Helen Redeemed and Other Poems. Maurice Hewlett
Читать онлайн книгу.As once before one wailed her Hector there.
SECOND STAVE
MENELAUS' DREAM: HELEN ON THE WALL
So he who wore his honour like a wreath
About his brows went the dark way of death;
Which being done, that deed of ruth and doom
Gave breath to Troy; but on the Achaians gloom
Settled like pall of cloud upon a land
That swoons beneath it. Desperate they scanned
Each other, saying: "Now we are left by God,"
And in the huts behind the wall abode,
Heeding not Diomede, Idomeneus,
Nor keen Odysseus, nor that friend of Zeus
Mykenai's king, nor that robbed Menelaus,
Nor bowman Teukros, Nestor wise, nor Aias—
Huge Aias, cursed in death! Peleides bare
Himself with pride, but he went raving there.
For in the high assembly Thetis made
In honour of her son, to waft his shade
In peace to Hades' house, after the fire
Twice a man's height for him who did suspire
Twice a man's heart and render it to Heaven
Who gave it, after offerings paid and given,
And games of men and horses, she brought forth
His regal arms for hero of most worth
In the broad Danaan host, who was adjudged
Odysseus by all voices. Aias grudged
The vote and wandered brooding, drawn apart
From his room-fellows, seeding in his heart
Envy, which biting inwards did corrode
His mettle, and his ill blood plied the goad
Upon his brain, until the wretch made mad
Went muttering his wrongs, ill-trimmed, ill-clad,
Sightless and careless, with slack mouth awry,
And working tongue, and danger in the eye;
And oft would stare at Heaven and laugh his scorn:
"O fools, think not to trick 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