Alcyone | Page 4

Then she broke
Once more fierce-footed through the noisome press;

But ere she reached the goal of her distress,
Her pierced heart
seemed to shatter, and she woke.
It seemed as she had been entombed for years,
And came again to
living with a start.
There was an awful echoing in her ears
And a
great deadness pressing at her heart.
She shuddered and with terror
seemed to freeze,
Lip-shrunken and wide-eyed a moment's space,

And then she touched the little lifeless face,
And kissed it, and rose
up upon her knees.
And round her still the silence seemed to teem
With the foul shadows
of her dream beguiled--
No dream, she thought; it could not be a
dream,
But her child called for her; her child, her child!--
She
clasped her quivering fingers white and spare,
And knelt low down,
and bending her fair head
Unto the lower gods who rule the dead,

Touched them with tender homage and this prayer:

O gloomy masters of the dark demesne,
Hades, and thou whom the
dread deity
Bore once from earthly Enna for his queen,
Beloved of
Demeter, pale Persephone,
Grant me one boon;
'Tis not for life I
pray,
Not life, but quiet death; and that soon, soon!
Loose from my
soul this heavy weight of clay,
This net of useless woe.
O mournful
mother, sad Persephone,
Be mindful, let me go!
How shall he journey to the dismal beach,
Or win the ear of Charon,
without one
To keep him and stand by him, sure of speech?
He is
so little, and has just begun
To use his feet
And speak a few small
words,
And all his daily usage has been sweet
As the soft nesting
ways of tender birds.
How shall he fare at all
Across that grim
inhospitable land,
If I too be not by to hold his hand,
And help him
if he fall?
And then before the gloomy judges set,
How shall he answer? Oh, I
cannot bear
To see his tender cheeks with weeping wet,
Or hear the
sobbing cry of his despair!
I could not rest,
Nor live with patient
mind,
Though knowing what is fated must be best;
But surely thou
art more than mortal kind,
And thou canst feel my woe,
All-pitying,
all-observant, all-divine;
He is so little, mother Proserpine,
He
needs me, let me go!
Thus far she prayed, and then she lost her way,
And left the half of all
her heart unsaid,
And a great languor seized her, and she lay,
Soft
fallen, by the little silent head.
Her numbèd lips had passed beyond
control,
Her mind could neither plan nor reason more,
She saw dark
waters and an unknown shore,

And the grey shadows crept about her
soul.
Again through darkness on an evil land
She seemed to enter but
without distress.
A little spirit led her by the hand,
And her wide
heart was warm with tenderness.
Her lips, still moving, conscious of
one care,
Murmured a moment in soft mother-tones,
And so fell

silent. From their sombre thrones
Already the grim gods had heard
her prayer.
TO THE CRICKET
Didst thou not tease and fret me to and fro,
Sweet spirit of this
summer-circled field,
With that quiet voice of thine that would not
yield
Its meaning, though I mused and sought it so?
But now I am
content to let it go,
To lie at length and watch the swallows pass,
As
blithe and restful as this quiet grass,
Content only to listen and to
know
That years shall turn, and summers yet shall shine,
And I
shall lie beneath these swaying trees,
Still listening thus; haply at last
to seize,
And render in some happier verse divine
That friendly,
homely, haunting speech of thine,
That perfect utterance of content
and ease.
THE SONG OF PAN
Mad with love and laden
With immortal pain,
Pan pursued a
maiden--
Pan, the god--in vain.
For when Pan had nearly
Touched her, wild to plead,
She was
gone--and clearly
In her place a reed!
Long the god, unwitting,
Through the valley strayed;
Then at last,
submitting,
Cut the reed, and made,
Deftly fashioned, seven
Pipes, and poured his pain
Unto earth and
heaven
In a piercing strain.
So with god and poet;
Beauty lures them on,
Flies, and ere they
know it
Like a wraith is gone.
Then they seek to borrow
Pleasure still from wrong,
And with
smiling sorrow
Turn it to a song.

THE ISLET AND THE PALM
O gentle sister spirit, when you smile
My soul is like a lonely coral
isle,
An islet shadowed by a single palm,
Ringed round with reef
and foam, but inly calm.
And all day long I listen to the speech
Of wind and water on my
charmèd beach:
I see far off beyond mine outer shore
The ocean
flash, and hear his harmless roar.
And in the night-time when the glorious sun,
With all his life and all
his light, is done,
The wind still murmurs in my slender tree,
And
shakes the moonlight on the silver sea.
A VISION OF TWILIGHT
By a void and soundless river
On the outer edge of space,
Where
the body comes not ever,
But the absent dream hath place,
Stands a
city, tall and quiet,
And its air is sweet and dim;
Never sound of
grief or riot
Makes it mad, or makes it grim.
And the tender skies thereover
Neither sun, nor