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Ilion Bk-VIII
Drawn to the anguish of men and the fierce terrestrial labour. Down he dropped with a roar of light invading the regions, And in his fierce and burning spirit intense and uplifted Sure of his luminous truth and careless for weakness of mortals Flaming oppressed the earth with his dire intolerant beauty. Over the summits descending that slept in the silence of heaven, He through the spaces angrily drew towards the tramp and the shouting Over the speeding of Xanthus and over the pastures of Troya. Clang of his argent bow was the wrath restrained of the mighty, Stern was his pace like Fate’s; so he came to the warfare of mortals And behind Paris strong and inactive waited God’s moment Knowing what should arrive, nor disturbed like men by their hopings. But in the courts of Heaven Zeus to his brother immortal Turned like a menaced king on his counsellor smiling augustly: “Seest thou, Poseidon, this sign that great gods revolting have left us, Follow their hearts and strive with Ananke? Yet though they struggle, Thou and I will do our will with the world, O earth-shaker.” Answered to Zeus the besieger of earth, the voice of the waters: “This is our strength and our right, for we are the kings and the masters. Too much pity has been and yielding of Heaven to mortals. I will go down with my chariot drawn by my thunder-maned coursers Into the battle and thrust down Troy with my hand to the silence, Even though she cling round the snowy knees of our child Aphrodite Or with Apollo’s sun take refuge from Night and her shadows. I will not pity her pain, who am ruthless even as my surges. Brother, thou knowest, O Zeus, that I am a king and a trader; For on my paths I receive earth’s skill and her merchandise gather, Traffic richly in pearls and bear the swift ships on my bosom. Blue are my waves and they call men’s hearts to wealth and adventure. Lured by the shifting surges they launch their delight and their treasures Trusting the toil of years to the perilous moments of Ocean. Huge man’s soul in its petty frame goes wrestling with Nature Over her vasts and his fragile ships between my horizons Buffeting death in his solitudes labour through swell and through storm-blast Bound for each land with her sons and watched for by eyes in each haven. I from Tyre up to Gades trace on my billows their trade-routes And on my vast and spuming Atlantic suffer their rudders.
Page – 455 Carthage and Greece are my children, the marts of the world are my term-posts. Who then deserves the earth if not he who enriches and fosters? But thou hast favoured thy sons, O Zeus; O Hera, earth’s sceptres Still were denied me and kept for strong Ares and brilliant Apollo. Now all your will shall be done, so you give me the earth for my nations. Gold shall make men like gods and bind their thoughts into oneness; Peace I will build with gold and heaven with the pearls of my caverns.” Smiling replied to his brother’s craft the mighty Cronion: “Lord of the boundless seas, Poseidon, soul of the surges, Well thou knowest that earth shall be seized as a booth for the trader. Rome nor Greece nor France can drive back Carthage for ever. Always each birth of the silence attaining the field and the movement Takes from Time its reign; for it came for its throne and its godhead. So too shall Mammon take and his sons their hour from the ages. Yet is the flame and the dust last end of the silk and the iron, And at their end the king and the prophet shall govern the nations. Even as Troy, so shall Babylon flame up to heaven for the spoiler Wailed by the merchant afar as he sees the red glow from the ocean.” Up from the seats of the Mighty the Earth-shaker rose. His raiment Round him purple and dominant rippled and murmured and whispered, Whispered of argosies sunk and the pearls and the Nereids playing, Murmured of azure solitudes, sounded of storm and the death-wail. Even as the march of his waters so was the pace of the sea-god Flowing on endless through Time; with the glittering symbol of empire Crowned were his fatal brows; in his grasp was the wrath of the trident, Tripled force, life-shattering, brutal, imperial, sombre. Resonant, surging, vast in the pomp of his clamorous greatness Proud and victorious he came to his home in the far-spuming waters. Even as a soul from the heights of thought plunges back into living, So he plunged like a rock through the foam; for it falls from a mountain Overpeering the waves in some silence of desolate waters Left to the wind and the sea-gull where Ocean alone with the ages Dreams of the calm of the skies or tosses its spray to the wind-gods, Tosses for ever its foam in the solitude huge of its longings Far from the homes and the noises of men. So the dark-browed Poseidon Came to his coral halls and the sapphire stables of Nereus
Page – 456 Ever where champ their bits the harnessed steeds of the Ocean Watched by foam-white girls in the caverns of still Amphitrite. There was his chariot yoked by the Tritons, drawn by his coursers Born of the fleeing sea-spray and shod with the northwind who journey Black like the front of the storm and clothed with their manes as with thunder. This now rose from its depths to the upper tumults of Ocean Bearing the awful brows and the mighty form of the sea-god And from the roar of the surges fast o’er the giant margin Came remembering the storm and the swiftness wide towards the Troad. So among men he arrived to the clamorous labours of Ares, Close by the stern Diomedes stood and frowned o’er the battle. He for the Trojan slaughter chose for his mace and his sword-edge Iron Tydeus’ son and the adamant heart of young Pyrrhus. But in the courts divine the Father high of the immortals Turned in his heart to the brilliant offspring born of his musings, She who tranquil observes and judges her father and all things. “What shall I say to the thought that is calm in thy breasts, O Athene? Have I not given thee earth for thy portion, throned thee and armoured, Darkened Cypris’ smile, dimmed Hera’s son and Latona’s? Swift in thy silent ambition, proud in thy radiant sternness, Girl, thou shalt rule with the Greek and the Saxon, the Frank and the Roman. Worker and fighter and builder and thinker, light of the reason, Men shall leave all temples to crowd in thy courts, O Athene. Go then and do my will, prepare man’s tribes for their fullness.” But with her high clear smile on him answered the mighty Athene, — Wisely and soberly, tenderly smiled she chiding her father Even as a mother might rail at her child when he hides and dissembles: “Zeus, I see and I am not deceived by thy words in my spirit. We but build forms for thy thought while thou smilest down high o’er our toiling; Even as men are we tools for thee, who are thy children and dear ones. All this life is thy sport and thou workst like a boy at his engines Making a toil of the game and a play of the serious labour. Then to that play thou callest us wearing a sombre visage, This consulting, that to our wills confiding, O Ruler; Choosing thy helpers, hastened by those whom thou lurest to oppose thee
Page – 457 Guile thou usest with gods as with mortals, scheming, deceiving, And at the wrath and the love thou hast prompted laughest in secret. So we two who are sisters and enemies, lovers and rivals, Fondled and baffled in turn obey thy will and thy cunning, I, thy girl of war, and the rosy-white Aphrodite. Always we served but thy pleasure since our immortal beginnings, Always each other we helped by our play and our wrestlings and quarrels. This too I know that I pass preparing the paths of Apollo And at the end as his sister and slave and bride I must sojourn Rapt to his courts of mystic light and unbearable brilliance. Was I not ever condemned since my birth from the toil of thy musings Seized like a lyre in my body to sob and to laugh out his music, Shake as a leaf in his fierceness and leap as a flame in his splendours! So must I dwell overpowered and so must I labour subjected Robbed of my loneliness pure and coerced in my radiant freedom, Now whose clearness and pride are the sovereign joy of thy creatures. Such the reward that thou keepst for my labour obedient always. Yet I work and I do thy will, for ’tis mine, O my father.” Proud of her ruthless lust of thought and action and battle, Swift-footed rose the daughter of Zeus from her sessions immortal: Breasts of the morning unveiled in a purity awful and candid, Head of the mighty Dawn, the goddess Pallas Athene! Strong and rapacious she swooped on the world as her prey and her booty Down from the courts of the Mighty descending, darting on Ida. Dire she descended, a god in her reason, a child in her longings, — Joy and woe to the world that is given to the whims of the child-god Greedy for rule and play and the minds of men and their doings! So with her aegis scattering light o’er the heads of the nations Shining-eyed in her boyish beauty severe and attractive Came to the fields of the Troad, came to the fateful warfare, Veiled, the goddess calm and pure in her luminous raiment Zoned with beauty and strength. Rejoicing, spurring the fighters Close o’er Odysseus she stood and clear-eyed governed the battle. Zeus to Hephaestus next, the Cyclopean toiler Turned, Hephaestus the strong-souled, priest and king and a bond-slave, Servant of men in their homes and their workshops, servant of Nature, He who has built these worlds and kindles the fire for a mortal.
Page – 458 “Thou, my son, art obedient always. Wisdom is with thee, Therefore thou know’st and obeyest. Submission is wisdom and knowledge; He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles: Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish. Troy and her sons and her works are thy food today, O Hephaestus.” And to his father the Toiler answered, the silent Seer: “Yes, I obey thee, my Father, and That which than thou is more mighty; Even as thou obeyest by rule, so I by my labour. Now must I heap the furnace, now must I toil at the smithy, I who have flamed on the altar of sacrifice helping the sages. I am the Cyclops, the lamester, who once was pure and a high-priest. Holy the pomp of my flames ascendant from pyre and from altar Robed men’s souls for their heavens and my smoke was a pillar to Nature. Though I have burned in the sight of the sage and the heart of the hero, Now is no nobler hymn for my ear than the clanging of metal, Breath of human greed and the dolorous pant of the engines. Still I repine not, but toil; for to toil I was yoked by my Maker. I am your servant, O Gods, and his of whom you are servants.” But to the toiler Zeus replied, to the servant of creatures: “What is the thought thou hast uttered betrayed by thy speech, O Hephaestus? True is it earth shall grow as a smithy, the smoke of the furnace Fill men’s eyes and their souls shall be stunned with the clang of the hammers; Yet in the end there is rest on the peak of a labour accomplished. Nor shall the might of the thinker be quelled by that iron oppression, Nor shall the soul of the warrior despair in the darkness triumphant; For when the night shall be deepest, dawn shall increase on the mountains And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom. Pallas thy sister shall guard man’s knowledge fighting the earth-smoke. Thou too art mighty to live through the clamour even as Apollo. Work then, endure; expect from the Silence an end and thy wages.” So King Hephaestus arose and passed from the courts of his father; Down upon earth he came with his lame omnipotent motion; And with uneven steps absorbed and silent the Master Worked employed mid the wheels of the cars as a smith in his smithy, But it was death and bale that he forged, not the bronze and the iron. Stark, like a fire obscured by its smoke, through the spear-casts he laboured
Page – 459 Helping Ajax’ war and the Theban and Phocian fighters. Zeus to his grandiose helper next, who proved and unmoving, Calm in her greatness waited the mighty command of her husband: “Hera, sister and spouse, what my will is thou knowest, O consort. One are our blood and our hearts, nor the thought for the words of the speaker Waits, but each other we know and ourselves and the Vast and the heavens, Life and all between and all beyond and the ages. That which Space not knows nor Time, we have known, O my sister. Therefore our souls are one soul and our minds become mirrors of oneness. Go then and do my will, O thou mighty one, burning down Troya.” Silent she rose from the seats of the Blissful, Hera majestic, And with her flowing garment and mystical zone through the spaces Haloed came like the moon on an evening of luminous silence Down upon Ida descending, a snow-white swan on the greenness, Down upon Ida the mystic haunted by footsteps immortal Ever since out of the Ocean it rose and lived gazing towards heaven. There on a peak of the mountains alone with the sea and the azure Voiceless and mighty she paused like a thought on the summits of being Clasped by all heaven; the winds at play in her gust-scattered raiment Sported insulting her gracious strength with their turbulent sweetness, Played with their mother and queen; but she stood absorbed and unheeding, Mute, with her sandalled foot for a moment thrilling the grasses, Dumbly adored by a soul in the mountains, a thought in the rivers, Roared to loud by her lions. The voice of the cataracts falling Entered her soul profound and it heard eternity’s rumour. Silent its gaze immense contained the wheeling of aeons. Huge-winged through Time flew her thought and its grandiose vast revolutions Turned and returned. So musing her timeless creative spirit, Master of Time, its instrument, grieflessly hastening forward Parted with greatnesses dead and summoned new strengths from their stables; Maned they came to her call and filled with their pacings the future. Calm, with the vision satisfied, thrilled by the grandeurs within her, Down in a billow of whiteness and gold and delicate raiment Gliding the daughter of Heaven came to the earth that received her
Page – 460 Glad of the tread divine and bright with her more than with sunbeams. King Agamemnon she found and smiling on Sparta’s levies Mixed unseen with the far-glinting spears of haughty Mycenae. Then to the Mighty who tranquil abode and august in his regions Zeus, while his gaze over many forms and high-seated godheads Passed like a swift-fleeing eagle over the peaks and the glaciers When to his eyrie he flies alone through the vastness and silence: “Artemis, child of my loins and you, O legioned immortals, All you have heard. Descend, O ye gods, to your sovereign stations, Labour rejoicing whose task is joy and your bliss is creation; Shrink from no act that Necessity asks from your luminous natures. Thee I have given no part in the years that come, O my daughter, Huntress swift of the worlds who with purity all things pursuest. Yet not less is thy portion intended than theirs who o’erpass thee: Helped are the souls that wait more than strengths soon fulfilled and exhausted. Archeress, brilliance, wait thine hour from the speed of the ages.” So they departed, Artemis leading lightning-tasselled. Ancient Themis remained and awful Dis and Ananke. Then mid these last of the gods who shall stand when all others have perished, Zeus to the Silence obscure under iron brows of that goddess, — Griefless, unveiled was her visage, dire and unmoved and eternal: “Thou and I, O Dis, remain and our sister Ananke. That which the joyous hearts of our children, radiant heaven-moths Flitting mid flowers of sense for the honey of thought have not captured, That which Poseidon forgets mid the pomp and the roar of his waters, We three keep in our hearts. By the Light that I watch for unsleeping, By thy tremendous consent to the silence and darkness, O Hades, By her delight renounced and the prayers and the worship of mortals Making herself as an engine of God without bowels or vision, — Yet in that engine are only heart-beats, yet is her riddle Only Love that is veiled and pity that suffers and slaughters, — We three are free from ourselves, O Dis, and free from each other. Do then, O King of the Night, observe then with Time for thy servant Not my behest, but What she and thou and I are for ever.” Mute the Darkness sat like a soul unmoved through the aeons,
Page – 461 Then came a voice from the silence of Dis, from the night there came wisdom. "Yes, I have chosen and that which I chose I endure, O Cronion, — Though to the courts of the gods I come as a threat and a shadow, Even though none to their counsels call me, none to their pastime, None companions me willingly; even thy daughter, my consort, Trembling whom once from our sister Demeter I plucked like a blossom Torn from Sicilian fields, while Fate reluctant, consenting, Bowed her head, lives but by her gasps of the sun and the azure; Stretched are her hands to the light and she seeks for the clasp of her mother. I, I am Night and her reign and that of which Night is a symbol. All to me comes, even thou shalt come to me, brilliant Cronion. All here exists by me whom all walk fearing and shunning; He who shuns not, He am I and thou and Ananke. All things I take to my bosom that Life may be swift in her voyage; For out of death is Life and not by birth and her motions And behind Night is light and not in the sun and his splendours. Troy to the Night I will gather a wreath for my shadows, O grower.” So in his arrogance dire the vast invincible Death-god Triumphing passed out of heaven with Themis and silent Ananke. Zeus alone in the spheres of his bliss, in his kingdoms of brilliance Sat divine and alarmed; for even the gods in their heavens Scarce shall live who have gazed on the unveiled face of Ananke, Heard the accents dire of the Darkness that waits for the ages. Awful and dull grew his eyes and mighty and still grew his members. Back from his nature he drew to the passionless peaks of the spirit, Throned where it dwells for ever uplifted and silent and changeless Far beyond living and death, beyond Nature and ending of Nature. There for a while he dwelt veiled, protected from Dis and his greatness; Then to the works of the world he returned and the joy of his musings. Life and the blaze of the mighty soul that he was of God’s making Dawned again in the heavenly eyes and the majestied semblance. Comforted heaven he beheld, to the green of the earth was attracted. But through this Space unreal, but through these worlds that are shadows Went the awful Three. None saw them pass, none felt them. Only in the heavens was a tread as of death, in the air was a winter, Earth oppressed moaned long like a woman striving with anguish.
Page – 462 Ida saw them not, but her grim lions cowered in their caverns, Ceased for a while on her slopes the eternal laughter of fountains. Over the ancient ramparts of Dardanus’ high-roofed city Darkening her victor domes and her gardens of life and its sweetness Silent they came. Unseen and unheard was the dreadful arrival. Troy and her gods dreamed secure in the moment flattered by sunlight. Dim to the citadel high they arrived and their silence invaded Pallas’ marble shrine where stern and white in her beauty, Armed on her pedestal, trampling the prostrate image of darkness Mighty Athene’s statue guarded imperial Troya. Dim and vast they entered in. Then through all the great city Huge a rushing sound was heard from her gardens and places And in their musings her seers as they strove with night and with error And in the fane of Apollo Laocoon torn by his visions Heard aghast the voice of Troy’s deities fleeing from Troya, Saw the flaming lords of her households drive in a death-rout Forth from her ancient halls and their noble familiar sessions. Ghosts of her splendid centuries wailed on the wings of the doom-blast. Moaning the Dryads fled and her Naiads passed from Scamander Leaving the world to deities dumb of the clod and the earth-smoke, And from their tombs and their shrines the shadowy Ancestors faded. Filled was the air with their troops and the sound of a vast lamentation. Wailing they went, lamenting mortality’s ages of greatness, Ruthless Ananke’s deeds and the mortal conquests of Hades. Then in the fane Palladian the shuddering priests of Athene Entered the darkened shrine and saw on the suffering marble Shattered Athene’s mighty statue prostrate as conquered, But on its pedestal rose o’er the unhurt image of darkness Awful shapes, a Trinity dim and dire unto mortals. Dumb they fell down on the earth and the life-breath was slain in their bosoms. And in the noon there was night. And Apollo passed out of Troya.
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