MOUNT IDA

Not cypress, but this warm pine-plumage now

Fragrant with sap, I pluck; nor bid you weep,

Ye Muses that still haunt the heavenly brow

Of Ida, though the ascent is hard and steep:

Weep not for him who left us wrapped in sleep

At dawn beneath the holy mountain's breast

And all alone from Ilion's gleaming shore

Clomb the high sea-ward glens, fain to drink deep

Of earth's old glory from your silent crest,

Take the cloud-conquering throne

Of gods, and gaze alone

Thro’ heaven. Darkling we slept who saw his face no more.

Ah yet, in him hath Lycidas a brother,

And Adonaïs will not say him nay,

And Thyrsis to the breast of one sweet Mother

Welcomes him, climbing by the self-same way:

Quietly as a cloud at break of day

Up the long glens of golden dew he stole

( And surely Bion called to him afar! )

The tearful hyacinths and the greenwood spray

Clinging to keep him from the sapphire goal,

Kept of his path no trace!

Upward the yearning face

Clomb the ethereal height, calm as the morning star.

Ah yet, incline, dear Sisters, or my song

That with the light wings of the skimming swallow

Must range the reedy slopes, will work him wrong!

And with some golden shaft do thou, Apollo,

Show the pine-shadowed path that none may follow;

For, as the blue air shuts behind a bird,

Round him closed Ida's cloudy woods and rills!

Day-long, night-long, by echoing height and hollow,

We called him, but our tumult died unheard:

Down from the scornful sky

Our faint wing-broken cry

Fluttered and perished among the many-folded hills.

Ay, though we clomb each faint-flushed peak of vision,

Nought but our own sad faces we divined:

Thy radiant way still laughed us to derision,

And still revengeful Echo proved unkind;

And oft our faithless hearts half feared to find

Thy cold corse in some dark mist-drenched ravine

Where the white foam flashed headlong to the sea:

How should we find thee, spirits deaf and blind

Even to the things which we had heard and seen?

Eyes that could see no more

The old light on sea and shore,

What should they hope or fear to find? They found not thee;

For thou wast ever alien to our skies,

A wistful stray of radiance on this earth,

A changeling with deep memories in thine eyes

Mistily gazing thro’ our loud-voiced mirth

To some fair land beyond the gates of birth;

Yet as a star thro’ clouds, thou still didst shed

Through our dark world thy lovelier, rarer glow;

Time, like a picture of but little worth,

Before thy young hand lifelessly outspread,

At one light stroke from thee

Gleamed with Eternity;

Thou gav'st the master's touch, and we — we did not know.

Not though we gazed from heaven o'er Ilion

Dreaming on earth below, mistily crowned

With towering memories, and beyond her shone

The wine-dark seas Achilles heard resound!

Only, and after many days, we found

Dabbled with dew, at border of a wood

Bedded in hyacinths, open and a-glow

Thy Homer's Iliad.... Dryad tears had drowned

The rough Greek type and, as with honey or blood,

One crocus with crushed gold

Stained the great page that told

Of gods that sighed their loves on Ida, long ago.

See — for a couch to their ambrosial limbs

Even as their golden load of splendour presses

The fragrant thyme, a billowing cloud up-swims

Of springing flowers beneath their deep caresses,

Hyacinth, lotus, crocus, wildernesses

Of bloom... but clouds of sunlight and of dew

Dropping rich balm, round the dark pine-woods curled

That the warm wonder of their in-woven tresses,

And all the secret blisses that they knew,

Where beauty kisses truth

In heaven's deep heart of youth,

Might still be hidden, as thou art, from the heartless world.

Even as we found thy book, below these rocks

Perchance that strange great eagle's feather lay,

When Ganymede, from feeding of his flocks

On Ida, vanished thro’ the morning grey:

Stranger it seemed, if thou couldst cast away

Those golden musics as a thing of nought,

A dream for which no longer thou hadst need!

Ah, was it here then that the break of day

Brought thee the substance for the shadow, taught

Thy soul a swifter road

To ease it of its load

And watch this world of shadows as a dream recede?

We slept! Darkling we slept! Our busy schemes,

Our cold mechanic world awhile was still;

But O, their eyes are blinded even in dreams

Who from the heavenlier Powers withdraw their will:

Here did the dawn with purer light fulfil

Thy happier eyes than ours, here didst thou see

The quivering wonder-light in flower and dew,

The quickening glory of the haunted hill,

The Hamadryad beckoning from the tree.

The Naiad from the stream;

While from her long dark dream

Earth woke, trembling with life, light, beauty, through and through.

And the everlasting miracle of things

Flowed round thee, and this dark earth opposed no bar,

And radiant faces from the flowers and springs

Dawned on thee, whispering, Knowest thou whence we are?

Faintly thou heardst us calling thee afar

As Hylas heard, swooning beneath the wave,

Girdled with glowing arms, while wood and glen

Echoed his name beneath that rosy star;

And thy farewell came faint as from the grave

For very bliss; but we

Could neither hear nor see;

And all the hill with Hylas! Hylas! rang again.

But there were deeper love-tales for thine ears

Than mellow-tongued Theocritus could tell:

Over him like a sea two thousand years

Had swept. They solemnized his music well!

Farewell! What word could answer but farewell,

From thee, O happy spirit, that couldst steal

So quietly from this world at break of day?

What voice of ours could break the silent spell

Beauty had cast upon thee, or reveal

The gates of sun and dew

Which oped and let thee through

And led thee heavenward by that deep enchanted way?

Yet here thou mad'st thy choice: Love, Wisdom, Power,

As once before young Paris, they stood here!

Beneath them Ida, like one full-blown flower,

Shed her bloom earthward thro’ the radiant air

Leaving her rounded fruit, their beauty, bare

To the everlasting dawn; and, in thy palm

The golden apple of the Hesperian isle

Which thou must only yield to the Most Fair;

But not to Juno's great luxurious calm,

Nor Dian's curved white moon,

Gav'st thou the sunset's boon,

Nor to foam-bosomed Aphrodite's rose-lipped smile.

Here didst thou make the eternal choice aright,

Here, in this hallowed haunt of nymph and faun,

They stood before thee in that great new light,

The three great splendours of the immortal dawn,

With all the cloudy veils of Time withdrawn

Or only glistening round the firm white snows

Of their pure beauty like the golden dew

Brushed from the feathery ferns below the lawn;

But not to cold Diana's morning rose,

Nor to great Juno's frown

Cast thou the apple down,

And, when the Paphian raised her lustrous eyes anew,

Thou from thy soul didst whisper — in that heaven

Which yearns beyond us! Lead me up the height!

How should the golden fruit to one be given

Till your three splendours in that Sun unite

Where each in each ye move like light in light?

How should I judge the rapture till I know

The pain? And like three waves of music there

They closed thee round, blinding thy blissful sight

With beauty and, like one roseate orb a-glow,

They bore thee on their breasts

Up the sun-smitten crests

And melted with thee smiling into the Most Fair.

Upward and onward, ever as ye went

The cities of the world nestled beneath

Closer, as if in love, round Ida, blent

With alien hills in one great bridal-wreath

Of dawn-flushed clouds; while, breathing with your breath

New heavens mixed with your mounting bliss. Deep eyes,

Beautiful eyes, imbrued with the world's tears

Dawned on you, beautiful gleams of Love and Death

Flowed thro’ your questioning with divine replies

From that ineffable height

Dark with excess of light

Where the Ever-living dies and the All-loving hears.

For thou hadst seen what tears upon man's face

Bled from the heart or burned from out the brain,

And not denied or cursed, but couldst embrace

Infinite sweetness in the heart of pain,

And heardst those universal choirs again

Wherein like waves of one harmonious sea

All our slight dreams of heaven are singing still,

And still the throned Olympians swell the strain,

And, hark, the burden, of all — Come unto Me!

Sky into deepening sky

Melts with that one great cry;

And the lost doves of Ida moan on Siloa's hill.

I gather all the ages in my song

And send them singing up the heights to thee!

Chord by æonian chord the stars prolong

Their passionate echoes to Eternity:

Earth wakes, and one orchestral symphony

Sweeps o'er the quivering harp-strings of mankind;

Grief modulates into heaven, hate drowns in love,

No strife now but of love in that great sea

Of song! I dream! I dream! Mine eyes grow blind:

Chords that I not command

Escape the fainting hand;

Tears fall. Thou canst not hear. Thou'rt still too far above.

Farewell! What word should answer but farewell

From thee, O happy spirit, whose clear gaze

Discerned the path — clear, but unsearchable —

Where Olivet sweetens, deepens, Ida's praise,

The path that strikes as thro’ a sunlit haze

Through Time to that clear reconciling height

Where our commingling gleams of godhead dwell;

Strikes thro’ the turmoil of our darkling days

To that great harmony where, like light in light,

Wisdom and Beauty still

Haunt the thrice-holy hill,

And Love, immortal Love... what answer but farewell?