Part 16 (1/2)
A lad deep-dipt in pa.s.sion pined for one Whose mood was froward as her face was fair.
Lovers she loathed, for tenderness she had none: Ne'er knew what Love was like, nor how he bare A bow, and arrows to make young maids smart: Proof to all speech, all access, seemed her heart.
So he found naught his furnace to allay; No quiver of lips, no lighting of kind eyes, Nor rose-flushed cheek; no talk, no lover's play Was deigned him: but as forest-beasts are shy Of hound and hunter, with this wight dealt she; Fierce was her lip, her eyes gleamed ominously.
Her tyrant's-heart was imaged in her face, That flushed, then altering put on blank disdain.
Yet, even then, her anger had its grace, And made her lover fall in love again.
At last, unable to endure his flame, To the fell threshold all in tears he came:
Kissed it, and lifted up his voice and said: ”O heart of stone, O curst and cruel maid Unworthy of all love, by lions bred, See, my last offering at thy feet is laid, The halter that shall hang me! So no more For my sake, lady, need thy heart be sore.
Whither thou doom'st me, thither must I fare.
There is a path, that whoso treads hath ease (Men say) from love; Forgetfulness is there.
But if I drain that chalice to the lees, I may not quench the love I have for you; Now at your gates I cast my long adieu.
Your future I foresee. The rose is gay, And pa.s.sing-sweet the violet of the spring: Yet time despoils them, and they soon decay.
The lily droops and dies, that l.u.s.trous thing; The solid-seeming snowdrift melts full fast; And maiden's bloom is rare, but may not last.
The time shall come, when you shall feel as I; And, with seared heart, weep many a bitter tear.
But, maiden, grant one farewell courtesy.
When you come forth, and see me hanging here, E'en at your door, forget not my hard case; But pause and weep me for a moment's s.p.a.ce.
And drop one tear, and cut me down, and spread O'er me some garment, for a funeral pall, That wrapped thy limbs: and kiss me--let the dead Be privileged thus highly--last of all.
You need not fear me: not if your disdain Changed into fondness could I live again.
And scoop a grave, to hide my loves and me: And thrice, at parting, say, 'My friend's no more:'
Add if you list, 'a faithful friend was he;'
And write this epitaph, scratched upon your door: _Stranger, Love slew him. Pa.s.s not by, until Thou hast paused and said, 'His mistress used him ill_.'”
This said, he grasped a stone: that ghastly stone At the mid threshold 'neath the wall he laid, And o'er the beam the light cord soon was thrown, And his neck noosed. In air the body swayed, Its footstool spurned away. Forth came once more The maid, and saw him hanging at her door.
No struggle of heart it cost her, ne'er a tear She wept o'er that young life, nor shunned to soil, By contact with the corpse, her woman's-gear.
But on she went to watch the athletes' toil, Then made for her loved haunt, the riverside: And there she met the G.o.d she had defied.
For on a marble pedestal Eros stood Fronting the pool: the statue leaped, and smote And slew that miscreant. All the stream ran blood; And to the top a girl's cry seemed to float.
Rejoice, O lovers, since the scorner fell; And, maids, be kind; for Love deals justice well.
IDYLL XXIV.
The Infant Heracles.
Alcmena once had washed and given the breast To Heracles, a babe of ten months old, And Iphicles his junior by a night; And cradled both within a brazen s.h.i.+eld, A gorgeous trophy, which Amphitryon erst Had stript from Pterelaus fall'n in fight.
She stroked their baby brows, and thus she said:
”Sleep, children mine, a light luxurious sleep, Brother with brother: sleep, my boys, my life: Blest in your slumber, in your waking blest!”
She spake and rocked the s.h.i.+eld; and in his arms Sleep took them. But at midnight, when the Bear Wheels to his setting, in Orion's front Whose shoulder then beams broadest; Hera sent, Mistress of wiles, two huge and hideous things, Snakes with their scales of azure all on end, To the broad portal of the chamber-door, All to devour the infant Heracles.
They, all their length uncoiled upon the floor, Writhed on to their blood-feast; a baleful light Gleamed in their eyes, rank venom they spat forth.
But when with lambent tongues they neared the cot, Alcmena's babes (for Zeus was watching all) Woke, and throughout the chamber there was light.
Then Iphicles--so soon as he descried The fell brutes peering o'er the hollow s.h.i.+eld, And saw their merciless fangs--cried l.u.s.tily, And kicked away his coverlet of down, Fain to escape. But Heracles, he clung Round them with warlike hands, in iron grasp Prisoning the two: his clutch upon their throat, The deadly snake's laboratory, where He brews such poisons as e'en heaven abhors.