Chapter II

When the springtime came again
And the shepherd to his spen
Led his cloudy flock again,
When the awkward lambkins bounded
While the twin pipes whistling sounded,
And old Charon from his glen
Saw below the smoke of men
Curling thinly from the trees,
Then the heroes sought the seas.
Then the Argo left the shore,
For each eager warrior thought,
When the Pleiads rose once more,
Of the golden fleece he sought.

Hylas went with Heracles,
Dancing to the dancing seas,
And he stood high in the bow,
Golden by the carven prow,
Or he lay within the furls
With the sea damp on his curls.
But at home his mother wept
With her hair upon the floor,
By the hearth where he had slept,
For her woman's heart was sore,
Saying, "He is gone from me!
Gone across the sounding sea!
Ai! Ai! Woe is me!
Alas! Alas! for thee,
Hylas, Alas!"

With the soft, south wind to follow
All the day the sail was hollow,
While the marvelous Orpheus sang,
Till the water furrows rang--
Never man sang as he sang--
Never man has sung the same--
And the ship flew till they came
Where the olive trees are gaunt
By the winding Hellespont,
And the Cian oxen wear
Water-bright the bronze plowshare.

On a fallow meadow hollow,
Where the Cian cattle wallow,
There they landed two by two;
They the grass and rushes strew
For their bed,
Leaves and pointed flag stocks callow,
Foot and head.
And the evening coming on,
Heracles and Telamon
Set the supper fires upleaping
And the shadows swooping, sweeping
Overhead.
Meanwhile, Hylas with a vase
Wandered inland through the haze,
Hoping there to fill his bronze,
Girt about with goat-foot fauns,
Polished.
And around and twice around it,
Where an inwrought girdle bound it,
Fled the rout of chaste Diana,
Goddess led.

Inland in a cup-shaped vale
Willow swart and galingale
Grew with swallowwort and sparsely
Maidenhair and blooming parsley,
And the shallow's level glass
Mirrored back the yellow grass
Where the swallow dipped his wings,
Making rings on rings in rings.
There a nymph dance was afoot
Where the country people put
Cloth and oaten cakes and bread
For the water spirits dread--
Two and two and in and out,
Three and two, around about,
Hands around and then they vanished,
Leaving Hylas there astonished.

But at last he stooped to dip
And the eager water slipped,
Stuttering past the metal lip,
Choking like a sunk bell rung--
Suddenly white nymph hands clung
Cold as iron around his arm
Till he cried out in alarm.
Gave a little silver cry
And the swallow skimming nigh
Darted higher in the sky,
And the echo when he spoke--
Awoke.
Now the white hands tighter cling,
Now the funneled water ring
Fills and flows till in its glass
Nods again the nodding grass.
_Alas! Alas! for thee,
Hylas, Alas!_

Then it was that Heracles
For sweet Hylas ill at ease,
Left the heroes by the fire,
Strung his bowstring taut as wire,
Went to look for Hylas inland
Past a little rocky headland,
Rising higher ever higher
Till he found the cup-shaped dale,
Where he called without avail,
Shouting loudly, "Hylas, Hylas,"
Echo answered back, "Alas,"
Echo answered very slowly,
Speaking sorrowfully and lowly,
When he called the lad, "Hy-_las_,"
Hollow echo said, "Alas."

And he never found him more
On the hill or by the shore,
On the upland, on the downland,
Never found him where he lay
Down among the boulders gray,
Limp among the watery rocks,
Where the lily raised its chalice
And the dread nymphs combed his locks,
Pale Nycheia, April-eyed,
And white Eunice and Malis.
For his voice came down to these
Vague as April in the trees,
Filtered through the water clear
Far and faint yet strangely near,
Very thin--
And no echo could they hear
Only ripples' silver din
And the dull splash of an otter;
Echo cannot live in water.

But that echo comes to me
Down through half eternity
Crying out, "Alas--Alas!"
For all beauty that must pass
Like a picture from a glass--
When time breathes it is not there--
Bony hands and coffined hair!
Alas! Alas! Alas!

BACCHUS IS GONE.

_Bacchus is gone_!
I saw him leave the shore
Upon a moonless time,
_And he is gone--is gone--_
Forevermore.
I saw the satyrs and the bacchanals--
_Bacchus is gone--is gone--_
With smoking torches as at funerals
Light him across the sea at dawn.

I saw the whimpering pards
Where he had passed--
_Bacchus is gone--is gone--_
Sniff to the water's edge,
Where purple stained, his footprints led--
I heard the Goat-foot whisper in the hedge,
"_Bacchus is dead--is dead,_"
And go aghast,
Snapping the myrtle branches as he fled.

_Bacchus is gone!_
And with him dancing Folly--
_Bacchus is dead--is dead--_
Oh, Melancholy!

No! No! He is not dead; he has but fled
To kindlier lands he knew in days before
Men snatched the purple roses from his head.
He does but wanton by some liberal shore--
Sun kissed--
And wreathed with vine leaves as of old,
With spotted beasts and maidens by his car,
And sound of timbrels like a story told
Of youth and love and blood and wine and war.

TIGER LILIES.

They make me think of battlefields I saw
Where butterflies with wings of sulphurous gold
Crawled on gray faces death had made obscene
That stared with stolid dolls' eyes from the mold.
They make me think of pools of wimpled slime,
Where lizards bask upon the quaking crust,
And crumbling walls where hairy spiders weave
And snakes lie coupling in the summer dust.

I think it must have been along the Nile
That first these speckled membranes burst the pod,
Before the boy-flat breasts of some half-cat
Half-man and beryl-eyed Egyptian god.
Or first they grew about forgotten tombs
The apes inherit in hot jungles where
Like xanthic suns through aquid shade of leaves
A spotted leopard's dilate pupils stare.

These were the mottled blossoms of Gomorrah,
Wreathed on beast-gods by priestly Sodomites,
By Baal fires when the talking timbrel's sound
Fell from Astarte's groves on full moon nights.
They suck a yellow venom from the sun
And mid their reedy stocks there comes and goes
The forked, black lightning of a serpent's tongue
That hisses as his slippery body flows.

Such lilies bloom beside the gates of hell
And poison honey festers in their pods,
Olid as tales of lust told long ago
About the wanton mother of the gods.
And I would plant them by the lichened tomb
Of that veiled queen who died of leprosy
With two red princes smothered in her womb;
Their roots would feed on her in secrecy.

THREE LANDSCAPE MOODS.

The First: Youth.

Youth is a vale afire with hollyhocks,
Robbed by those greedy publicans the bees,
Where cuckoos call like fairy story clocks
And blue-jays holla in the apple trees.
No thunderheads come up with black despair
To dim its arching orchard's leafy sheen,
But clouds like ivory towers pile in air
And gothic woods stand, cloistered, cool and green.

It is a glade where earliest flowers grow,
Along the melting snowbanks in the spring,
The waxen-stemmed anemones first show,
And Madame Woodthrush preens her dainty wing.
White hyacinths like masts with flower spars
Stand in the woods and dot each bosky lawn,
Like distant sails or clusters of pale stars
Against an emerald sky at early dawn.

Cleft in life's hills, Youth is a sheltered swale
Where for a while we lie in indolence
And watch time's waterfall thin as a veil
That falls and hangs and smokes in long suspense,
And there a fountain spouts of purest joy
That feeds the fall, birds whistle on its brim,
Often I lay beside it when a boy
And saw the future mirrored vague and dim--

Heaven was there a strangely clouded page,
Two rivers on the plains met like a "Y,"
And blue as ghosts the mountains of old age
Rolled down the western sky.

The Second: High Tide o' Life.

High Tide o' Life's a city by the sea,
By tide rips where the flood comes shouting in,
On straits that bring up ships with spicèd freights
And sails as scarlet as a woman's sin.
A mart where merchants chaffer on the docks
For pearls and feather work and jewel'd shoon,
And hurry off to feast when all the clocks
Strike anvil-tongued a thousand-noted noon.

High Tide o' Life's a city proudly vain,
With minarets from whence men can descry,
Like domes of giants' houses, chain on chain,
Death's arid mountains arabesque the sky.
And hoary uplands wave with tasseled corn,
And long sun pencils strike the hills, afar,
The walled towns smolder in the fire of morn
Like embers of a sullen, fallen star.

High Tide o' Life's an upland where no breath
Of frost has ever crept across the grass,
But days as idle as a shibboleth
Like golden coins are quickly spent. They pass
In hidden valleys fit for secret lust,
Where strange winged-sins like griffin-hippogryphs
Bask with their glittering scales in white-hot dust
Along a sunstruck face of basalt cliffs.

It is an isle in red, witch-haunted seas
Where lovers' nights, the jade-faced moon stands still,
Pouring an amber twilight through the trees,
Across the copper ocean and the hill.
High Tide o' Life's a plain laid easterly
In realms ruled over by some fabled _Djinn_
Where rivers blue as _lapis-lazuli_
Rush down to meet the flood tides roaring in.

The Third: Old Age.

Old age is like a bleak plateau,
About--around--the dead leaves blow
In shouting, keening winter wind,
Below life's plains lie cloud bedimmed
Below.
In long gray lines the dead leaves go,
The stone blue shadows limn the snow,
The thwacking branches creak and mutter
In scarecrow desolation utter.
In scarecrow
Clothes the last leaves flutter
And in dry hollows rasp and putter
About the starved, old, carven faces,
Around the ancient burial places
About, around, below.

That land is very old and lonely
Beneath--among--the cliffs its only
Hope is kindling firelight
Before the coming of the night,
Before
There are no travelers there
Left any more to come and share
The shelter from the ghost wolves' patter,
The helter-skelter, bony clatter
The helter-skelter
And the scatter
Of riven, driven souls that chatter
Beneath the cliffs, while in and out
Among them raves the death wolves' rout,
Beneath, among, before.

And ever from each waning fire
Away--away--against desire
The death wolves snatch their struggling toll,
And snarl and harry down a soul,
And snarl
And harry down one other,
And then another and another,
To where Death sits, an idiot,
That stirs all things into a pot,
That stirs
Till everything is nought
Except the stirrer and the pot;
Beside eternities midriff,
Where time is bordered by a cliff,
With creaking bones and dismal whoop
He makes God's bitter charnel soup--
"Away," he cries, "or we shall quarrel,
Away, my wolves, for more and snarl
Away! Away! and snarl."

THE HERMITAGE OF BELLS.

A Drama of Sound.

_Dramatis Personae._

The King.
The Queen.
The World,
The Five Bells.
The Earth.

_Time_: The Middle Ages.
_Place_: Lusitania.