Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Opening Scene of “Prince Deukalion”
By Bayard Taylor (1825–1878)S
S
Broken and rolled away? That leaden weight
Which pressed mine eyelids to reluctant sleep
Falls off: I wake; yet see not anything
As I beheld it. Yonder hang the clouds,
Huge, weary masses, leaning on the hills;
But here, where starwort grew and hyacinth,
And bees were busy at the bells of thyme,
Stare flinty shards; and mine unsandal’d feet
Bleed as I press them: who hath wrought the change?
The plain, the sea, the mountains, are the same;
And there, aloft, Demeter’s pillared house,—
What!—roofless, now? Are she and Jove at strife?
And, see!—this altar to the friendly nymphs
Of field and flock, the holy ones who lift
A poor man’s prayer so high the Gods may hear,—
Shivered?—Hath thunder, then, a double bolt?
They said some war of Titans was renewed,
But such should not concern us, humble men
Who give our dues of doves and yearling lambs
And mountain honey. Let the priests in charge,
Who weigh their service with our ignorance,
Resolve the feud!—’tis they are answerable,
Not we; and if impatient Gods make woe,
We should not suffer!
Hark!—what strain is that,
Floating about the copses and the slopes
As in old days, when earth and summer sang?
Too sad to come from their invisible tongues
That moved all things to joy; but I will hear.
With the mystery of beauty, in all things fair and brief:
But only he hath seen us, who was happy in the seeing,
And he hath heard, who listened in the gladness of belief.
As a frost that creeps, ere the winds of winter whistle.
And odors die in blossoms that are chilly to the core.
Your doubt hath sent before it the sign of our dismissal;
We pass, ere ye speak it; we go, and come no more!
Yet still, methinks, the sweet and wholesome grass
Will sometime spring, and softer rains wash white
My wethers’ fleeces. We, Earth’s pensioners,
Expect less bounty when her store is scant;
But while her life, though changed from what it was,
Feeds on the sunshine, we shall also live.
We met the anguish and were not afraid;
Like One, we bore for you the penal pain.
Behold, your life is but a culprit’s chance
To rise, renewed, from out its closing trance;
And, save its loss, there is not any gain!
Of loving lives?—that promise final good,
Greater than gave the Gods, so theirs be lost?
Sad is their message, yet its sense allures,
And large the promise, though it leaves us bare.
I would I knew the secret; but, instead,
I shudder with a strange, voluptuous awe,
As when the Pythia spake: ’tis doom disguised,—
Choice offered us when term of choice is past,
And we, obedient unto them that choose,
Are made amenable! Hark,—once again!
We fade from your days and your dreams,
With the grace that was lithe as a leopard’s,
The joy that was swift as a stream’s!
To the musical reeds, and the grasses;
To the forest, the copse, and the dell;
To the mist, and the rainbow that passes;
The vine, and the goblet,—farewell!
Go, drink from the fountains that flow not!—
Our songs and our whispers are dumb:
But the thing ye are doing ye know not,
Nor dream of the thing that shall come!
The dungeons where we waited for The End,
Which coming not, we issue forth to power.
We quench vain joy with shadows of the grave;
We smite your lovely wantonness, to save;
We hang Eternity on Life’s weak hour!
We hide in the vapors,
And linger in echoes,
Awaiting recall.
The strings of the psalter,
The shapes in the marble
Our passing deplore:
The souls of the children,
The faith of the poets
Shall seek us, and find.
With tender remorses;
And out of its exile
The passion return!
Your silver sandals,
From mists of the mountains
Your floating veils!—
From musky vineyard,
And copse of laurel,
The ears that listened
For lovers’ tales!
Let olives ripen
And die, untended;
Leave oak and poplar,
And homeless pine!
Take shell and trumpet
From swell of surges,
And feet that glisten
From restful brine!
As the bee when twilight
Has closed the bell,—
As love from the bosom
When doubts compel,
We go: farewell!
Yet something stays,—a sense of distant woe,
As now, this hour, while the green lizards glide
Across the sun-warmed stones, and yonder bird
Prinks with deliberate bill his ruffled plumes,
Far off, in other lands, an earthquake heaved
The high-towered cities, and a darkness fell
From twisted clouds that ruin as they pass.
But, lo!—who rises yonder?—as from sleep
Rising, slow movements of a sluggish grace,
That speak her gentle, though a Titaness,
And strong, though troubled is her breadth of brow,
And eyes of strange, divine obscurity.
She sees me not: I am too mean for sight
Of such a goddess; yet, methinks, the milk
Of those large breasts might feed me into that
Which once I dreamed I should be,—lord, not slave!