Helen Redeemed and Other Poems | Page 5

me!" then forlorn
Would gaze about green earth or out to
sea:
"This is the end of man in his degree"--
Thus would he
moralise in those bare lands
With hopeless brows and tossing up of
hands--
"To sow in sweat and see another reap!"
Then, pitying
himself, he'd fall to weep
His desolation, scorned by Gods, by men

Slighted; but in a flash he'd rage again
And shake his naked sword at
unseen foes,
And dare them bring Odysseus to his blows:
Or let the
man but flaunt himself in arms...!
So threatening God knows what of
savage harms,
On him the oxen patient in the marsh,
Knee-deep in
rushes, gazed to hear his harsh
Outcry; and them his madness taught
for Greeks,

So on their dumb immensity he wreaks
His vengeance,
driving in the press with shout
Of "Aias! Aias!" hurtling, carving out

A way with mighty swordstroke, cut and thrust,
And makes a
shambles in his witless lust;
And in the midst, bloodshot, with blank
wild eyes
Stands frothing at the lips, and after lies
All reeking in his
madman's battlefield,
And sleeps nightlong. But with the dawn's
revealed
The pity of his folly; then he sees
Himself at his fool's

work. With shaking knees
He stands amid his slaughter, and his own

Adds to the wreck, plunging without a groan
Upon his planted
sword. So Aias died
Lonely; and he who, never from his side

Removed, had shared his fame, the Lokrian,
Abode the fate
foreordered in the plan
Which the Blind Women ignorantly weave.
But think not on the dead, who die and leave
A memory more
fragrant than their deeds,
But to the remnant rather and their needs

Give thought with me. What comfort in their swords
Have they,
robbed of the might of two such lords
As Peleus' son and Telamon's?
What art
Can drive the blood back to the stricken heart?
Like
huddled sheep cowed obstinate, as dull
As oxen impotent the wain to
pull
Out of a rut, which, failing at first lunge,
Answer not voice nor
goad, but sideways plunge
Or backward urge with lowered heads, or
stand
Dumb monuments of sufferance--so unmanned
The Achaians
brooded, nor their chiefs had care
To drive them forth, since they too
knew despair,
And neither saw in battle nor retreat
A way of
honour.
And the plain grew sweet
Again with living green; the spring o' the
year
Came in with flush of flower and bird-call clear;
And Nature,
for whom nothing wrought is vain,
Out of shed blood caused grass to
spring amain,
And seemed with tender irony to flout
Man's folly
and pain when twixt dead spears sprang out
The crocus-point and
pied the plain with fires
More gracious than his beacons; and from
pyres
Of burnt dead men the asphodel uprose
Like fleecy clouds
flushed with the morning rose,
A holy pall to hide his folly and pain.

Thus upon earth hope fell like a new rain,
And by and by the pent
folk within walls
Took heart and ploughed the glebe and from the
stalls
Led out their kine to pasture. Goats and sheep

Cropt at their
ease, and herd-boys now did keep
Watch, where before stood armèd
sentinels;
And battle-grounds were musical with bells
Of feeding
beasts. Afar, high-beacht, the ships
Loomed through the tender mist,

their prows--like lips
Of thirsty birds which, lacking water, cry

Salvation out of Heaven--flung on high:
Which marking, Ilios
deemed her worst of road
Was travelled, and held Paris for a God

Who winged the shaft that brought them all this peace.
He in their love went sunning, took his ease
In house and hall, at
council or at feast,
Careless of what was greatest or what least
Of
all his deeds, so only by his side
She lay, the blush-rose Helen, stolen
bride,
The lovely harbour of his arms. But she,
A thrall, now her
own thralldom plain could see,
And sick of dalliance, loathed herself,
and him
Who had beguiled her. Now through eyes made dim
With
tears she looked towards the salt sea-beach
Where stood the ships,
and sought for sign in each
If it might be her people's, and so hers,

Poor alien!--Argive now herself she avers
And proudly slave of Paris
and no wife:
Minion she calls herself; and when to strife
Of love he
claims her, secret her heart surges
Back to her lord; and when to kiss
he urges,
And when to play he woos her with soft words,
Secret her
fond heart calleth, like a bird's,
Towards that honoured mate who
honoured her,
Making her wife indeed, not paramour,
Mother, and
sharer of his hearth and all
His gear. Thus every night: and on the
wall
She watches every dawn for what dawn brings.
And the strong
spirit of her took new wings
And left her lovely body in the arms

Of him who doted, conning o'er her charms,
And witless held a shell;
but forth as light
As the first sigh of dawn her spirit took flight

Across the dusky plain to where fires gleamed
And muffled guards
stood sentry; and it streamed
Within the hut, and hovered like a
wraith,
A presence felt, not seen, as when gray Death
Seems to the
dying man a bedside guest,
But to the watchers cannot be exprest.

So hovered Helen in a dream, and yearned
Over the sleeper as he
moaned and turned,
Renewing his day's torment in