At The Fall Of An Age

(The story of Achilles rising from the dead for love of Helen

is well enough known. That of Polyxo's vengeance may be less

familiar; it can be found in Pausanias' "Description of Greece,"

explaining the Rhodian worship of Helen as Dendritis, the treegoddess.)

The scene is the fore-court of a noble dwelling on the island of

Rhodes. Portico of the house, with steps of heavy stone and

painted wooden columns, but all worn and old. Black pine-forest

on the hill behind. One great pine stands to the left of the steps,

near the house-wall; it is old, with contorted boughs, one of

which overhangs the steps. The time is nearly twenty years after

the fall of Troy.

Enter a shepherd and his little son, the shepherd leading a reluctant

lamb by a noosed thong. They come from the right

foreground, and go toward the left.

THE SHEPHERD  The gods get hungry like you and me, so it has to die.

THE BOY  But you called her mine; you promised that I might

rear her. Oh father.

THE SHEPHERD  I can't help that. You have a shepherd's eye and

you chose the perfect one. We eat the runts and the lame,

the gods want perfection; the run of the season, that is

neither poor nor perfect, is for wool and breeding. Choose again.

THE BOY  Only to lose again.

A man comes in running, from the left.

THE SHEPHERD  Hey, Fisherman?

THE FISHERMAN  (breathless) You had better fetch in your flock,

and tell cowboy. Pirates I think.

THE SHEPHERD  What, what, what?

THE FISHERMAN  Ohey, the house! Who is at the door? A ship

has landed.

THE PORTER  Who's there? A ship?

THE FISHERMAN  Armed men coming ashore from a black ship.

I left Calcho watching.

The porter turns in the doorway. Shouting is heard from

'within the house. The shepherd and boy scurry away out of

sight, tugging the lamb.

THE PORTER What kind of a ship?

THE FISHERMAN  (breathless) Akh. Akh. The kind that people sail in.

A few men with spears or pikes begin to come down between

the columns; one is adjusting a leather helmet, another struggles

clumsily with his shield.

Calcho comes in from the left. He is a fisherman too, and carries

the trident fish-spear of his trade.

THE FIRST FISHERMAN  Oh, here is Calcho. Didn't they catch you?

THE PORTER  Where are they, Calcho? Raiding the pasture?

Speak, man.

CALCHO  They are coming quietly up the path.

The spearmen begin to form across the courtyard, at the foot

of the steps. The first fisherman edges around behind them.

THE PORTER  What? Armed men? (turning) My lady . . .

He moves to the side, to stand by one of the columns. Polyxo,

the lady of the house, comes to the head of the steps, and

speaks across the spearheads below her.

POLYXO  Tell me what you have seen, Calcho.

CALCHO  We dare not launch; the west is too full of wind; we

drop our lines from the rock. I heard oars groaning;

That long black ship glided below us like a dream and came in

and landed. These are some great lord's men;

I watched when they leaped the strake. They have fierce obedient

faces; their life is outside them; they would do anything

Without winking. As for the woman with them . . .

POLYXO  A woman?

CALCHO  For whom they laid the plank to the strand;

I watched and her beauty was like the thoughts of God, burning

and calm.

POLYXO  We knew one like that:

Gold and fire and ivory; King Menelaus his adulterous wife: that

Helen, for whose lawless luxury

Ten thousand died; the lord of my love and of this island among

them . . . for a wanton. If this were that fountain

Of death! We've prayed for it; did the men speak like Spartans?

I dream too much.

CALCHO  Not a word.

He looks behind him, and joins the defenders of the house,

holding his trident as they hold their pikes. The strangers

come in, masked identically, moving like one machine. The

woman with them might be either their captive or their

queen; a fold of her cloak is drawn over her face.

POLYXO  Who are you, strangers? It is peace I think?

The woman drops her cloak from her face and head; the hair

is golden and the face ivory. An exclamation like a sigh of

wonder is heard among Polyxo's people.

HELEN  Peace and love, dear.

POLYXO  (shuddering) Ah. Yes. Your face, Helen,

Has been much in my dreams. . . . My eyes are too old to see

only the beauty among the tricks of the world.

What are these warriors?

HELEN  I’ll tell you that in the house, when you

are kind. Do you remember, Polyxo,

A day in spring, you and I were laughing together beside the

flooded Eurotas? I garlanded

Your dear dark head with flowers before we bathed together,

parting the green reeds of the bank.

Our skies were clear and no grief had come; you were my guest then.

Now I am yours.

The household spearmen have moved to right and left of the

steps at the word "peace" so that the space between the two

women is cleared; Polyxo standing at the head of the steps and

Helen in front of her guard.

POLYXO  Grief has come; and that day is dead. ... A man was

here last year from Laconia

Passing to Egypt, who boasted that neither time nor grief nor

weariness touched Helen's face. We judged him A liar.

HELEN  You find me much changed, Polyxo.

POLYXO  Changed? A woman

who has been a wild cause of misery and death

Will surely be pale with repentance; a woman famously unfaithful,

surely purple with shame; a woman

Pursued by the ghosts of slaughtered men and a screaming city-could

hardly escape marking I think:

The cheeks furrowed, and the eyes a haggard stare between the

red eyelids . . . Nothing nothing nothing

Not a line, not a mark. You have wandered through life uncaring,

untouched, heartless, unmarked, and all your wickedness

Is like a song.

HELEN  Must I not love you any more, once my dear friend?

POLYXO  Whilst I ... Oh, your beauty is pure,

Young and burning and holy; you are not changed from the

bride Menelaus unveiled or the young wife

The long soft eyes of Paris lustfully lingered on; whilst I look at me.

She uncovers her head, throwing down the Tynan headdress;

her thin gray-white hair, corded throat and wrinkled cheeks are seen.

It was no trick of mine

That drew ten thousand down to black death and burnt the chief

towers of Asia. But you the gods have made

To look pure forever. The gods do strangely.

Perhaps . . . they leave justice to men.

HELEN  They are in their cloud;

we know too little about them. We know

They love and surely reward the hospitable house. May I go

into your house, Polyxo? I am homeless.

We have come far; weary are the waves.

POLYXO  Not yet. I am thinking

what gift ... Is Menelaus behind you

Baying on the trail? He will find it hard perhaps to raise the Greek

princes a second time.

HELEN  My lord

Grew old, and has left me, in the aging world. Carved stones contain

him, with all the careful honors of death,

In high Therapnse.

POLYXO  Well old. Some have died

Young. You are all alone then? If any evil-disposed or remembering

person should do you hurt,

No husband would come, nor no fierce lover, to find the quarrel

and avenge you? It is bitter to be left alone.

I have learned that.

HELEN  Very bitter. Worse to be exiled. Old friends

I see begin to regard you

Strangely and coldly; they let you stand at the door.

POLYXO  I have not only myself to think of, but all

This island people. You come questionably. Tell me who exiled

you, for what new . . . we'll not say crime: the . . .

Adventures of one so immortally beautiful must not be called . . .

HELEN  Call them, Oh my lost friend, by any

Bleak shameful name that your heart can bear, but not me beautiful.

That name is my hill of miseries. Many

Women are beautiful; and some have peace; and a few are happy.

I am exiled indeed, but for no crime.

The sons of Menelaus by that other woman have always hated me.

They inherit the kingdom, and I

Am exiled.

POLYXO  Not without reason; they would give the people a reason.

HELEN  I am not here to be judged. A storm

That struck Therapnae, and the living dead, perhaps had frightened

them.

POLYXO  What is this? You shall tell me all the story

Before you come in my door.

HELEN  (turning to her guardsmen)

Servants of Achilles: you see that

friendship is a fading and fragile hope

Among the living. With you in the high sepulchres

It stands, if anything does. Oh soldiers, where will you take me, to

what refuge, if I refuse

To humble myself before this woman, but turn and shake off the

eyes of Rhodes and enter the ship,

Where will you sail to?

THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD  Queen: to the mound on the Asian

foreland. You know our condition: that we have no home

But the high, holy and quiet sepulchre. A ship is made to sail

home; we shall hasten home.

HELEN  (shuddering) Ah, Ah.

I knew that!

THE CAPTAIN  The west wind still wildly blows.

HELEN  Oh soldiers: you

know that Achilles your master loved me. Look north;

You can see from here like a blue shadow on the raging sea

Ancient Crete, and the snows of Cretan Mount Ida; take me there

and leave me; leave me on the sand

Like a beggar woman, and hasten home.

THE CAPTAIN  We must not beach the

black prow again, we must hasten home.

HELEN

To the burial-hill. To the wailing Trojan ghosts. To dust and

ashes. (She turns toward the house.) I will contrive to be

humble.

Polyxo:  I am the woman

Whom Theseus loved, and high-born Menelaus, and beautiful-throated

Paris, and Deiphobus,

And one greater than these more terribly, whom I shall name. I

would rather have been a shepherd's daughter

To run barefoot and milk the mountain ewes, and pat the curd

into cheeses.

POLYXO  Far better for you;

Or else to be strangled at birth.

HELEN Yet I remember the good gray

elders of Troy, having seen their sons

For my sake slain, and knowing me the poison in the city's heartyet

when they passed me, walking like kings,

They would look at my face with love, they never reproached

me. I have memories of men doing nobly, to make me patient

In the day of humiliation.

(She stands in silence, struggling 'with her pride, 'while Polyxo

bitterly 'watches. Helen continues

But Achilles,

Violent and fierce, whom nothing could bind: for while he lived

he dared affront Agamemnon the king,

And had no reverence for beautiful human flesh, but pierced the

shining feet of Hector slain

And dragged him about and about the city at the chariot's tail,

defiling the beautiful heroic body;

But after he was dead he opposed

The purpose of God. . . . He said my remembered face tormented

him, he had no reverence but lusted for me,

In his life he had never known me, in his death he lusted. He

wrestled with Death in the shut darkness; he broke

The mighty wrists and the mound of burial. He stood on the

broken head of the mound and shouted to his men,

Whose graves pit the wide plain. They had never failed to obey

him, they heard and rose. All the fierce Myrmidons,

Dark faces and fire in the hollow eye-sockets and earth-matted

hair; staring they stood. These men here

Are of those that stood up.

(Movement of Polyxo's people. They retreat a little, but a

line of the best draws across the foot of the steps again, so that

Polyxo is seen again above spearheads. She herself shows fear,

but says

POLYXO  Go on. Tell it all. Whatever I resolve

to do will not be shaken

By the lies of the poets you listen to in idle Sparta

Or lonely Therapnse in the long evenings.

HELEN  I would to God it

were lies. Why do you hate me, Polyxo?

POLYXO  Tell your tale.

HELEN  I cannot. I will not. Soldiers:

Will you not speak?

THE MYRMIDONS  (clashing their shields, and making a heavy

pacing dance, as of bronze puppets; but I think only the

leader speaks.)

We that broke the walls

And tore open the citadel of Asia,

And the holy city of Priam like a gored ship

Foundered in the roaring seas of our blood:

We have sacked the empire of Death also.

They planted strange seed in Asia who buried Achilles.

The earth had received us and we broke the earth;

The hands of God were upon us to hold us under;

We broke the fingers of God and Fate;

They planted wild seed in Asia who buried Achilles.

When we camped in the dead

Metropolis, we dead, there was nothing living but a wolf and a dog;

The very swallows were burnt

That used to twitter in the eaves of Troy.

Where Priam and the silken processions

Went delicately

By the great hewn stones; in the morning

We pissed on the stones and knew that we dead lived,

And went south from there

Fasting, until we came to a town and killed it.

Punic ships lay on the shore.

They planted strange seed in Asia who buried Achilles.

Oh high blue water

And whirling currents in the lee of islands,

Purple nights and blue days,

Were you not pierced, were you not trampled?

Bear witness how his great heart burned you,

Toward this woman he burned.

HELEN

Stand farther, soldiers. I cannot bear. . . . Oh Polyxo, save me.

Though love is dead and friendship forgotten,

The living should guard the living, and a woman ought to have

pity on a woman . . .

THE MYRMIDONS  We beached at sundown

And struck in the night, in the gathered storm.

King Menelaus said "What are these?"

And the spear-point was at his beard.

"Dorian barbarians?"

Look under the torches, Oh King, that flare in the wind in the gates,

Look under the torches.

The Dorians have yellow hair; ours is earth-dark.

The Dorians have black iron helmets, ours are green bronze.

They planted strange seed in Asia who buried Achilles.

HELEN

Be silent, be silent! It is all true. There was only a little guard at

Therapnac. Our troops were north

On the borders, in the doors of the north. They took the high

house and held Therapnae. The storm raged, and the thunder

Shook the towers, while Achilles possessed me. It is true: he

came and possessed me. His body was not like death-

Only his eyes.

THE MYRMIDONS  We were the door-holders.

Our master went in and laid off his armor, and the queen of

Laconia

Screamed once, and then sweetly smiled.

The wild male power of the world

Was mated with the perfect beauty.

While Menelaus outside the gate

Howled like a dog in the violet lightnings in the gaps of night

For spears, but all his were fleeing to the mountain.

And the Gods came down against us and we held the doors.

HELEN

You are not a rock but a woman: let me go in, let me go in!

From public shame, and this furnace of eyes.

POLYXO  Menelaus died?

HELEN  Not that night.

He did die, Of old age, the next day. ... I was compelled, undefended.

POLYXO  We are not

blind, we can see you are beautiful

Enough to have stung the body of a violent man in the very

ashes. But I am a woman, and not

A loving woman. Tell me, you dead and stationed soldiers, where

is your master, this woman's lover?

I desire not to offend him by ... any act toward this woman,

if she is still claimed. We have no force

In our pastoral island to oppose the power

That humbled warlike Therapnae bristling with spears.

THE LEADER OF THE MYRMIDONS  YOU hide

a knife in your mind, but not too darkly

For eyes that have looked through hollow death, and are whetted

and disillusioned, nor too dreadful. We are charged

To keep this woman whom our lord has enjoyed intact of any

less lover until she dies.

When she dies we may hasten home.

HELEN  Will you plot against me

before my face? And vainly. I can pity delusion

Even in dead men; whatever it is you would sell, she will not

buy. My friend has grown cold, but not

Wicked; not monstrous; one can see that without looking

through hollow death. ... As to Achilles,

I will tell you, Polyxo. He went away from Therapnae in the

stormy dawn, gathering his men,

Only detaching these few to guard me. He returned to the

ships; and one had been burned, he took one of ours;

And sailed away to fetch west for the island Leuke, that white

Atlantic splendor in the waves, to find there

The peace, he said, that even the most beautiful woman never

can give. For there one is free of death's

Dreams as of life's. He will never return. I tell you because I

trust you.

POLYXO  That is true. Whatever you've done,

Your blood is noble. The free-born

Trust gayly where a slave trembles. I have determined what

I will do.

HELEN  Why are you trembling, Polyxo?

POLYXO

We are not accustomed to seeing the dead land on this island.

Come into the house. Come in. Let Helen

Pass, but not those bronze corpses.

THE LEADER OF THE MYRMIDONS  We deliver her to you.

A VOICE AMONG POLYXO's MEN  Oh beautiful

woman trust her not!

POLYXO  Who spoke?

HELEN

I will go in without fear, although I think that you hate me for

some reason. I'd not seek shelter

In a house of cold welcome, but choice has been taken from me.

The ship I came from goes home to black

And quiet death. One endures a cold welcome liefer than death;

I will lay down all pride

And like a suppliant go in. But why do you tremble, Polyxo?

POLYXO  Surely with

eagerness. My house is honored.

Helen approaches the steps, and the spears part to let her

pass. Calcho leans from among the spears and 'whispers as

she passes in.

CALCHO

Beautiful woman turn back. Look: her pressed lips mean evil.

HELEN  Thank you, fisherman.

POLYXO  What did that man

Whisper across the trident?

HELEN  Why, nothing, dear. He would bring

me a speckled sea-trout or a great lamprey.

He thinks I am used to kindness. Oh, why do you tremble so?

POLYXO  The chill at

sundown. Time brings all things.

They go into the house.

CALCHO  Evil is planned. Shall we let the most beautiful woman

in the world fall into a trap, while we stand idle?

ONE OF THE MEN  Well, it's a pity . . .

ANOTHER  You think our lady lays traps because she had you

whipped once; but well you deserved it.

THE MYRMIDONS

Is there any stir in the house?

Listen: or a cry?

Farm-boys with spears, you sparrows

Playing hawk, be silent.

Splendid was life

In the time of the heroes, the sun went helmeted, the moon was maiden,

When glory gathered on Troy, the picketed horses

Neighed in the morning, and long live ships

Ran on the wave like eagle-shadows on the slopes of mountains.

Then men were equal to things, the earth was beautiful, the

crests of heroes

Waved as tall as the trees.

Now all is decayed, all corrupted, all gone down.

Men move like mice under the shadows of trees,

And the shadows of the tall dead.

The brightness of fire is dulled,

The heroes are gone.

In naked shame Agamemnon

Died of a woman.

The sun is crusted and the moon tarnished,

And Achilles has chosen peace.

Tell me, you island spearmen, you plowboy warriors,

Has anyone cried out in the dark door?

Not yet. The earth darkens.

Slate gray twilight has come; but later a high cloud catching

light fills the scene with a confusing red radiance.

At the fall of an age men must make sacrifice

To renew beauty, to restore strength.

We say that if the perfect beauty were sacrificed,

The very beauty that makes our death-cleansed eyes

Dazzle with tears, would be spread on the sky

And earth like a banner.

All men would begin to desire again, and value

Come back to the earth, and splendor walk there.

There is one perfection to be poured out, one lonely beauty

Left in the world, as lonely as the last eagle.

Has anyone groaned in the house? There it sounds.

A sharp clear broken-off cry like a snapped arrow.

CALCHO

Dead wolves, will her death feed you?

THE MYRMIDONS  Our trade was death.

And now we have known it, it is nothing evil.

CALCHO  Can we endure this?

He and a few others are going up the steps, when Polyxo

comes out and stands above.

POLYXO  Clear the stones.

Armed men are at her side; Calcho and his few -followers

return down.

POLYXO  You need not press in, you shall see all. I have caught

the panther.

Oh men of Rhodes, we sometimes exclaim against the great gods,

when the guilty seem to flourish, and the innocent

Fall unavenged. We are always rebuked at last. A murderer may

flee to Caucasus but the broad eyes

Hardly turn and behold him constantly, and see the knife

whetting or the noose hanging, in the very gorge

He runs to hide in, under the snow-shining walls and towers of

the world. Do you remember my lord

Tlepolemus, the husband of my soul and my body? I have caught

his murderer. Numberless thousands have died

By the war-making act of this one woman, the powers of Greece

and the house of Priam; they are not perfectly

Important to us here enisled, but Righteousness counted them;

and while I avenge Tlepolemus the gods are here

Avenging all. I have two black men I bought from Egypt, whose

minds are not made like ours, they feel

No shudder where a Greek would flinch; I bid them lead forth

the murderess, so stripped and shamed as men who were

stricken

On the plain by Troy ... as Tlepolemus . . .

Ah Ah ... was robbed

Of the hacked and dinted armor ... all ... that corselet I

gave him: in the days when I was able to weep,

And prayed it keep safe his breast; the Greeks retreated from his

body fallen in the dust, and grooms and foot-soldiers

Despoiled and stripped him, and left him naked under the glaring

lion of heaven and the Trojan eyes,

White flower in the foul dust, the body I had held in my arms,

the flesh that my mouth had clung to. ... Shall I not

Shame this dead woman? . . . Come.

Helen is led by slaves from the door, her hands bound behind

her back. The confusing red twilight somewhat veils her

nakedness. Her head is held high, and the eyes clear, though

she struggles against the bonds, breathing hard through

parted lips. Her yellow hair is disordered, and hangs like a

heavy fleece on one shoulder.

HELEN  (straining at the cords) Are you the stronger? Yet

wretched to the end of time:

Contempt and a hissing: whilst I overcome by treachery am

more than equal to all that may hurt me.

POLYXO  Here

Is what made war. Look at it, because it will not be beautiful

to-morrow. No warriors will quarrel for it.

No one will cut through death to come to it. Now, now, I say,

the old aching hatred, the very bitterness

That fouled my wine with aloes and stained my meat with spilt

gall, morning and evening all the empty years,

Is turned sweet; it is better to taste than honey; it smells more

lovely than myrrh and frankincense

Hot from the south. You caught panther!

I am glad that you were a queen in haughty Therapnae; it will

be harder to die; I am glad you are beautiful

Beyond fault, beyond nature: the ridiculous ugliness of death

and corruption look the more dreadful to you;

I am glad you had many lovers, you will lie alone; I am glad time

could not touch you nor age deflower you,

That your beauty is like the African crystal no point can scratch,

unwoundable, uncontaminable;

For what comes now shall very suddenly unpolish it. Ah, Ah, Ah,

I am sick with delight. Call the black ravens, you beautiful

woman.

Oh Helen, black crows and heavy-beaked ravens to be your

lovers, to kiss your eyes. Call the mountains

Of Asia to look at you.

HELEN  Rhodians: your mistress you see has

gone mad, you must prevent her not for my sake,

For your own honor from making this place forever abominable.

POLYXO  (to a slave) Cast the rope over that branch.

I shall sleep sound at last, who have lain year after year tortured

remembering. To-morrow, coming

From the door at dawn, I shall see my enemy's face puffed

purple and her breasts blackening, and the dragged neck

Not like a dove's, and those fine white feet

Perhaps all shrivelled, perhaps all swollen, who knows? God,

who sent her here, knows. Why do you wait?

Fling the coil, slave, keep the noose in your hands. Hup! A good

cast. I shall not sleep, but call

Torches, and feast all night.

HELEN  I see my dark shameful death. Hear

me, Rhodians . . .

POLYXO  Let her speak, haltered.

The slave makes to hang the noose on her neck, but when

she looks at him he stands back in awe of her.

VOICES AMONG THE PEOPLE

We cannot suffer this. Oh Oh Oh.

Spear the black men, hang up the old woman.

Pikes and fire, ah? Like spitted pigs. We dare.

They move toward the steps.

POLYXO

I thought that you herd of dogs and peasants . . . Here, the

guard. Peasants: here are the men

Who fought at Troy, men to be trusted, my house garrison.

Fully armed soldiers, old men but dangerous, move mechanically

in two files from the door, right and left of the group

formed by POLYXO and HELEN and the slaves, and make a

fence of spears at the foot of the steps. They are masked with

identical faces of old grim 'warriors; between them and the

Myrmidons the island militia, seethe like a rabble.

POLYXO  Rabble, you

know your boundary: the soldiers

Of Tlepolemus. Few, but enough. These will not lust for a harlot.

These are the men that saw

The gods fighting, when the rivers of the plain flowed fire and

the earth roared like water. . . . Veterans of Troy:

It is mine to avenge your labor and pain and your leader's death;

it is yours to keep those plowboys in awe

And herd those herdsmen.

THE MYRMIDONS

Old men you ought to have died

In your good years, not wearily

Gone home to rust.

If you had died and revived again

Your hair would not be snowed under but brown as ours,

And your eyes as fierce.

POLYXO  (to the slave) I said, halter that woman. Between the

dead and the living my hatred stands,

HELEN

Will you stand and let me be slain, you men of Rhodes?

POLYXO

What, is life sweet? Cry out. Weep publicly. Show all your

mind, make all your grief like your body naked.

Surely it is all as beautiful as your body, and I shall be merciful.

THE MYRMIDONS

It is beautiful to see men die by violence, but to watch a woman

Killed, is the crown. Oh Queen, die boldly.

HELEN  I pray you on my knees, Polyxo.

Life is too dear to be spent on pride. I am not afraid, but I love

life.

POLYXO  I tell you, kneeling's

Not half enough. You must act fear, if you feel none. Plead,

scream.

Helen stands again, and 'wrenches at the cords, twisting her

body.

THE MYRMIDONS  (coming nearer the house, pressing on the demoralized

crowd)

Queen, life and death are no better than the two ears of a carrion-

Battening dog; there is nothing to choose.

We know them both, and their beauty is beyond them, their

beauty is the value,

As yours is your beauty. We also were sacrificed.

HELEN

Dead wolves, fight for me. Save me. You could blow down this

brittle stubble of Rhodian spears like summer

Fire in the stubble. Flash your fangs, wolves. Fight, you bronze

wolves. For I have the seed of Achilles in me.

For your lord, for your leader's blood, not for me make war.

THE MYRMIDONS

Beautiful blossoms of battle again and forever unfolding

Star the earth, but we dropped petals of one

Shall endure peace, not even to behold them again nor to hear them,

In the quiet places, in enormous neutrality.

Oh perfectly beautiful, pain is brief, endure to be sacrificed.

This great age falls like water and a new

Age is at birth, but without your pain it could never be beautiful.

The golden fleece of your hair, the straining

Shoulders, the dove-throat, the breasts thrust forward by the

strain of bonds,

Shall yield their beauty to the earth and sky,

The wonderful breasts their soul to all the flushed hills of earth,

The long white thighs to the marble mountains.

Mycenae is down in corruption but Athens will stand instead,

The Dorians will make Laconia a land of helots.

HELEN

Dogs, not wolves. Death-whipped dogs. Hear me, veterans

Of Rhodes, old valiant warmen that fought in Asia from the

wall I watched you. . . . No help, no help anywhere?

I am brought to bay here between the bony mercy of unmanned

old age and the eyeless pity of the dead.

Do you see this ebony tool of murder hangs the halter on my

throat, the strangling death?

POLYXO  Helen:

Speak quickly, for your end hastens.

HELEN  I will speak. I have lived

and seen the great beauty of things, and been loved and

honored.

If now I must die, it is come. Nothing on earth nor in ocean is

hatefuller than death; at least I have not

Wasted my life like this gray murderess, fouling with age, lying

twenty years in the pit of time

Grinding the rust on a knife.

POLYXO  Take for your portion agony and

shame. Sweep room there below, guardsmen.

Haul, slaves. May all that cause war, thus perish. ... It is dark;

torches, torches! People of Rhodes, we have caught

And hanged a panther. Pelt the white body with pine cones, pelt

it with clods.

While she is hanged, confused struggle in the brown twilight

between the old guardsmen and the people. The Myrmidons,

chanting in their pacing dance, take no part in it.

THE MYRMIDONS

Wild swan, splendid-bodied,

Silent at last, silent and proud, fly up the dark.

Clash bronze, beat shields, beauty is new-born.

It is not to be whispered in Argos that Helen died like a woman,

Nor told in Laconia that sickness killed her.

Strike swords, blade on blade, the daughter of God

Hangs like a lamp, high in the dark, quivering and white.

The breasts are thrust forward and the head bows, the fleece of gold

Shakes on the straining shoulders, writhes to the long white thighs.

When God looked down from heaven the mound in the Troad

Swarmed like an anthill, what spears are those?

Power that will pierce your people, God of the living,

The warrior-ants of the anthill, the spears from the dark barrow

. . .

Torches are being brought from the house.

Look under the torches, Oh King, that flare in the wind of night,

Look under the torches.

No Dorians are we; they planted strange seed in Asia who buried

Achilles,

Power to pierce death, helmeted heads cracking the grass-roots,

Power to be born again.

Come down and behold us Oh King of heaven and Oh hawks of

Caucasus

Come down and behold us,

You African lions in the tawny wilderness roar in the storm,

For our master is joined with the beauty he remembered in

death, with the splendor of the earth,

While the King of Laconia howls like a starved dog

In the rain, in the violet lightnings, in the gaps of night, and we

hold the gates.

Polyxo comes between torch-bearers to exult.

POLYXO

High violent wind let the tree stand, leave me my vengeance.

Slaves, hold the flaring torches up high;

I can see a hanging whiteness in the wind and smoke. She ought

to be hideous now? How beautiful she is.

Hair veils the face. Where is my triumph? I am very happy.

The high wind swings her slowly spinning

As if to show all her beauty. I did not wantonly, Oh beautiful

woman; my need compelled me. I have done

More than I dared; I have put my pain outside me; it is time to

exult. White mountains, ice-helmeted peaks

That wall the ends of the world, come here and behold my

triumph. Where is my triumph, has the wind snatched it?

There is no woman on earth so happy as I am, having slain my

pain: yet it seems that all present things

Slip away down hill, and I could weep for them.

CALCHO  (coming behind her in the darkness and confusion)

Old woman,

revenge is a slippery fish. This from Calcho.

He drives the trident into her side, and tries to escape. One

of the guard strikes him doivn. Polyxo has groaned and fallen

on the steps.

THE MYRMIDONS  (who have not ceased from their pacing dance)

Roar in the night, storm, like a lion, spare not the stars.

They have planted wild seed in the air who lifted God's

Daughter on high, wavering aloft, blessing the new

Age at birth with the beauty of her body . . .

POLYXO  (slowly, gasping)

Three spears? that fish-spear ah, ah, like a shark or tunny.

Drag . . . the points, black man, the barbed points, out.

Ah. Ah. Ah. No. Their claws catch in my entrails; her death was

kinder. What whiteness

Wavers up there over fires and anguish? Rhodes: I have no son . . .

THE MYRMIDONS  (turning and going back by the way they came)

All is accomplished. Islanders, gather the slain.

Seed has been planted in Asia, seed in Therapnae,

High in the dark, seed for the white eagles of dawn.

For us the black ship on the shore, for us the black waters, the black

Hollow of the mound. Heavily beat, bronze upon bronze.

Clash, bronze; beat, shields; beauty is new-born.

The flame is blown from the torches by the violent wind.