Alcyone | Page 3

beautiful human speech,
Draw me, and stir
within my soul
That subtle ineradicable longing
For tender
comradeship?
It is because I cannot all at once,
Through the
half-lights and phantom-haunted mists
That separate and enshroud us
life from life,
Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths

Nor plumb thy depths.
I am like one that comes alone at night
To a
strange stream, and by an unknown ford
Stands, and for a moment
yearns and shrinks,
Being ignorant of the water, though so quiet it is,

So softly murmurous,
So silvered by the familiar moon.
TO MY DAUGHTER
O little one, daughter, my dearest,
With your smiles and your
beautiful curls,
And your laughter, the brightest and clearest,
O
gravest and gayest of girls;
With your hands that are softer than roses,
And your lips that are
lighter than flowers,
And that innocent brow that discloses
A
wisdom more lovely than ours;
With your locks that encumber, or scatter
In a thousand mercurial

gleams,
And those feet whose impetuous patter
I hear and
remember in dreams;
With your manner of motherly duty,
When you play with your dolls
and are wise;
With your wonders of speech, and the beauty
In your
little imperious eyes;
When I hear you so silverly ringing
Your welcome from chamber or
stair.
When you run to me, kissing and clinging,
So radiant, so
rosily fair;
I bend like an ogre above you;
I bury my face in your curls;
I fold
you, I clasp you, I love you.
O baby, queen-blossom of girls!
CHIONE
Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair
Moved, but the growing tide
from verge to verge,
Heaving salt fragrance on the midnight air,

Climbed with a murmurous and fitful surge.
A hoary mist rose up and
slowly sheathed
The dripping walls and portal granite-stepped,
And
sank into the inner court, and crept
From column unto column thickly
wreathed.
In that dead hour of darkness before dawn,
When hearts beat fainter,
and the hands of death
Are strengthened,--with lips white and drawn

And feverish lids and scarcely moving breath,
The hapless mother,
tender Chione,
Beside the earth-cold figure of her child,
After long
bursts of weeping sharp and wild
Lay broken, silent in her agony.

At first in waking horror racked and bound
She lay, and then a
gradual stupor grew
About her soul and wrapped her round and round

Like death, and then she sprang to life anew
Out of a darkness
clammy as the tomb;
And, touched by memory or some spirit hand,

She seemed to keep a pathway down a land
Of monstrous shadow
and Cimmerian gloom.

A waste of cloudy and perpetual night--
And yet there seemed a
teeming presence there
Of life that gathered onward in thick flight,

Unseen, but multitudinous. Aware
Of something also on her path she
was
That drew her heart forth with a tender cry.
She hurried with
drooped ear and eager eye,
And called on the foul shapes to let her
pass.
For down the sloping darkness far ahead
She saw a little figure slight
and small,
With yearning arms and shadowy curls outspread,

Running at frightened speed; and it would fall
And rise, sobbing; and
through the ghostly sleet
The cry came: 'Mother! Mother!' and she
wist
The tender eyes were blinded by the mist,
And the rough
stones were bruising the small feet.
And when she lifted a keen cry
and clave
Forthright the gathering horror of the place,
Mad with her
love and pity, a dark wave
Of clapping shadows swept about her face,

And beat her back, and when she gained her breath,
Athwart an
awful vale a grizzled steam
Was rising from a mute and murky
stream,
As cold and cavernous as the eye of death.
And near the ripple stood the little shade,
And many hovering ghosts
drew near him, some
That seemed to peer out of the mist and fade

With eyes of soft and shadowing pity, dumb;
But others closed him
round with eager sighs
And sweet insistence, striving to caress
And
comfort him; but grieving none the less,
He reached her heartstrings
with his tender cries.
And silently across the horrid flow,
The shapeless bark and pallid
chalklike arms
Of him that oared it, dumbly to and fro,
Went
gliding, and the struggling ghosts in swarms
Leaped in and passed,
but myriads more behind
Crowded the dismal beaches. One might
hear
A tumult of entreaty thin and clear
Rise like the whistle of a
winter wind.
And still the little figure stood beside
The hideous stream, and toward

the whispering prow
Held forth his tender tremulous hands, and cried,

Now to the awful ferryman, and now
To her that battled with the
shades in vain.
Sometimes impending over all her sight
The spongy
dark and the phantasmal flight
Of things half-shapen passed and hid
the plain.
And sometimes in a gust a sort of wind
Drove by, and where its
power was hurled,
She saw across the twilight, jarred and thinned,

Those gloomy meadows of the under world,
Where never sunlight
was, nor grass, nor trees,
And the dim pathways from the Stygian
shore,
Sombre and swart and barren, wandered o'er
By countless
melancholy companies.
And farther still upon the utmost rim
Of the drear waste, whereto the
roadways led,
She saw in piling outline, huge and dim,
The walled
and towerèd dwellings of the dead
And the grim house of Hades.