Helped by the anxious joy of their kindred supported their anguish

Women with travail racked for the child who shall rack them with sorrow.

Hopes that were confident, fates that sprang dire from the seed of a moment,

Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,

All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,

Labour blind and vain expense and sacrifice wasted,

These he beheld with a heart unshaken; to each side he studied

Seas of confused attempt and the strife and the din and the crying.

All things he pierced in us gazing down with his eyelids immortal,

Lids on which sleep dare not settle, the Father of men on his creatures;

Nor by the cloud and the mist was obscured which baffles our eyeballs,

But he distinguished our source and saw to the end of our labour.

He in the animal racked knew the god that is slowly delivered;

Therefore his heart rejoiced. Not alone the mind in its trouble

God beholds, but the spirit behind that has joy of the torture.

Might not our human gaze on the smoke of a furnace, the burning

Red, intolerable, anguish of ore that is fused in the hell-heat,

Shrink and yearn for coolness and peace and condemn all the labour?

Rather look to the purity coming, the steel in its beauty,

Rather rejoice with the master who stands in his gladness accepting

Heat of the glorious god and the fruitful pain of the iron.

Last the eternal gaze was fixed on Troy and the armies

Marching swift to the shock. It beheld the might of Achilles

Helmed and armed, knew all the craft in the brain of Odysseus,

Saw Deiphobus stern in his car and the fates of Aeneas,

Greece of her heroes empty, Troy enringed by her slayers,

Paris a setting star and the beauty of Penthesilea.

These things he saw delighted; the heart that contains all our ages

Blessed our toil and grew full of its fruits, as the Artist eternal

Watched his vehement drama staged twixt the sea and the mountains,

Phrased in the clamour and glitter of arms and closed by the firebrand,

Act itself out in blood and in passions fierce on the Troad.

Yet as a father his children, who sits in the peace of his study

Hearing the noise of his brood and pleased with their play and their quarrels,

So he beheld our mortal race. Then, turned from the armies,

Into his mind he gazed where Time is reflected and, conscient,

Knew the iron knot of our human fates in their warfare.

Page – 443

Calm he arose and left our earth for his limitless kingdoms.

Far from this lower blue and high in the death-scorning spaces

Lifted o'er mortal mind where Time and Space are but figures

Lightly imagined by Thought divine in her luminous stillness,

Zeus has his palace high and there he has stabled his war-car.

Thence he descends to our mortal realms; where the heights of our mountains

Meet with the divine air, he touches and enters our regions.

Now he ascended back to his natural realms and their rapture,

There where all life is bliss and each feeling an ecstasy mastered.

Thence his eagle Thought with its flashing pinions extended

Winged through the world to the gods, and they came at the call, they ascended

Up from their play and their calm and their works through the infinite azure.

Some from our mortal domains in grove or by far-flowing river

Cool from the winds of the earth or quivering with perishable fragrance

Came, or our laughter they bore and the song of the sea in their paces.

Some from the heavens above us arrived, our vital dominions

Whence we draw breath; for there all things have life, the stone like the ilex,

Clay of those realms like the children of men and the brood of the giants.

There Enceladus groans oppressed and draws strength from his anguish

Under a living Aetna and flames that have joy of his entrails.

Fiercely he groans and rejoices expecting the end of his foemen

Hastened by every pang and counts long Time by his writhings.

There in the champaigns unending battle the gods and the giants,

There in eternal groves the lovers have pleasure for ever,

There are the faery climes and there are the wonderful pastures.

Some from a marvellous Paradise hundred-realmed in its musings,

Million-ecstasied, climbed like flames that in silence aspire

Windless, erect in a motionless dream, yet ascending for ever.

All grew aware of the will divine and were drawn to the Father.

Grandiose, calm in her gait, imperious, awing the regions,

Hera came in her pride, the spouse of Zeus and his sister.

As at her birth from the foam of the spaces white Aphrodite

Rose in the cloud of her golden hair like the moon in its halo.

Aegis-bearing Athene, shielded and helmeted, answered

Rushing the call and the heavens thrilled with the joy of her footsteps

Page – 444

Dumbly repeating her name, as insulted and trampled by beauty

Thrill might the soul of a lover and cry out the name of its tyrant.

Others there were as mighty; for Artemis, archeress ancient,

Came on her sandals lightning-tasselled. Up the vast incline

Shaking the world with the force of his advent thundered Poseidon;

Space grew full of his stride and his cry. Immortal Apollo

Shone and his silver clang was heard with alarm in our kingdoms.

Ares' impetuous eyes looked forth from a cloud-drift of splendour;

Themis' steps appeared and Ananke, the mystic Erinnys;

Nor was Hephaestus' flaming strength from his father divided.

Even the ancient Dis to arrive dim-featured, eternal,

Seemed; but his rays are the shades and his voice is the call of the silence.

Into the courts divine they crowded, radiant, burning,

Perfect in utter grace and light. The joy of their spirits

Calls to eternal Time and the glories of Space are his answer:

Thence were these bright worlds born and persist by the throb of their heart-beats.

Not in the forms that mortals have seen when assisted they scatter

Mists of this earthly dust from their eyes in their moments of greatness

Shone those unaging Powers; nor as in our centuries radiant

Mortal-seeming bodies they wore when they mixed with our nations.

Then the long youth of the world had not faded still out of our natures,

Flowers and the sunlight were felt and the earth was glad like a mother.

Then for a human delight they were masked in this denser vesture

Earth desires for her bliss,  —  thin veils, for the god through them glimmered.

Quick were men's days with the throng of the brilliant presences near them:

Gods from the wood and the valley, gods from the obvious wayside,

Gods on the secret hills leaped out from their light on the mortal.

Oft in the haunt and the grove they met with our kind and their touches

Seized and subjected our clay to the greatness of passions supernal,

Grasping the earthly virgin and forcing heaven on this death-dust.

Glorifying human beauty Apollo roamed in our regions

Clymene when he pursued or yearned in vain for Marpessa;

Glorifying earth with a human-seeming face of the beauty

Brought from her heavenly climes Aphrodite mixed with Anchises.

Glimpsed in the wilds were the Satyrs, seen in the woodlands the Graces,

Dryad and Naiad in river and forest, Oreads haunting

Page – 445

Glens and the mountain-glades where they played with the manes of our lions

Glimmered on death-claimed eyes; for the gods then were near us and clasped us,

Heaven leaned down in love with our clay and yearned to its transience.

But we have coarsened in heart and in mood; we have turned in our natures

Nearer our poorer kindred; leaned to the ant and the ferret.

Sight we have darkened with sense and power we have stifled with labour,

Likened in mood to the things we gaze at and are in our vestures:

Therefore we toil unhelped; we are left to our weakness and blindness.

Not in those veils now they rose to their skies, but like loose-fitting mantles

Dropped in the vestibules huge of their vigorous realms that besiege us

All that reminded of earth; then clothed with raiment of swiftness

Straight they went quivering up in a glory like fire or the storm-blast.

Even those natural vestures of puissance they leave when they enter

Mind's more subtle fields and agree with its limitless regions

Peopled by creatures of bliss and forms more true than earth's shadows,  —

Mind that pure from this density, throned in her splendours immortal

Looks up at Light and suffers bliss from ineffable kingdoms

Where beyond Mind and its rays is the gleam of a glory supernal:

There our sun cannot shine and our moon has no place for her lustres,

There our lightnings flash not, nor fire of these spaces is suffered.

They with bodies impalpable here to our touch and our seeing,

But for a higher delight, to a brighter sense, with more sweetness

Palpable there and visible, thrilled with a lordlier joyance,

Came to the courts of Zeus and his heavens sang to their footsteps.

Harmonies flowed through the blissful coils of the kingdoms of rapture.

Then by his mighty equals surrounded the Thunderer regnant

Veiled his thought in sound that was heard in their souls as they listened.

Veiled are the high gods always lest there should dawn on the mortal

Light too great from the skies and men to their destiny clear-eyed

Walk unsustained like the gods; then Night and Dawn were defeated

And of their masks the deities robbed would be slaves to their subjects.

"Children of Immortality, gods who are joyous for ever,

Rapture is ours and eternity measures our lives by his aeons.

For we desireless toil who have joy in the fall as the triumph,

Knowledge eternal possessing we work for an end that is destined

Page – 446

Long already beyond by the Will of which Time is the courser.

Therefore death cannot alter our lives nor pain our enjoyment.

But in the world of mortals twilight is lord of its creatures.

Nothing they perfectly see, but all things seek and imagine,

Out of the clod who have come and would climb from their mire to our heavens.

Yet are the heavenly seats not easy even for the chosen:

Rough and remote is that path; that ascent is too hard for the death-bound.

Hard are God's terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal.

Mind resists; their breath is a clog; by their tools they are hampered,

Blindly mistaking the throb of their mortal desires for our guidance.

How shall they win in their earth to our skies who are clay and a life-wind,

But that their hearts we invade? Our shocks on their lives come incessant,

Ease discourage and penetrate coarseness; sternness celestial

Forces their souls towards the skies and their bodies by anguish are sifted.

We in the mortal wake an immortal strength by our tortures

And by the flame of our lightnings choose out the vessels of godhead.

This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgings

Travails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure.

Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking

Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.

But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter

She would go glad and the goal would be missed and the aeons be wasted.

But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings

Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;

Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud.

This by pain we prevent; we compel his feet to the journey.

But in their minds to impression made subject, by forms of things captured

Blind is the thought and presumptuous the hope and they swerve from our goading;

Blinded are human hearts by desire and fear and possession,

Darkened is knowledge on earth by hope the helper of mortals.

"Now too from earth and her children voices of anger and weeping

Beat at our thrones; 'tis the grief and the wrath of fate-stricken creatures,

Mortals struggling with destiny, hearts that are slaves to their sorrow.

We unmoved by the cry will fulfil our unvarying purpose.

Troy shall fall at last and the ancient ages shall perish.

Page – 447

You who are lovers of Ilion turn from the moans of her people,

Chase from your hearts their prayers, blow back from your nostrils the incense.

Let not one nation resist by its glory the good of the ages.

Twilight thickens over man and he moves to his winter of darkness.

Troy that displaced with her force and her arms the luminous ancients,

Sinks in her turn by the ruder strength of the half-savage Achaians.

They to the Hellene shall yield and the Hellene fall by the Roman.

Rome too shall not endure, but by strengths ill-shaped shall be broken,

Nations formed in the ice and mist, confused and crude-hearted.

So shall the darker and ruder always prevail o'er the brilliant

Till in its turn to a ruder and darker it falls and is shattered.

So shall mankind make speed to destroy what 'twas mighty creating.

Ever since knowledge failed and the ancient ecstasy slackened,

Light has been helper to death and darkness increases the victor.

So shall it last till the fallen ages return to their greatness.

For if the twilight be helped not, night o'er the world cannot darken;

Night forbidden how shall a greater dawn be effected?

Gods of the light who know and resist that the doomed may have succour,

Always then shall desire and passion strive with Ananke?

Conquer the cry of your heart-strings that man too may conquer his sorrow,

Stilled in his yearnings. Cease, O ye gods, from the joy of rebellion.

Open the eye of the soul, admit the voice of the Silence."

So in the courts of Heaven august the Thunderer puissant

Spoke to his sons in their souls and they heard him, mighty in silence.

Then to her brother divine the white-armed passionless Hera:

"Zeus, we remember; thy sons forget, Apollo and Ares."

"Hera, queen of the heavens, they forget not, but choose to be mindless.

This is the greatness of gods that they know and can put back the knowledge;

Doing the work they have chosen they turn not for fruit nor for failure,

Griefless they walk to their goal and strain not their eyes towards the ending.

Light that they have they can lose with a smile, not as souls in the darkness

Clutch at every beam and mistake their one ray for all splendour.

All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us,

And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning.

There is an hour for knowledge, an hour to forget and to labour."

Great Cronion ceased and high in the heavenly silence

Page – 448

Rose in their midst the voice of the loud impetuous Ares

Sounding far in the luminous fields of his soul as with thunder.

"Father, we know and we have not forgotten. This is our godhead,

Still to strive and never to yield to the evil that conquers.

I will not dwell with the Greeks nor aid them save forced by Ananke

And because lives of the great and the blood of the strong are my portion.

This too thou knowest, our nature enjoys in mankind its fulfilment.

War is my nature and greatness and hardness, the necks of the vanquished;

Force is my soul and strength is my bosom; I shout in the battle

Breaking cities like toys and the nations are playthings of Ares:

Hither and thither I shove them and throw down or range on my table.

Constancy most I love, nobility, virtue and courage;

Fugitive hearts I abhor and the nature fickle as sea-foam.

Now if the ancient spirit of Titan battle is over,  —

Tros fights no more on the earth, nor now Heracles tramples and struggles,

Bane of the hydra or slaying the Centaurs o'er Pelion driven,  —

Now if the earth no more must be shaken by Titan horsehooves,

Since to a pettier framework all things are fitted consenting,

Yet will I dwell not in Greece nor favour the nurslings of Pallas.

I will await the sons of my loins and the teats of the she-wolf,

Consuls browed like the cliffs and plebeians stern of the wolf-brood,

Senates of kings and armies of granite that grow by disaster;

Such be the nation august that is fit for the favour of Ares!

They shall fulfil me and honour my mother, imperial Hera.

Then with an iron march they shall move to their world-wide dominion,

Through the long centuries rule and at last because earth is impatient,

Slowly with haughtiness perish compelled by mortality's transience

Leaving a Roman memory stamped on the ages of weakness."

But to his son far-sounding the Father high of the Immortals:

"So let it be since such is the will in thee, mightiest Ares;

Thou shalt till sunset prevail, O war-god, fighting for Troya."

So he decreed and the soul of the Warrior sternly consented.

He from his seats arose and down on the summits of Ida

Flaming through Space in his cloud in a headlong glory descended,

Prone like a thunderbolt flaming down from the hand of the Father.

Thence in his chariot drawn by living fire and by swiftness,

Thundered down to earth's plains the mighty impetuous Ares.

Page – 449

Far where Deiphobus stern was labouring stark and outnumbered

Smiting the Achaian myriads back on the right of the carnage,

Over the hosts in his car he stood and darkened the Argives.

But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke to his children:

"Ares resisting a present Fate for the hope of the future,

Gods, has gone forth from us. Choose thou thy paths, O my daughter,

More than thy brother assailed by the night that darkens o'er creatures.

Choose the silence in heaven or choose the struggle mid mortals,

Golden joy of the worlds, O thou roseate white Aphrodite."

Then with her starry eyes and bosom of bliss from the immortals

Glowing and rosy-limbed cried the wonderful white Aphrodite,

Drawing her fingers like flowers through the flowing gold of her tresses,

Calm, discontented, her perfect mouth like a rose of resistance

Chidingly budded 'gainst Fate, a charm to their senses enamoured.

"Well do I know thou hast given my world to Hera and Pallas.

What though my temples shall stand in Paphos and island Cythera

And though the Greek be a priest for my thoughts and a lyre for my singing,

Beauty pursuing and light through the figures of grace and of rhythm,  —

Forms shall he mould for men's eyes that the earth has forgotten and mourns for,

Mould even the workings of Pallas to commune with Paphia's sweetness,

Mould Hephaestus' craft in the gaze of the gold Aphrodite,  —

Only my form he pursues that I wear for a mortal enchantment,

He to whom now thou givest the world, the Ionian, the Hellene,

But for my might is unfit which Babylon worshipped and Sidon

Palely received from the past in images faint of the gladness

Once that was known by the children of men when the thrill of their members

Was but the immortal joy of the spirit overflowing their bodies,

Wine-cups of God's desire; but their clay from my natural greatness

Falters betrayed to pain, their delight they have turned into ashes.

Nor to my peaks shall he rise and the perfect fruit of my promptings,

There where the senses swoon but the heart is delivered by rapture:

Never my touch can cling to his soul nor reply from his heart-strings.

Once could my godhead surprise all the stars with the seas of its rapture;

Once the world in its orbit danced to a marvellous rhythm.

Men in their limits, gods in their amplitudes answered my calling;

Life was moved by a chant of delight that sang from the spaces,

Page – 450

Sang from the Soul of the Vast, its rapture clasping its creatures.

Sweetly agreed my fire with their soil and their hearts were as altars.

Pure were its crests; 'twas not dulled with earth, 'twas not lost in the hazes

Then when the sons of earth and the daughters of heaven together

Met on lone mountain peaks or, linked on wild beach and green meadow,

Twining embraced. For I danced on Taygetus' peaks and o'er Ida

Naked and loosing my golden hair like a nimbus of glory

O'er a deep-ecstasied earth that was drunk with my roses and whiteness.

There was no shrinking nor veil in our old Saturnian kingdoms.

Equals were heaven and earth, twin gods on the lap of Dione.

Now shall my waning greatness perish and pass out of Nature.

For though the Romans, my children, shall grasp at the strength of their mother,

They shall not hold the god, but lose in unsatisfied orgies

Yet what the earth has kept of my joy, my glory, my puissance,

Who shall but drink for a troubled hour in the dusk of the sunset

Dregs of my wine Pandemian missing the Uranian sweetness.

So shall the night descend on the greatness and rapture of living;

Creeds that refuse shall persuade the world to revolt from its mother.

Pallas' adorers shall loathe me and Hera's scorn me for lowness;

Beauty shall pass from men's work and delight from their play and their labour;

Earth restored to the Cyclops shall shrink from the gold Aphrodite.

So shall I live diminished, owned but by beasts in the forest,

Birds of the air and the gods in their heavens, but disgraced in the mortal."

Then to the discontented rosy-mouthed Aphrodite

Zeus replied, the Father divine: "O goddess Astarte,

What are these thoughts thou hast suffered to wing from thy rose-mouth immortal?

Bees that sting and delight are the words from thy lips, Cytherea.

Art thou not womb of the world and from thee are the thronging of creatures?

And didst thou cease the worlds too would cease and the aeons be ended.

Suffer my Greeks; accept who accept thee, O gold Dionaean.

They in the works of their craft and their dreams shall enthrone thee for ever,

Building thee temples in Paphos and Eryx and island Cythera,

Building the fane more enduring and bright of thy golden ideal.

Page – 451

Even if natures of men could renounce thee and God do without thee,

Rose of love and sea of delight, O my child Aphrodite,

Still wouldst thou live in the worship they gave thee protected from fading,

Splendidly statued and shrined in men's works and men's thoughts, Cytherea."

Pleased and blushing with bliss of her praise and the thought of her empire

Answered, as cries a harp in heaven, the gold Aphrodite:

"Father, I know and I spoke but to hear from another my praises.

I am the womb of the world and the cause of this teeming of creatures,

And if discouraged I ceased, God's world would lose heart and would perish.

How will you do then without me your works of wisdom and greatness,

Hera, queen of heaven, and thou, O my sister Athene?

Yes, I shall reign and endure though the pride of my workings be conquered.

What though no second Helen find a second Paris,

Lost though their glories of form to the earth, though their confident gladness

Pass from a race misled and forgetting the sap that it sprang from,

They are eternal in man in the worship of beauty and rapture.

Ever while earth is embraced by the sun and hot with his kisses

And while a Will supernal works through the passions of Nature,

Me shall men seek with my light or their darkness, sweetly or crudely,

Cold on the ice of the north or warm in the heats of the southland,

Slowly enduring my touch or with violence rapidly burning.

I am the sweetness of living, I am the touch of the Master.

Love shall die bound to my stake like a victim adorned as for bridal,

Life shall be bathed in my flames and be purified gold or be ashes.

I, Aphrodite, shall move the world for ever and ever.

Yet now since most to me, Father of all, the ages arriving,

Hostile, rebuke my heart and turn from my joy and my sweetness,

I will resist and not yield, nor care what I do, so I conquer.

Often I curbed my mood for your sakes and was gracious and kindly,

Often I lay at Hera's feet and obeyed her commandments

Tranquil and proud or o'ercome by a honeyed and ancient compulsion

Fawned on thy pureness and served thy behests, O my sister Pallas.

Deep was the love that united us, happy the wrestle and clasping;

Love divided, Love united, Love was our mover.

But since you now overbear and would scourge me and chain and control me,

Page – 452

War I declare on you all, O my Father and brothers and sisters.

Henceforth I do my will as the joy in me prompts or the anger.

Ranging the earth with my beauty and passion and golden enjoyments

All whom I can, I will bind; I will drive at the bliss of my workings,

Whether men's hearts are seized by the joy or seized by the torture.

Most I will plague your men, your worshippers and in my malice

Break up your works with confusion divine, O my mother and sister;

Then shall you fume and resist and be helpless and pine with my torments.

Yet will I never relent but always be sweet and malignant,

Cruel and tyrannous, hurtful and subtle, a charm and a torture.

Thou too, O father Zeus, shalt always be vexed with my doings;

Called in each moment to judge thou shalt chafe at our cry and our quarrels,

Often grope for thy thunderbolt, often frown magisterial

Joining in vain thy awful brows o'er thy turbulent children.

Yet in thy wrath recall my might and my wickedness, Father;

Hurt me not then too much lest the world and thyself too should suffer.

Save, O my Father, life and grace and the charm of the senses;

Love preserve lest the heart of the world grow dulled and forsaken."

Smiling her smile immortal of love and of mirth and of malice

White Aphrodite arose in her loveliness armed for the conflict.

Golden and careless and joyous she went like a wild bird that winging

Flits from bough to bough and resumes its chant interrupted.

Love where her white feet trod bloomed up like a flower from the spaces;

Mad round her touches billowed incessantly laughter and rapture.

Thrilled with her feet was the bosom of Space, for her amorous motion

Floated, a flower on the wave of her bliss or swayed like the lightning.

Rich as a summer fruit and fresh as Spring's blossoms her body

Gleaming and blushing, veiled and bare and with ecstasy smiting

Burned out rosy and white through her happy ambrosial raiment,

Golden-tressed and a charm, her bosom a fragrance and peril.

So was she framed to the gaze as she came from the seats of the Mighty,

So embodied she visits the hearts of men and their dwellings

And in her breathing tenement laughs at the eyes that can see her.

Swift-footed down to the Troad she hastened thrilling the earth-gods.

There with ambrosial secrecy veiled, admiring the heroes

Strong and beautiful, might of the warring and glory of armour,

Over her son Aeneas she stood, his guard in the battle.

Page – 453

But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke mid his children:

"Thou for a day and a night and another day and a nightfall,

White Aphrodite, prevail; o'er thee too the night is extended.

She has gone forth who made men like gods in their glory and gladness.

Now in the darkness coming all beauty must wane or be tarnished;

Joy shall fade and mighty Love grow fickle and fretful;

Even as a child that is scared in the night, he shall shake in his chambers.

Yet shall a portion be kept for these, Ares and white Aphrodite.

Thou whom already thy Pythoness bears not, torn by thy advent,

Caverned already who sittest in Delphi knowing thy future,

What wilt thou do with the veil and the night, O burning Apollo?"

Then from the orb of his glory unbearable save to immortals

Bright and austere replied the beautiful mystic Apollo:

"Zeus, I know that I fade; already the night is around me.

Dusk she extends her reign and obscures my lightnings with error.

Therefore my prophets mislead men's hearts to the ruin appointed,

Therefore Cassandra cries in vain to her sire and her brothers.

All I endure I foresee and the strength in me waits for its coming;

All I foresee I approve; for I know what is willed, O Cronion.

Yet is the fierce strength wroth in my breast at the need of approval

And for the human race fierce pity works in my bosom;

Wroth is my splendid heart with the cowering knowledge of mortals,

Wroth are my burning eyes with the purblind vision of reason.

I will go forth from your seats and descend to the night among mortals

There to guard the flame and the mystery; vast in my moments

Rare and sublime to sound like a sea against Time and its limits,

Cry like a spirit in pain in the hearts of the priest and the poet,

Cry against limits set and disorder sanities bounded.

Jealous for truth to the end my might shall prevail and for ever

Shatter the moulds that men make to imprison their limitless spirits.

Dire, overpowering the brain I shall speak out my oracles splendid.

Then in their ages of barren light or lucidity fruitful

Whenso the clear gods think they have conquered earth and its mortals,

Hidden God from all eyes, they shall wake from their dream and recoiling

Still they shall find in their paths the fallen and darkened Apollo."

So he spoke, repressing his dreadful might in his bosom,

And from their high seats passed, his soul august and resplendent

Page – 454