Men and Women | Page 8

Castile, before Philip II
moved the Court to Madrid, where Cervantes, Calderon, and Las Casas
lived and Columbus died.
76. Titian: pictures by the Venetian, Tiziano Vecellio (1477-1576),
glowing in color, presumably of large golden-haired women like his
famous Venus.
90. Corregidor: the Spanish title for a magistrate, literally, a corrector,
from corregir, to correct.
ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES
1842
I am a goddess of the ambrosia courts,
And save by Here, Queen of
Pride, surpassed
By none whose temples whiten this the world.

Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along;
I shed in hell o'er my
pale people peace;
On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard
Each
pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,
And every feathered
mother's callow brood,
And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns 10 Of poppies red to
blackness, bell and stem,
Upon my image at Athenai here;
And this
dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,
Was dearest to me. He, my
buskined step
To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways,
And
chase the panting stag, or swift with darts
Stop the swift ounce, or lay

the leopard low,
Neglected homage to another god:
Whence
Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke
Of tapers lulled, in jealousy
despatched 20 A noisome lust that, as the gad bee stings,
Possessed
his stepdame Phaidra for himself
The son of Theseus her great absent
spouse.
Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage
Against the fury of the
Queen, she judged
Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart
An
Amazonian stranger's race should dare
To scorn her, perished by the
murderous cord:
Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll
The fame
of him her swerving made not swerve. 30 And Theseus, read, returning,
and believed,
And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath,
The man
without a crime who, last as first,
Loyal, divulged not to his sire the
truth,
Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained
That of his wishes
should be granted three,
And one he imprecated straight--"Alive

May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"
Poseidon heard, ai ai! And
scarce the prince
Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car 40 That
give the feet a stay against the strength
Of the Henetian horses, and
around
His body flung the rein, and urged their speed
Along the
rocks and shingles at the shore,
When from the gaping wave a
monster flung
His obscene body in the coursers' path.
These, mad
with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled
Wallowing about their feet, lost
care of him
That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole
Snapping
beneath their plunges like a reed, 50 Hippolutos, whose feet were
trammelled fast,
Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein

Which either hand directed; nor they quenched
The frenzy of their
flight before each trace,
Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woful car,

Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell,
Huge fish-bone
wrecked and wreathed amid the sands
On that detested beach, was
bright with blood
And morsels of his flesh; then fell the steeds

Head foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts, 60 Shivering with
sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.
His people, who had witnessed all
afar,
Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos.
But when his sire, too
swoln with pride, rejoiced
(Indomitable as a man foredoomed)
That
vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,
I, in a flood of glory visible,


Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed
By deed, revealed, as all took
place, the truth.
Then Theseus lay the wofullest of men, 70 And
worthily; but ere the death-veils hid
His face, the murdered prince full
pardon breathed
To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.
So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries,
Lest in the cross-way none the
honey-cake
Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;
Lest at
my fane the priests disconsolate
Should dress my image with some
faded poor
Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object
Such
slackness to my worshippers who turn 80 Elsewhere the trusting heart
and loaded hand,
As they had climbed Olumpos to report
Of
Artemis and nowhere found her throne--
I interposed: and, this
eventful night
(While round the funeral pyre the populace
Stood
with fierce light on their black robes which bound
Each sobbing head,
while yet their hair they clipped
O'er the dead body of their withered
prince,
And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated
On the cold hearth,
his brow cold as the slab 90 'T was bruised on, groaned away the heavy
grief--
As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed
Sending a
crowd of sparkles through the night,
And the gay fire, elate with
mastery,
Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars
Of wine,
dissolving oils and frankincense,
And splendid gums like gold) my
potency
Conveyed the perished man to my retreat
In the
thrice-venerable forest here.
And this white-bearded sage who
squeezes now 100 The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame,

Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taught
The doctrine of each herb
and flower and root,
To know their secret'st virtue and express
The
saving soul of all: who so has soothed
With layers the torn brow and
murdered cheeks,
Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,

And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,
And laid the strips
and lagged ends of flesh

Even once more, and slacked the sinew's
knot 110 Of every tortured limb--that now