NINTH STAVE

Now Dawn came weeping forth, and on the crest

Of Ida faced a chill wind from the West.

Forth from the gray sea wrack-laden it blew

And howled among the towers, and stronger grew

As crept unseen the sun his path of light.

Then she who in the temple all that night

Had kept her rueful watch, the prophetess

Kassandra, peering sharply, heard the press

And rush of flight above her, and with sick

Foreboding waited; and the air grew thick

With flying shapes immortal overhead.

As in late Autumn, when the leaves are shed

And dismal flit about the empty ways,

And country folk provide against dark days,

And heap the woodstack, and their stores repair,

Attent you know the quickening of the air,

And closer yet the swish and sweep and swing

Of wings innumerable, emulous to bring

The birds to broader skies and kindlier sun,

And know indeed that winter is begun —

So seeing first, then hearing, she knew the hour

Was come when Troy must fall, and not a tower

Be left to front the morrow. And she covered

Her head and mourned, while one by one they hovered

Above their shrines, then flockt and faced the dawn.

First, in her car of shell and amber, drawn

By clustering doves with burnisht wings, a-throng,

Passes Queen Aphrodité, and her song

Is sweet and sharp: “I gave my sacred zone

To warm thy bosom, Helen which by none

That live by labour and in tears are born

And sighing go their ways, has e'er been worn.

It kindled in thine eyes the lovelight, showed

Thy burning self in his. Thy body glowed

With beauty like to mine: mine thy love-laughter

Thy cooing in the night, thy deep sleep after,

Thy rapture of the morning, love renewed;

And all the shadowed day to sit and brood

On what has been and what should be again:

Thou wilt not? Nay, I proffer not in vain

My gifts, for I am all or will be nought.

Lo, where I am can be no other thought.”

Thus to the wooded heights of Ida she

Was drawn, hid in that pearly galaxy

Of snow-white pigeons.

Next upon the height

Of Pergamos uplift a beam of light

That for its core enshrined a naked youth,

Golden and fierce. She knew the God sans ruth,

Him who had given woeful prescience to her,

Apollo, once her lover and her wooer;

Who stood as one stands glorying in his grace

And strength, full in the sun, though on her place

Within the temple court no sun at all

Shone, nor as yet upon the topmost wall

Was any tinge of him, but all showed gray

And sodden in the wind and blown sea-spray.

Not to him dared she lift her voice in prayer,

Nor scarce her eyes to see him.

To him there

Came swift a spirit in shape of virgin slim,

With snooded hair and kirtle belted trim,

Short to the knee; and in her face the gale

Had blown bright sanguine colour. Free and hale

She was; and in her hand she held a bow

Unstrung, and o'er her shoulders there did go

A baldrick that made sharp the cleft betwixt

Her sudden breasts — to that a quiver fixt,

Showing gold arrow-points. No God there is

In Heaven more swift than Delian Artemis,

The young, the pure health-giver of the Earth,

Who loveth all things born, and brings to birth,

And after slays with merciful sudden death —

In whom is gladness all and wholesome breath,

And to whom all the praise of him who writes,

Ever.

These two she saw like meteorites

Flare down the wind and burn afar, then fade.

And Leto next, a mother grave and staid,

Drave out her chariot, which two winged stags drew,

Swift following, robed in gown of inky blue,

And hooded; and her hand which held the hood

Gleamed like a patch of snow left in a wood

Where hyacinths bring down to earth the sky.

And in her wake a winging company,

Dense as the cloud of gulls which from a rock

At sea lifts up in myriads, if the knock

Of oars assail their peace, she saw, and mourned

The household gods. For outward they too turned,

The spirits of the streams and water-brooks,

And nymphs who haunt the pastures, or in nooks

Of woodlands dwell. There like a lag of geese

Flew in long straying lines the Oreades

That in wild dunes and commons have their haunt;

There sped the Hamadryads; there aslant,

As from the sea, but wheeling ere they crost

Their sisters, thronged the river-nymphs, a host;

And now the Gods of homestead and the hearth,

Like sad-faced mourning women, left the garth

Where each had dwelt since Troy was stablishéd,

And been the holy influence over bed

And board and daily work under the sun

And nightlong slumber when day's work was done:

They rose, and like a driven mist of rain

Forsook the doomed high city and the plain,

And drifted eastaway; and as they went

Heaviness spread o'er Ilios like a tent,

And past not off, but brooded all day long.

But ever coursed new spirits to the throng

That packt the ways of Heaven. From the plain,

From mere and holt and hollow rose amain

The haunters of the silence; from the streams

And wells of water, from the country demes,

From plough and pasture, bottom, ridge and crest

The rustic Gods rose up and joined the rest.

Like a long wisp of cloud from out his banks

Streamed Xanthos, that swift river, to the ranks

Of flying shapes; and driven by that same mind

That urged him to it came Simoeis behind,

And other Gods and other, of stream and tree

And hill and vale — for nothing there can be

On earth or under Heaven, but hath in it

Essence whereby alone its form may hit

Our apprehension, channelled in the sense

Which feedeth us, that we through vision dense

See Gods as trees walking, or in the wind

That singeth in the bents guess what's behind

Its wailing music.

And now the unearthly flock,

Emptying every water, wood, bare rock

And pasture, beset Ida, and their wings

Beat o'er the forest which about her springs

And makes a sea of verdure, whence she lifts

Her soaring peaks to bathe them in the drifts

Of cloud, and rare reveal them unto men —

For Zeus there hath his dwelling, out of ken

Of men alike and gods. But now the brows,

The breasting summits, still eternal snows,

And all the faces of the mountain held

A concourse like in number to the field

Of Heaven upon some breathless summer night

Printed with myriad stars, some burning bright,

Some massed in galaxy, a cloudy scar,

And others faint, as infinitely far.

There rankt the Gods of Heaven, Earth, and Sea,

Brethren of them now hastening from the fee

Of stricken Priam. Out of his deep cloud

Zeus flamed his levin, and his thunder loud

Volleyed his welcome. With uplifted hands

Acclaiming, God's oncoming each God stands

To greet. And thus the Hierarchy at one

Sits to behold the bitter business done

Which Paris by his luxury bestirred.

But in the city, like a stricken bird

Grieving her desolation and despair,

As voiceless and as lustreless, astare

For imminent Death, Kassandra croucht beneath

Her very doom, herself the bride of Death;

For in the temple's forecourt reared the mass

Of that which was to bring the woe to pass,

And hidden in him both her murderers

Wrung at their nails.

And slow the long day wears

While all the city broods. The chiefs keep house,

Or gather on the wall, or make carouse

To simulate a freedom they feel not;

And at street corners men in shift or plot

Whisper together, or in the market-place

Gather, and peer each other in the face

Furtively, seeking comfort against care;

Whose eyes, meeting by chance, shift otherwhere

In haste. But in the houses, behind doors

Shuttered and barred, the women scrub their floors,

Or ply their looms as busily: for they

Ever cure care with care, and if a day

Be heavy lighten it with heavier task;

And for their griefs wear beauty like a mask,

And answer heart's presaging with a song

On their brave lips, and render right for wrong.

Little, by outward seeming, do they know

Of doom at hand, of fate or blood or woe,

Nor how their children, playing by their knees,

Must end this day of busyness-at-ease

In shrieking night, with clamour for their bread,

And a red bath, and a cold stone for a bed

Under the staring moon.

Now sinks the sun

Blood-red into the heavy sea and dun,

And forth from him, as he were stuck with swords,

Great streams of light go upward. Then the lords

Of havoc and unrest prepare their storms,

And o'er the silent city, vulture forms —

Eris and Enyo, Alké, Ioké,

The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey —

Hover and light on pinnacle and tower:

The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour

When Haro be the wail. And down the sky

Like a white squall flung Até with a cry

That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds,

As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds

Surging together, blotted out the sea,

The beachéd ships, the plain with mound and tree,

And slantwise came the sheeted rain, and fast

The darkness settled in. Kassandra cast

Her mantle o'er her head, and with slow feet

Entered her shrine deserted, there to greet

Her fate when it should come; and merciful Sleep

Befriended her.

Now from his lair did creep

Odysseus forth unarmed, his sword and spear

There in the Horse, and warily to peer

And spy his whereabouts the Ithacan

Went doubtful. Then his dreadful work began,

As down the bare way of steep Pergamos

Under the dark he sought for Paris’ house.