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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  Parrhasius

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Tragedy: I. Greece

Parrhasius

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867)

THERE stood an unsold captive in the mart,

A gray-haired and majestical old man,

Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,

And the last seller from the place had gone,

And not a sound was heard but of a dog

Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,

Or the dull echo from the pavement rung,

As the faint captive changed his weary feet.

He had stood there since morning, and had borne

From every eye in Athens the cold gaze

Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him

For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came

And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,

And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer

Passed on; and when, with weariness o’erspent,

He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,

The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats

Of torture to his children, summoned back

The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

’T was evening, and the half-descended sun

Tipped with a golden fire the many domes

Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere

Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street

Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up

With a stout heart that long and weary day,

Haughtily patient of his many wrongs,

But now he was alone, and from his nerves

The needless strength departed, and he leaned

Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts

Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of him

Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,

Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian’s cheek

Flushed as he measured with a painter’s eye

The moving picture. The abandoned limbs,

Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins

Swollen to purple fulness; the gray hair,

Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes;

And as a thought of wilder bitterness

Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,

And the fast workings of his bloodless face

Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.

The golden light into the painter’s room

Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole

From the dark pictures radiantly forth,

And in the soft and dewy atmosphere

Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.

The walls were hung with armor, and about

In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms

Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,

And from the casement soberly away

Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,

And like a veil of filmy mellowness,

The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.

Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully

Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,

Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus—

The vulture at his vitals, and the links

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;

And, as the painter’s mind felt through the dim,

Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth

With its far reaching fancy, and with form

And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye

Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl

Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip

Were like the winged god’s breathing from his flight.

“Bring me the captive now!

My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift

From my waked spirit airily and swift,

And I could paint the bow

Upon the bended heavens—around me play

Colors of such divinity to-day.

“Ha! bind him on his back!

Look—as Prometheus in my picture here!

Quick—or he faints!—stand with the cordial near!

Now—bend him to the rack!

Press down the poisoned links into his flesh!

And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

“So—let him writhe! How long

Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!

What a fine agony works upon his brow!

Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!

How fearfully he stifles that short moan!

Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

“‘Pity’ thee! So I do!

I pity the dumb victim at the altar—

But does the robed priest for his pity falter?

I ’d rack thee though I knew

A thousand lives were perishing in thine—

What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

“‘Hereafter!’ Ay—hereafter!

A whip to keep a coward to his track!

What gave Death ever from his kingdom back

To check the sceptic’s laughter?

Come from the grave to-morrow with that story,

And I may take some softer path to glory.

“No, no, old man! we die

Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away

Our life upon the chance wind, even as they!

Strain well thy fainting eye—

For when that bloodshot quivering is o’er,

The light of heaven will never reach thee more.

“Yet there ’s a deathless name!

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,

And like a steadfast planet mount and burn;

And though its crown of flame

Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,

By all the fiery stars! I ’d bind it on!—

“Ay—though it bid me rifle

My heart’s last fount for its insatiate thirst—

Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first—

Though it should bid me stifle

The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,

And taunt its mother till my brain went wild—

“All—I would do it all—

Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot,

Thrust foully into earth to be forgot!

Oh heaven!—but I appall

Your heart, old man! forgive—ha! on your lives

Let him not faint!—rack him till he revives!

“Vain—vain—give o’er! His eye

Glazes apace. He does not feel you now—

Stand back! I ’ll paint the death-dew on his brow!

Gods! if he do not die

But for one moment—one—till I eclipse

Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!

“Shivering! Hark! he mutters

Brokenly now—that was a difficult breath—

Another? Wilt thou never come, oh Death!

Look! how his temple flutters!

Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!

He shudders—gasps—Jove help him!—so—he ’s dead.”

How like a mounting devil in the heart

Rules the unreigned ambition! Let it once

But play the monarch, and its haughty brow

Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought

And unthrones peace forever. Putting on

The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns

The heart to ashes, and with not a spring

Left in the bosom for the spirit’s lip,

We look upon our splendor and forget

The thirst of which we perish! Yet hath life

Many a falser idol. There are hopes

Promising well; and love-touched dreams for some;

And passions, many a wild one; and fair schemes

For gold and pleasure—yet will only this

Balk not the soul—Ambition, only, gives,

Even of bitterness, a beaker full!

Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream,

Troubled at best; Love is a lamp unseen,

Burning to waste, or, if its light is found,

Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken;

Gain is a grovelling care, and Folly tires,

And Quiet is a hunger never fed;

And from Love’s very bosom, and from Gain,

Or Folly, or a Friend, or from Repose—

From all but keen Ambition—will the soul

Snatch the first moment of forgetfulness

To wander like a restless child away.

Oh, if there were not better hopes than these—

Were there no palm beyond a feverish fame—

If the proud wealth flung back upon the heart

Must canker in its coffers—if the links

Falsehood hath broken will unite no more—

If the deep yearning love, that hath not found

Its like in the cold world, must waste in tears—

If truth and fervor and devotedness,

Finding no worthy altar, must return

And die of their own fulness—if beyond

The grave there is no heaven in whose wide air

The spirit may find room, and in the love

Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart

May spend itself—what thrice-mocked fools are we!