantic trumpets, deep and clear as a limpid river, now high now low from middle notes ranging, strong and resonant as the voice of an ever-young god who is both boy and man, warbling unearthly melody around and above and between and below the golden warbling of the lyre.

He sang; and the faces of all the immortals became diaphanous with unimaginable radiance; and the steady godly eyes gleamed like fixed stars at the rapturous magic of his singing. For he sang of arms and the man, the deathless song of the man so ready at need, never so strong nor so fierce nor so terrible as when he (naked) fought fearful odds and a losing battle back to the wall, who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Ilion—the deathless song of much-contriving much-enduring Odysseys, and of all the deeds which ever I had done since the distant day when I, a great boy, met Helen, the divine one of goddesses, a tender girl, who watched me faring girded high through the ford of Eyrotas by rugged Lakedaimon; and of the doughty deeds which thenafter I did at the siege of Dardanian Ilion. He sang of my wily contrivance, the Wooden Horse, whereby at length we Argives took the city: of the wanderings of Golden Helen, and of mine: of our meeting again in torrid Egypt and our wooing there, and of how there I died, slain by unknowing Telegonos my own son and Kirke’s of the awful braided tresses. And, in a solemn slow low descant, he sang of how that was the first time, and the last, when ever I lay in the pure arms of Helen, being dead.

He paused; and the immortal gods wept softly, at the sadness of his song and the cruel fate which drove us ever here and there apart. And it was dusky eve.

He bowed his beautiful godly young breast for the lucky horns of the lyre to kiss again; and his wonderful fingers skilfully wielded the quill which awakened the delicate voice of the strings. And he sang of my far-future birth in the sea-girt island, kingdom of Victory queen of the stalwart stately Anglicans: of my sordid squalid lot there; and of the wily audacious ferocity of the deeds, which I did in contempt of all men, to deliver myself and to soar.

He sang of how I, grieving in mind because not one single honourable friend or companion came near me, but only rogues and tosspots and false traitors, set out to wander in strange lands, studying all divine mysteries and magic lore, seeking for wisdom everywhere. He sang of my marvellous deeds, summoning ghostly souls from the dead and bending them to my will: of how, in Egypt, I half-failed in the ordeal of the scorching staff; and of the consequence which befel. And, there, his sacred strain leaped, leaped like one who meets a sudden slimy toad sitting very still upon his way, leaped, and was still.

And the immortal gods kept silence. Night flung her violet mantle round the dome of heaven; and she pinned it with a star. But those resplendent faces scintillated like many moons in the violet luminous sheen, intense, immovable.

He took the lyre close to the warmth of his well-spread breast in the hollow of his shoulder, uplifting his stainless throat, singing with the well-struck strings. And he sang jewels five words long, which, on the stretched forefinger of all time, shall sparkle for ever, singing of my long fall backward through the rolling wheels of time: of my vision in the secret subterranean shrine at Thebes: of my voyage adown the sacred river of Egypt: of my coming to Tanis: of my doings with the hierarch Amenemhat; and of my flight to the open sea.

He sang of my magic invocation of the azure-haired earth-shaking lord of ocean: of the apparition of King Poseidon amiably-minded: of my going to the shrine of far-darting Phoibos Apollon at Delphi, and the oracle chaunted by the levated Pythia: of my meeting unafraid with Pan, and his goodly gift of clear-seeing.

He sang (and his cadences rippled) of my furious drive down hill, over the rivers of cold and of flame, for the third time into the world of the dead.

He stretched out all the slim lithe strength of his ivory limbs, lambent and supple and warm with refulgent youth, to the heavenly lyre. His fair throat poured forth a stronger canorous strain, thrilled with unspeakable splendour. And he sang of the singing of Golden Helen in exile: to whose sweet anthem, all the blissful court, from all parts answering, rang.

He sang of how I escaped from fetters and dungeon: of how my wiles and my audacity and my endurance, sneered-at or scorned by men, made great gods glad to serve me: of the fight of the six champions, sons of kings and mighty heroes all. And Herakles, glory of Hera, burst into boisterous blubberings, inasmuch as he had had no part in so finely finished an affray.

He sang of my treatment of titans: of the wounding of shady Hades of recording mind, inexorable king of the land of the shades. And all the gods and goddesses cried aloud, beating on their blessed knees, because of the sheer stupendous magnificence of my audacity.

He sang so divine a song, that even fancy’s ear records it not, and the pen must pass on, leaving a blank: for, nor mortal speech, nor even the inward shaping of the mind has colour fine enough to paint the sweet great strain of his nectar, flower-like, fertile of song. He sang of my wonderful journey out of the netherworld: of the swift death of my shipmen, fearful, when they saw my mysterious coming: of my lonely voyage in my unoared sail-less galley over the windless sea.

He sang the cause of my coming, which was Love, the Crown of all Wisdom.

He sang of the sturdy unswerving indomitable force, reward of my wiles and my audacity and my endurance, which had brought me bearing spoils, even the Treasure of Hades, from out of the deep and the shade, to the height of the peak of lofty Olympos. It was Love, all-conquering Love.

Such was the close of his marvellous melody. And, as the last tone thrilled, strong as a proclamation, Echo caught the strain, repeating ever lowly, and more low, from sphere to sphere, Love ... Love ... Love ... Love.

Rosy-fingered Dawn, crowned with auroral coronal, flung wide the gates of day: Helios Hyperion began to drive in scintillating splendour across the sky: the rays of the rising sun splashed beams of golden light over the clouded throne of the Father and King of gods and men, when Hermes finished singing thus for me before the areiopagos of the blessed gods.⁠[60]

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