Some Elders.
Would God that suddenly
With no great agony,
No long sick-watch to keep,
My hour would come to me,
My hour, and presently
Bring the eternal, the
Unwaking Sleep,
Now that my Shepherd, he
Whose love watched over me,
Lies in the deep!
For woman’s sake he endured and battled well,
And by a woman’s hand he fell.
What hast thou done, O Helen blind of brain,
O face that slew the souls on Ilion’s plain,
One face, one face, and many a thousand slain?
The hate of old that on this castle lay,
Builded in lust, a husband’s evil day,
Hath bloomed for thee a perfect flower again
And unforgotten, an old and burning stain
Never to pass away.
Nay, pray not for the hour of death, being tried
Too sore beneath these blows
Neither on Helen turn thy wrath aside,
The Slayer of Men, the face which hath destroyed
Its thousand Danaan souls, and wrought a wide
Wound that no leech can close.
—Daemon,52 whose heel is set
On the House and the twofold kin
Of the high Tantalidae,
A power, heavy as fate,
Thou wieldest through woman’s sin,
Piercing the heart of me!
—Like a raven swoln with hate
He hath set on the dead his claw,
He croaketh a song to sate
His fury, and calls it Law!
Ah, call upon Him! Yea, call—
And thy thought hath found its path—
The Daemon who haunts this hall,
The thrice-engorged Wrath;
From him is the ache of the flesh
For blood born and increased;
Ere the old sore hath ceased
It oozeth afresh.
—Indeed He is very great,
And heavy his anger, He,
The Daemon who guides the fate
Of the old Tantalidae:
Alas, alas, an evil tale ye tell
Of desolate angers and insatiable!
—Ah me,
And yet ’tis all as Zeus hath willed,
Doer of all and Cause of all;
By His Word every chance doth fall,
No end without Him is fulfilled;
What of these things
But cometh by high Heaven’s counsellings? A band of Mourners has gathered within the House.
Ah, sorrow, sorrow! My King, my King!
How shall I weep, what word shall I say?
Caught in the web of this spider thing,
In foul death gasping thy life away!
Woe’s me, woe’s me, for this slavish lying,
The doom of craft and the lonely dying,
The iron two-edged and the hands that slay!
And criest thou still this deed hath been
My work? Nay, gaze, and have no thought
That this is Agamemnon’s Queen.
’Tis He, ’tis He, hath round him wrought
This phantom of the dead man’s wife;
He, the old Wrath, the Driver of Men astray,
Pursuer of Atreus for the feast defiled;
To assoil an ancient debt he hath paid this life;
A warrior and a crownèd King this day
Atones for a slain child.
—That thou art innocent herein,
What tongue dare boast? It cannot be,
Yet from the deeps of ancient sin
The Avenger may have wrought with thee.
—On the red Slayer crasheth, groping wild
For blood, more blood, to build his peace again,
And wash like water the old frozen stain
Of the torn child.
Ah, sorrow, sorrow! My King, my King!
How shall I weep, what word shall I say?
Caught in the web of this spider thing,
In foul death gasping thy life away.
Woe’s me, woe’s me, for this slavish lying,
The doom of craft and the lonely dying,
The iron two-edged and the hands that slay!
And what of the doom of craft that first
He planted, making the House accurst?
What of the blossom, from this root riven,
Iphigenia, the unforgiven?
Even as the wrong was, so is the pain:
He shall not laugh in the House of the slain,
When the count is scored;
He hath but spoilèd and paid again
The due of the sword.
I am lost; my mind dull-eyed
Knows not nor feels
Whither to fly nor hide
While the House reels.
The noise of rain that falls
On the roof affrighteth me,
Washing away the walls;
Rain that falls bloodily.
Doth ever the sound abate?
Lo, the next Hour of Fate
Whetting her vengeance due
On new whet-stones, for new
Workings of hate.
Would thou hadst covered me, Earth, O Earth,
Or e’er I had looked on my lord thus low,
In the pallèd marble of silvern girth!
What hands may shroud him, what tears may flow?
Not thine, O Woman who dared to slay him,
Thou durst not weep to him now, nor pray him,
Nor pay to his soul the deep unworth
Of gift or prayer to forget thy blow.
—Oh, who with heart sincere
Shall bring praise or grief
To lay on the sepulchre
Of the great chief?
His burial is not thine to array.
By me he fell, by me he died,
I watch him to the grave, not cried
By mourners of his housefolk; nay,
His own child for a day like this
Waits, as is seemly, and shall run
By the white waves of Acheron
To fold him in her arms and kiss!
Lo, she who was erst reviled
Revileth; and who shall say?
Spoil taken from them that spoiled,
Life-blood from them that slay!
Surely while God ensueth
His laws, while Time doth run
’Tis written: On him that doeth
It shall be done.
This is God’s law and grace,
Who then shall hunt the race
Of curses from out this hall?
The House is sealed withal
To dreadfulness.
Aye, thou hast found the Law, and stept
In Truth’s way.—Yet even now I call
The Living Wrath which haunts this hall
To truce and compact. I accept
All the affliction he doth heap
Upon me, and I charge him go
Far off with his self-murdering woe
To strange men’s houses. I will keep
Some little dower,
