Волшебница Шалотт и другие стихотворения - [32]

The dragon, which our trembling fathers call’d

The God’s own son.

A tale, that told to me,

When but thine age, by age as winter-white

As mine is now, amazed, but made me yearn

For larger glimpses of that more than man

Which rolls the heavens, and lifts, and lays the deep,

Yet loves and hates with mortal hates and loves,

And moves unseen among the ways of men.

Then, in my wanderings all the lands that lie

Subjected to the Heliconian ridge

Have heard this footstep fall, altho’ my wont

Was more to scale the highest of the heights

With some strange hope to see the nearer God.

One naked peak — the sister of the sun

Would climb from out the dark, and linger there

To silver all the valleys with her shafts —

There once, but long ago, five-fold thy term

Of years, I lay; the winds were dead for heat;

The noonday crag made the hand bum; and sick

For shadow - not one bush was near — I rose

Following a torrent till its myriad falls

Found silence in the hollows underneath.

There in a secret olive-glade I saw

Pallas Athene climbing from the bath

In anger; yet one glittering foot disturb’d

The lucid well; one snowy knee was prest

Against the margin flowers; a dreadful light

Came from her golden hair, her golden helm

And all her golden armour on the grass,

And from her virgin breast, and virgin eyes

Remaining fixt on mine, till mine grew dark

For ever, and I heard a voice that said

‘Henceforth be blind, for thou hast seen too much,

And speak the truth that no man may believe.’

Son, in the hidden world of sight, that lives

Behind this darkness, I behold her still,

Beyond all work of those who carve the stone,

Beyond all dreams of Godlike womanhood,

Ineffable beauty, out of whom, at a glance,

And as it were, perforce, upon me flash’d

The power of prophesying - but to me

No power - so chain’d and coupled with the curse

Of blindness and their unbelief, who heard

And heard not, when I spake of famine, plague,

Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood, thunderbolt,

And angers of the Gods for evil done

And expiation lack’d — no power on Fate,

Theirs, or mine own! for when the crowd would roar

For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,

To cast wise words among the multitude

Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours

Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain

Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke

Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb

The madness of our cities and their kings.

Who ever turn’d upon his heel to hear

My warning that the tyranny of one

Was prelude to the tyranny of all?

My counsel that the tyranny of all

Led backward to the tyranny of one?

This power hath work’d no good to aught that lives,

And these blind hands were useless in their wars.

О therefore that the unfulfill’d desire,

The grief for ever born from griefs to be,

The boundless yearning of the Prophet’s heart —

Could that stand forth, and like a statue, rear’d

To some great citizen, win all praise from all

Who past it, saying, ‘That was he!’

In vain!

Virtue must shape itself in deed, and those

Whom weakness or necessity have cramp’d

Within themselves, immerging, each, his urn

In his own well, draw solace as he may.

Menoeceus, thou hast eyes, and I can hear

Too plainly what full tides of onset sap

Our seven high gates, and what a weight of war

Rides on those ringing axles! jingle of bits,

Shouts, arrows, tramp of the hornfooted horse

That grind the glebe to powder! Stony showers

Of that ear-stunning hail of Ares crash

Along the sounding walls. Above, below,

Shock after shock, the song-built towers and gates

Reel, bruised and butted with the shuddering

War-thunder of iron rams; and from within

The city comes a murmur void of joy,

Lest she be taken captive — maidens, wives,

And mothers with their babblers of the dawn,

And oldest age in shadow from the night,

Falling about their shrines before their Gods,

And wailing ‘Save us.’

And they wail to thee!

These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine own,

See this, that only in thy virtue lies

The saving of our Thebes; for, yesternight,

To me, the great God Ares, whose one bliss

Is war, and human sacrifice — himself

Blood-red from battle, spear and helmet tipt

With stormy light as on a mast at sea,

Stood out before a darkness, crying ‘Thebes,

Thy Thebes shall fall and perish, for I loathe

The seed of Cadmus — yet if one of these

By his own hand - if one of these —’

My son,

No sound is breathed so potent to coerce,

And to conciliate, as their names who dare

For that sweet mother land which gave them birth

Nobly to do, nobly to die. Their names,

Graven on memorial columns, are a song

Heard in the future; few, but more than wall

And rampart, their examples reach a hand

Far thro’ all years, and everywhere they meet

And kindle generous purpose, and the strength

To mould it into action pure as theirs.

Fairer thy fate than mine, if life’s best end

Be to end well! and thou refusing this,

Unvenerable will thy memory be

While men shall move the lips: but if thou dare —

Thou, one of these, the race of Cadmus — then

No stone is fitted in yon marble girth

Whose echo shall not tongue thy glorious doom,

Nor in this pavement but shall ring thy name