'•MftlH M >\ND OTHER POEMS ARTHUR STRINGER UC-NRLF B 3 3M2 fi35 THE WOMAN IN THE RAIN AND OTHER POEMS The Woman in the Rain AND OTHER POEMS BY ARTHUR STRINGER AUTHOR OF "THE WIRE TAPPERS," "PHANTOM WIRES," ETC. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1907 Copyright, f Yea, dogs me step by step: my better II UNANOINTED ALTARS ^ g UXAXOIXTED ALTARS " T ET it be," said he, " that the hounds shall win, J -^ Let it come that I bow to the curs, And stand a jool in the eyes of the world. But, O never a jool in hers! " It was not for the sake of the things they sought, Xor the foolish crowns they cried for. Xor for any of all the ancient gods Their fathers had fought and died for ! It was not, he knew, for the name of the land, Xor the pride of the loins that bore him; Not, not for these did he die his deaths, And crush to the goals before him ! " Let it be that the ancient jest holds good, Let it come that I bow to the curs, And stand a jool in the eyes of the world, But, O never a jool in hers! " So the years that he wrought were empty years, And the laurels he won, their laughter; 60 UNANOINTED ALTARS But other than his were the mouths that pressed This mouth that he hungeied after! Yea, the years that he wrought seemed wasted years, And his goodly strength was broken, And his shrivelled heart lay dry as dust, — But the word was left unspoken I Yet he stood, at the end, in their wondering eyes, (For all that he held them curs) Far more of a god than a fool, indeed, — But a fool to the end in Hers! * ON A CHOPIN NOCTURNE TTE desolate and saddened sought the gleam Of that white summit where lone Beauty dwelt, And mid its calm some ghostly marble found, — Yea, in its tranquil snows his broken dream Of Beauty moulded . . . and we watch it melt, As Music, into April showers of sound ! THE WANDERERS 6l THE WANDERERS T\ RIFTING from Deep to dark-horizoned Deep, Sea-worn we fare through unknown islands lone To unimagined mainlands lonelier still. Out past gray headlands, with o'er- wistful eyes We gaze where pathless waters pale and gloom And tumble restlessly all touched with gold Deep through the darkening West, — and talk of Home. Then like the rustling of soft leaves to us, Then like the whispering of evening waves, Across the twilight silences there come, Borne in upon the sea-wind's languid wings, Soft hidden voices and strange harmonies, Far sounds from hills and shores unknown to us, Low strains that creep and fail like solemn bells Across a windy pla inland, cries that lure Us onward and still onward toward the End, Through foam and spindrift to the uttermost Dark undiscovered Country of the Dream, Strange intuitions telling us there lies Some wider world about us than we dream, And wayward memories of how we fared From coasts too far away for feeble thought ! Thev come as broken voices blown to us 62 THE WANDERERS From out a land of twilight too remote And muffled in deep mists to be discerned, One wind-blown echo comes, one teasing strain, And while we listen with bewildered ears, The music mocking dies, the glory fades, The fragile tone dissolves, — and leaves us there Amid the gathering silence and the gloom With some new anguish eating at our hearts, And some dark mem'ry washing restlessly Upon the granite bastions of Regret. What it would whisper now we cannot tell, And so, with sullen oar yet watching eyes, We still fare on past thresholds still unknown, And question whence we come and whither go; And ere the dawn is gray again we quench Doubt's sinking fires and drive the splintered keel Deep through the black waves and go plunging out, Out past the headlands of the open sea, With straining sails and wills more obdurate, On through the dark horizon of unrest, Still onward, ever onward, to the End ! AT THE COMEDY 63 AT THE COMEDY T AST night, in snowy gown and glove, I saw you watch the play Where each mock hero won his love The old unlifelike way. (And O were life their little scene Where love so smoothly ran, How different, Dear, this world had been Since this old world began!) For you, who saw them gaily win Both hand and heart away, Knew well where dwelt the mockery in That foolish little play. (" // love were all — if love were all," The viols sobbed and cried, " Then love were best whatever befall! " Low, low the flutes replied.) And you, last night, did you forget, So far from me, so near? — 64 AT THE COMEDY For watching there your eyes were wet With just an idle tear ! (And down the great dark curtain jell Upon their foolish play, But you and I knew — Oh, too well! — Life went another way!) * AN EPITAPH Q WOMAN -SOUL, all flower, and flame, and dew, — Through your white life I groped once up to God In happier days : you lie beneath His sod, And now through Him alone I grope to you! THE MAN WHO KILLED 65 THE MAN WHO KILLED The speaker is Cain, crouched in a grove of matted shadow and sunlight, beside the body of his brother Abel. This body lies close by an overturned jar of oil, at the foot of an altar- cairn of rough and smoke-stained stones. Near it, grains and fruits, brought for sacrificial offering, wither in the hot noonday sun Cain, in an agony of apprehension that slowly grows to terror, at the sight of the first of the race of man to be overtaken by Death, peers down at the body, while at times his mother, Eve, is heard singing in the distance. . . . Y^HAT pulsing warmth is this that oozes through Your matted hair? What makes so horrible These hands of mine, that fawn upon the throb And gush of rivers which they cannot stanch? WTiat voice was that ? . . . . . . Oh, whence came all this blood? What wild bird screams and calls so loud ? . . . O God, What is this wonder creeping down his face, His piteous face so white and stained? What wind Is this that sighs so low across the world? Eve is heard singing out of the remote distance: 66 THE MAN WHO KILLED The silence went out of the day, The sorrow passed out of the west, For bone of my bone he lay Warm on my wondering breast I Each valley where Loneliness crept Grew vocal and golden and warm, For son of my loins he slept Close in my wondering arm! Speak. . . . Speak! ... ere on this altar-rock I beat My maddened head, or tear this unknown ache Out of my loins, and in relieving gloom Lie at your side ! But no . . . no, not as you, All huddled in such hideous unconcern, Thus ugly, stark, with brutish mouth agape In foul black-blooded slag ! No, not With sightless eyes where glazing terrors seem To crawl, with each half-mucid limb inert, Where, for one breath that ended in a scream, You writhed and twisted with some hellish thing, You fought and struggled with some Fear unknown, Then like a burnt-out faggot drooped away, And moved not in the dust ! Speak out, swart throat, Speak out again and boast of this grim strength That woke and bore me down ! But cry aloud THE MAX WHO KILLED 67 That all is well with you, that in your time You will remember, will be hot to strike And hold your own ! . . . O, Abel, speak ! One old-time word of hate is all I ask. What is the Thing that steals thus over you? Can it indeed be Joy? Or is it Pain? 'What wreath of heavy Wonder has my hand Crushed on your startled brow? What mystery Is this that I have clothed your body in? Past what unseen Abyss have you been thrust? What ache is this, unknown to all the world, Eats through my dizzy veins ? Why should it seem That you have gone beyond some lonely Door That shuts me out, and leaves me desolate? . . . Earth's green things I have seen return to earth, Days I have seen thus fade away and droop, Tides I have seen go out, and Summer pass Beyond earth's iron hills . . . yet all again Came back — there lies the wonder ! — came with joy To us again ! Eve in the distance is again heard singing: The silence went out of the day, The sorrow passed out of the izest, For bone of my bone he lay Warm on my nvndering breast! 68 THE MAN WHO KILLED The noon grows old; the tide Turns back, and loud his lost ewes bleat. . . . But he Wakes not, — he who, one little hour ago, Was livid with a rage that crushed me down ! I feared and hated then his panting might, His man's good sinewy strength. But Oh, I dread Him more, thus meek of hand and humble-eyed, Here where he sprawls dishevelled in the sun, So ominous ! And his poor gaping mouth Rebuked me not, though with my heel I spurned His parted lips, that panted, and were still ! Far away Eve sings once more: The birds at the Dawn may awake, The birds in the Dusk may depart, For the song on the paths that I take Is sung by my sheltering heart! What new word on the lip of waiting Time Is this earth hears? How in one little sound Like that he uttered could be sloughed away The might that made him wonderful and quick ! What god-like thing pulsed out through this small wound No wider than a leaf ? What mystery Has crowded through a gate so small as this? Are you the thing that fought and flung me back? Are you the voice I heard on morning hills? THE MAX WHO KILLED 69 Are you the warmth I felt on nights of rain, The valiant motion and the flame-like speed That swept like wind and fire through gloomy woods? . . . And this limp hand once dared sheer crag and sea, And cunningly has builded in its time, And yet can shade not from the cruel sun These staring eyes, that watch I know not what ! If you are wiser now than I am wise, If out through dark and distant worlds you look, What are these wordless horrors, what this woe Abysmal, what this black engulfing sea, Mirrored in eyes that answer not to mine? Speak to me once, Stark Terror, for I fear The noise of leaves and grasses when I watch You lying thus ! Until you wake, I dare Not look on God's wide hills of awful light ! I fear, from now, the accusing-fingered Hours; I fear the voices fugitive and thin From every calling thicket, and I fear The whispering wood with all its twilight ghosts, Its snakes of vine, its hateful spears of thorn ! O fling close round me, God, Thy moonlight's gloom ! Thy muffling midnight silences send down And shroud me in grim isolation, drench Me in oblivion ! Let lone-houred Night Companion me upon my stealthy ways — 7° THE MAN WHO KILLED For I it was who flung the first red blot On earth's green breathing fields, — I, I it was Who first thrust sorrow in the sound of winds, And tainted life with blood ! n The speaker still is Cain, beside his brother's body, now lying in the quiet gloom of a rocky cave, opening towards the East. One thin and wavering column of smoke rises from a sheaf of unripened grain saturated with oil, smouldering on a flat stone nearby. The smoke makes the air of the cave thick and grey. How long is it, — How long, O aching silence, has he lain Here where I thrust him from the ways of Eve Our Mother, and from all the wheeling stars That seemed to watch and understand his eyes, And their white emptiness? I hid him deep, Yet from my own grim sight could hide him not ! For in wild fear, by root and brake and rock I dragged him from the light. Then at his side All through the endless afternoon, all through The still, dusk, stifling evening, and all through The midnight full of little cries, I watched. Eden shone gold against the eastern sky, Dawn crept dull grey across the world, and still Close at his side I watched, that if he slept He yet with sun and bird might wake again. Blood-red the morning grew, green waters stirred, THE MAN WHO KILLED 7 1 The leaves forgot their silence, loud the birds Broke into song, and nearby grazed a ewe — But still this dull face washed with pitying tears From tangled leaf and grass saw not the light, Nor did he move again ! And then I knew ! Then through my veins a desolation black With horror crept and burned, for I that hour Stood face to face with Death ! Shrilling, my fear In one great cry rang down the very gloom Of Hell's most inchoate murk, and hungry gulfs Of isolation sucked each echo in. And all the vaulted galleries of Woe And nether anguish in that hour I knew ! From Eden's obdurate walls the naming swords Of angels flashed thrice deep, while drunkenly I fell and grovelled, and cried out to Thee, God, in pity yet to veil Thy sun, To still keep dark a little time Thy dawn, And all Thy careless crying things strike dumb ! 1 evermore must frenzied turn and feed On my own fears, some pitiful content Tear from this heart, foreknowing in each bone The End toward which I crumble day by day, The worm toward which I ripen hour by hour ! Stung into thought I stand, and from this day The balm of dreams remedial must seek; For Adam, when he walked the first wide night 7 2 THE MAN WHO KILLED And saw the threading stars enweaving slow The fringes of God's grey infinitudes, Felt not this loneliness of soul that makes Me marked of men ! All time to me the world Shall homeless lie ! Back from those hills where he Now fares a hostage I shall ever cringe, Since at his twilight bourne of Emptiness He stands to bar my way, to fling me out On desperate life and days with terrors strewn. He died but once, yet I a thousand times In maddened thought must die, and wake, and die; And all the woe of our torn father thrust Once out into the night, was naught to mine This reeling hour ! O, blast, God, with Thy bolt This awful air so hushed I cannot breathe ! Deep, deep in Thine unfathomed solitudes Hurl me and hide me till the wings of Time Have withered into dust ! O, do Thy worst, — God, lash me and drive me like a broken leaf Down Thy dark worlds, confound me as Thou wilt, But rend this silence that about me broods ! O calm me with some doom quite adequate ! Strike quick, and have it done, for how, indeed, Canst Thou once blight this guilty head with fire, How fiercely crush this hand, that first lured Death Into the world, and brought this timeless ruin THE MAN WHO KILLED 73 To one so warm with movement and with dream? White sleeper, you who once were strong to act, Who found earth beautiful, and joyed in life, Yet from this day must slowly be demeaned And darkened into dust and be forgot, Can you not wake but once, and plead for me? O, tongue so eloquent one day ago And now so silent grown, but sigh to me That all His dews, His soft assuaging rains May yet from earth's glad grasses wash this blot, As here I wash your body with hot tears ! Nay, o'er you keeping watch I draw the scent Of carnage still unknown, the savor thin Of deaths untold, and ulcerous hates unwombed, Hot rapine, war, and conflagrations wide ! From this day down unto the last slow throb Of mortal time, life shall a burden seem To me, and all my sons in sorrow born ! Old fears shall whimper in our ageing veins, Remorse and gloom with me and mine shall walk. My children and my children's children sprung From these dark loins contaminate all time With undefined new dreads shall tainted go. Down ashen years unknown, while gazing out With eyes still unconsoled into the West Where swim eve's placid stars, the heirs of strive For ever shall be mocked with dreams of Peace; 74 THE MAN WHO KILLED And Love, o'er-desperately sought, shall be As bitter ashes in their sated mouths To madden them. And while they weep, the swords Of angels golden in the dusk of Time Shall guard life's lonely Edens unforgot; And hating death, man still by fire and sword Shall die, all torn by predetermined war ! Immitigably this old wound shall ache Down all the ages, for my sons must bear The curse and brand of Cain, although I fling Hot life's retrieving seed across strange lands, — Though in o'er-passionate dim futile thirst Of days continual, I people thick The ages and the loneliest fields of earth, — Still shall I not atone for this first blood ! ON A PORTRAIT OF R. L. S. V\Z"AS it this dun and sombre-breasted bird Who sang so gladly, with a throat so frail ! Not for his crest, but for the songs we heard, Let us remember then the nightingale ! NORTHERN PINES 75 NORTHERN PINES T PASS where the pines for Christmas Stand thick in the crowded street, "Where the groves of Dream and Silence Are paced by feverish feet. And far thro' the rain and the street-cries My home-sick heart goes forth To the pine-clad hills of childhood, To the dark and tender North. And I see the glooming pine-lands, And I thrill to the Northland cold, Where the sunset falls in silence On the hills of gloom and gold ! And the still dusk woods close round me, And I know the waiting eyes Of my North, as a child's, are tender, As a sorrowing Mother's, wise ! j6 ON RE-READING HAMLET ON RE-READING HAMLET i r\ GOD, if this were all ! To see the naked Right, And then by day and night To crush o'er Circumstance, Despair, and petty Chance, And fight the one good fight! O God, if this were all ! n If this were only all ! But, ah ! to see, and yet Half fear the waves that fret Beyond the Harbor Bar; To strive not, since the star Lies from us, oh so far; To know, and not forget ! O God, that this is all ! THE SINGERS 77 THE SINGERS VJ/ISTFUL by the door they wait, Tired of all their dusty mart, Dreaming we go desolate Since from them we dwell apart ! Wistful in the Xight they cry Through their wall'd and cramped abode, While they hear us trooping by With the moonlight on the Road ! Mad we are and glad we are, Housed by all this goodly Home Roofed by sun and wheeling star — With the whole wide world to roam ! What each jocund day shall give That we take and go content; Singing out the life we live, — And they watch in wonderment. And they never once shall know What the solace or the quest, 78 THE SINGERS As they see us come and go, Fluting down their lonely West Till they wait as children wait Round our swart and mystic band And like children, soon or late, Listening humbly, understand! *J* RICHES TT 7ASTED and all in rags his starved soul went, And, opulently paupered, he grew old And crouched with loaded hands and heart forespent, A beggar, with a million bits of gold 1 WHEN THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 79 WHEN THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN \XTE who knew the True King well, We who loved and served him long, Cleaved to him whate'er befell — We who when they did him wrong Could have faced the Hounds of Hell With a cheer and snatch of song — While re-crowd about his throne Those who serve when all is fair, Knight by knight oft tried and known We shall stand close round him there, WTien our King comes to his own — Stand with humbled heads and bare, While a great shout — one alone — For the True King rends the air. With that cheer shall die the flame, With that day, the tale be told ! Never, Comrade, quite the same Those who come and serve for gold ! We went ragged, knew no shame, In those lean, glad days of old ! 80 WHEN THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN So, all out-at-elbows, grim, Hand by hand on swords a-rust (While his Kingly eyes are dim And his God, he knows, is just !) We shall sadly kneel to him, King and Cause we took on trust — Then past plain and mountain rim Ride away all stained with dust ! THE SEEKERS "IT" NOCK, and the Door shall open: ah, we knocked And found the unpiteous portals locked. Waiting, we learned us croons to while along Those dreary watches — and ye call it Song ! Seek, and thine eyes shall find: Oh, we have sought The Vision of our Dream, yet found it not. We limn its broken shadow, that our heart May half remember — and ye call it Art ! DEATH AND A CHILD 8 1 DEATH AND A CHILD HpO us who watched thine earliest days, "Who knew so well thy childish ways, Oh strange it seems that Death should turn That gloomy face so gauntly stern Aside to thee, — thou wert so young, And to thy childhood language clung A touch of that strange spirit tongue, That softer language of the skies, God's angels spoke in Paradise. Did Death grow envious that we Should half forget His majesty? Deep did He strike, to make us feel He still expected we should kneel ! We dreamed not He would deign to come And strike such childhood babbling dumb. Such pitiable small talk as thine Had never led us to divine Death hearkened closely to each word Thy brooding mother scarcely heard. Was it her own o'er-wistful gaze First drew Him from His wonted ways To that sad wall of angels' wings 82 DEATH AND A CHILD That guarded thy last slumberings, Where He, half tired of coquetry With those who bowed a willing knee, No longer in mere dalliance smiled, But showed His power, and took a child? Thy little hand has clutched His hand, And we no longer understand How once we deemed Death so austere. The old-time face we used to fear Has lost its ancient horror now, Since that inexorable brow Once smiled and bended over thine. Yes, lighter-hearted Proserpine, To us those glooms where thou art gone Can never more be Acheron, Yes, one weak, childish hand has hurled The terrors from that Underworld ! LIFE AND LABOR TT ERE on a languid deck how tranquilly we float ! Seafaring now seems easy, thanks to — call it coal ! — Who blames us all for idling, on an idle boat ? Fools , stand and watch one moment in the stokers' hole! LYONORS OF LYONESSE 83 LYONORS OF LYONESSE PROM her dark tower she lightly threw To him three roses red; He spake no word as near he drew, But bowed his troubled head. Two lilies white, for Innocence, Burned on his shield, like flame; He dare not view those ramparts whence Such sin-dark roses came. For her red mouth was wise with love, No shame her laughter screened, Where, moonlight-bosomed, she above His wall-bound pathway leaned, — Since clad in mail he rode for Christ, And strait the path he trod; Nor scorned he to be sacrificed For his most jealous God. But from her rose-grown tower she came, And laughed into his eyes. He flushed to his pale brow with shame, And spake unto the skies: 84 LYONORS OF LYON ESSE " To Christ this woman yet shall bow, Or be cast down ! " he said. " Yea, where she flaunts her scarlet now, Shall float the Cross instead ! " She laughed where swayed his spear aloft, For she no arms did wear; All her slim body, white and soft, Of steel and mail was bare. Her embattled eyes broke into song; A challenge paled her cheek, For in her weakness she stood strong, He, in his strength, lay weak. She, in twined gold soft-helmeted, Cuirassed in yielding rose, From her wise pleading mouth of red Let fall sweet words for blows. Oft had he fought in his stern mail, But no such fight as this; She crept where he stood stunned and pale And his sad mouth did kiss. He said no word, but on his face Like fire her red lips burned; He said no word, but from that place Broken and bent he turned. LYOXORS OF LYOXESSE 85 She saw him sered and stricken seek His lonelier paths again; Then two strange tears crept down her cheek, And she was crowned with pain. She sank before him on the ground, And clasped his iron greaves; And wept forlorn where she had frowned, — Her hot tears fell like leaves. " This man took not my wanton kiss, He stooped and shamed me not ! I ne'er have known a man like this, — And such I need, God wot ! " But, trembling, he still sought the way That lightly, once, he trod, And riding whispered: " From this day, I need thy strength, O God ! " But like a little child, she wept; Then laughed, that it was so; And watching long, like one who slept And wakened, saw him go; And saw, with widened eyes, that hour A beauty known not of From her torn body break and flower, Yet dreamed not it was love, 86 LYONORS OF LYON ESSE But prayed, that night, for his pure soul And thanked her new-found God That he had gone unhurt and whole To that white world he trod. She dreamed not once, how like a sword Still through his visor press'd Her perilous face, how each soft word, Like thorns, still tore his breast. She dreamed not of the fight he fought, — Till lo, he crept again To her with his high vows forgot, — And then she knew his pain ! Then on his fallen sword she wept; From where his arms did cling About her conquering knees, she leapt And cried, " I did this thing ! " " But ne'er the white steel of your soul Was mine to break or save ! From its soiled sheath, unscathed and whole It still shall flash and wave ! " " For me," she cried, " for God, you must The godly knight remain ! " . . . And through his naked heart she thrust The sword his hand would stain. LYOKORS OF LYOXESSE 87 On his dead mouth she pressed one kiss, And " God, I thank thee! " cried, " For giving me the strength for this; That spotless, see, he died i " Then on her woman's breast she bound His coat of mail that day, And with grim plume and armet crowned Rode e'er for Christ, men say! IN THE TEMPLE OF XEPTUNE (At Paestum) '"PHE old gods wane, and new gods come, And men where Deities once dwelt Bend puzzled knees, and find them dumb, — These gods to whom their fathers knelt. If in no temples far or near To earth's new-given gods we bow, Let us still kneel to Beauty here, Who bears her god-head on her brow ! 88 THE SONATA APPASSIONATA THE SONATA APPASSIONATA TN distant rooms, above sad wind and rain, She, who her grieving heart could utter not, Weighed down with wearied love's too-golden chain, Lures from low keys this glory tear-enwrought ; And with bent head I listen, and I know (As he once knew, who through her speaks again) That gladness, at its greatest, walks with woe, That music, at its deepest, dwells with pain ! For luting through Earth's loneliness and gloom, A second Orpheus of more frenzied soul, He came to us, who groped as from a tomb For that free air down which his music stole. He, from his more harmonious world of song Crept in to us, who dreamed with heavy eyes And heard his lyre, and then could only long, Half madly for life's unremembered skies ! And, like Eurydice, we yearned again To tread some lost and more melodious air, Where once we too had known that happier strain And once our exiled feet were wont to fare ! THE SONATA APPASSIONATA I A gleam of lives more golden but long gone, A thin, strange echo of celestial things, Came to us, and forgotten glories shone From out the fires of Earth's rememberings. Then, then we knew our Dusk once had its Dawn, And all those dreams that tease our mortal breast, All, all those ways we would, yet could not. reach, All, all our vain desires, our old unrest, In Song he woke, that long had slept in speech ! For he had heard those chords Uranian That must divinely madden him who hears; And they on high beheld the god-like pain That mocked his soul, and closed his mortal ears ! So thou, sad earthly exile, on low keys, Through wind and rain, in quiet rooms afar, Seeking this immemorial ache to ease And flinging forth against each mortal bar Once more his immemorial harmonies, With hands that are as wings, from star to star Now bearest me away, past earthly seas To some old Home, where God and Music are ! 9 o MY FRIEND, THE ENEMY MY FRIEND, THE ENEMY CINCE your fierce hate has so befriended me, Who shall oppose you, watchful to the end — Since 'twas your covert blade I might not see, Made vigilant this breast I must defend — Still keep my sword from rust and slumber free, And since on blow and parry souls depend Call no soft truce to break my strength, but be, In endless opposition, still my friend ! * THE MUSICIAN SPEAKS IN CANDOR IT' NOW him, whose art ye fondly blame and praise, As but a reed, whereon some Hand unknown, God-like, to lute ineloquent, e'er plays The one old ineffectual monotone S SUNSET IN THE FAR NORTH T OW in the west the sullen mountains lie, White-fanged and gaunt, against a blood-red sky, Where starved and wolfish, stalked from height to height, Day gnaws upon its last thin rind of Light ! A WO MAX'S HAXD 91 A WOMAN'S HAXD HP HE dawn grew golden in the east, The dancing and the music ceased; The world, the world of men, awoke, And then the guest who tarried spoke, And as he spoke he took her hand In his — he could not understand ! — And held it, tiny, white, and slim, While she in silence gazed at him. " Soft little tender bird-like thing, May time, and toil," he murmured, " bring No line to thee, poor girlish hand ! " — For he could never understand ! — Then she, with one strange wistful look, Drew back the hand he idly took, And, smiling, hid it from his gaze While he bent low, and went his ways. The little hand remained the same Soft bird-like thing, and no toil came 92 A WOMAN'S HAND To take its tenderness away Or steal its beauty day by day. For in the world its only part Was but to press a woman's heart — Oh wayward hand so white and slim ! That ached with all its love for him ! *j? THE AGE OF LAUGHTER CTILL drugged with Song, and gay with Laughter, lo, How round the board they feast, while gaunt-eyed grown Here squats their outcast Fool, and asks how show The solemn stars, and questions what is known Beyond the Shadows that affright men so They needs must drink ! And flute and pipe are blown In reassuring mirth, and glasses flow, And much brave laughter wakes, and floor and throne Reflect the valiant lamps. . . . And yet they know That out beyond the Door no light is shown, And in the end they one by one must go Home through the Silence of the Night — alone ! SHE SEEMED A WILD BIRD 93 SHE SEEMED A WILD BIRD CHE seemed a wild bird caged on earth, Who fretted in her prison bars; A voice from heaven's ethereal blue, Still unforgetf ul of her birth ; And while she gazed out on the stars. She sighed to look where once she new, Until her wings at last broke through ! And from my lonelier world I gaze, And should my wistful eyes once see Some new star drift down heaven's ways, I know she looks once more on me, And by the astral barrier waits Until my angel swing the gates, And earth no longer cages me ! LABOR W r AR not on him ! — his dread artillery Doth lie in idle arm and rusting tool; And lo he sets his ruthless legions free When once he lets his sullen anvils cool ! 94 DESTINY DESTINY "LJ E sat behind his roses and did wake With wanton hands those passions grim That naught but bitter tears and blood can slake, And naught but years can dim. So o'er their wine did Great Ones sit and nod, Ordaining War ... as it befell : Men drunk with drum and trumpet mouthed of God And reeled down blood-washed roads to Hell ! THE KEEPER "\X7TDE is the world and wide its open seas, Yet I who fare from pole to pole remain A prisoned Hope that paces ill at ease, A captive Fear that fumbles with its chain. I once for Freedom madly did aspire, And stormed His bars in many a burst of rage: But see, my Keeper with his brands of fire Has cowed me quite . . . and bade me love my cage ! THE TWO ROOMS 95 THE TWO ROOMS u (^ OOD - BYE, little room," she murmured, When she went, this many a year; " O white little room, forgive me, For my heart was breaking here ! " But still with a poignant sadness The scent of the lilac bloom Blows in at the open window And fills her lonely room. And still she can half remember The imprisoning walls of white, And the hours of her lonely sorrow, And the tears she wept by night. And still through the years she wonders At the lilacs white with dusk, Though her chamber is hung with scarlet And her pillow is sweet with musk. For now she is done with heart-aches, And the midnight finds her glad : But the earlier tear-wet pillow Is the one that least was sad! 96 MEMORIES MEMORIES /~\UT of the Night we come, and we shall go Back to the Night : and that is all we know ! Yet clinging to us are deep mystic things, Vague dreams and visions, dim rememberings And whispers low that tell us we have known Some vanished glory and strange beauties flown That are not of the dust from which we climb Up to the kinglier pinnacles of Time ! E'er by familiar Doorways are we borne, And old to us how often seems a morn ! And yet some Hand has fettered close our hearts; And Life's forgetful captive seldom parts The spirit-chain, and stands his moment free ! But still, at times, the odor of the Sea, The silences of night, the rise and fall Of bells that over lonely uplands call, The pulse and throb of Music passionate, The lark amid the pines o'er which the late Slow-paling crowns of sunset-glory rest, The autumn fields all golden in the West, The measured breathing of a bosom deep In life's vast mystery that men call Sleep, And life's sad pleasure that is known as Love — MEMORIES 97 These whisper of the things we know not of, Vaguely do these at some rare moment speak Of those old glories that we idly seek Ere on our dream the doors of Being close, And all the beauty and the wonder goes ! * THE ASCENT OF MAN T^HE gods dwelt nearer men in olden days; Yea, through the world ethereal feet once trod Since now they walk their more secluded ways, 'Tis man climbs nearer each exalted god ! 98 the SHADOW IX g past THE SHADOWING PAST TJ" E followed me with ghost-like tread. He dogged me night and day; Each time I dreamed that he was dead There at my door he lay. 'Though once I harbored such a hound, He is no longer mine ! So him at last I caught and bound, And hushed his ceaseless whine. Dark paths with many a twist I took, Strange woods with twilight dim; Through by-ways thick with turn and crook Alone I carried him. His last cries in a tarn I drowned, And hurried home once more: Lo, waiting there, my old gaunt Hound Stood whining at the door! THE STORM 99 THE STORM CAME to you where drenched with brine You watched our granite shore, Where cold between your face and mine The stinging tempest tore. I We watched estranged ; but while we gazed Those teeth of granite ground A ship that struck, and sank, and raised.. And ten poor sailors drowned. Then with a little cry of dread, A sob of sudden pain, You crept to me, and, lo, the Dead Brought lije to Love again! IOO THE LURE O' LIFE THE LURE O' LIFE \X7HEN my life has enough of love, and my spirit enough of mirth, When the ocean no longer beckons me, when the road- way calls no more, Oh, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day! When the lash of the wave bewilders, and I shrink from the sting of the rain, When I hate the gloom of Thy steel-gray wastes, and slink to the lamp-lit shore, Oh, purge me in Thy primal fires, and -fling me on my way! When I house me close in a twilit inn, where I brood by a dying fire, When I kennel and cringe with fat content, where a pillow and loaf are sure, Oh, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day! THE EJJM 0' LIFE: IOI When I quail at the snow on the uplands, when I crawl from the glare of the sun, When the trails that are lone invite me not, and the half- way lamps allure, Oh, purge me in Thy primal fires, and fling me on my way I When the wine has all ebbed from an April, when the Autumn of life forgets The call and the lure of the widening West, the wind in the straining rope, Oh, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day! When I waken to hear adventurers strange throng valiantly forth by night, To the sting of the salt-spume, dust of the plain, and width of the western slope, Oh, purge me in Thy primal fires and fling me on my way ! — When swarthy and careless and grim they throng out under my rose-grown sash, And I — I bide me there by the coals, and I know not heat nor hope, Then, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day! 102 A DIALOGUE m SPRING A DIALOGUE IN SPRING The Monk speaks. He is old, but has quiet and kindly eyes. He stands with one thin hand on a sun-dial dis- colored with lichen. I take it, madam, on a day like this You are most happy? City hearts, I think, Find keener beauties in this quiet place, Than we, who live and die between the hills ! The Woman, who is no longer young, speaks: I am most happy ! The Monk speaks: Yet it seemed to me Your face was troubled, when I chanced to come Down past the breaking hawthorn ! The Woman speaks: Yes; I know. It was the children calling, far away. It was, perhaps, the beauty and the youth And all the wonder of this April world ! A DIALOGUE IX SPRING 103 The Monk speaks: Then, you are childless, madam? The Woman speaks: Childless — yes ! The Monk speaks: I understand ! And out of loneliness You weep a little? The Woman speaks, musingly. Xo ; no ; not loneliness . . . The whisper of warm grasses, and the rain, The brooding depths of peace through rifted pearl, The mellow call and flute of many birds, The showery freshness, and the seas of bloom Above dark orchards, and the old, old balm, The sunlight veiled with mist, the muffled sense Of immemorial rapture — O dear God, Are these today not doubly sweet to me. Who grew o'erwise through sin, who watched too long By twilit casements and have known too well The gloomy green of troubled seas at eve, Till all their brine but mortal tear-drops seemed, And every wave a woman's heaving breast And even r surf a cry of sorrow was ! 104 A DIALOGUE IN SPRING The Monk, turning from the sun-dial, speaks: They who much loved, forgiven much shall be i The Woman speaks, gazing down the valley: And I, who am defenceless utterly, Look out on life with eyes no longer young And hear the call of children, far away, And touched with poignant beauties see the world About me waken . . . and I weep a little ! The Monk speaks: Dear Lady, old all Youth in time must grow, And sad or happy as the seasons fall, We must accept God's will ! The Woman speaks: God's will ! Yes, yes, But what glad Youth, to us no longer young, Seems not with sorrow touched ! Oh, sir, what Spring In hearts that loved once well, seems not too sweet? Clouded God's suns should be for lives like mine; In shade and moonlight we should ever walk, For with its sweep of turgid waters life That was not life has laid my spirit waste A DIALOGUE IN SPRING 105 And barren days have left me bowed and worn ! For much I knew, and suffered, having sinned ! (The Woman pauses, and turns from the monk to the Valley once more) But softly as the green leaves take the light, I, with this dreamy air grown satisfied, Feel stir vague gladness, and remember now The childish pitiful pale things of youth; And some old ghost in this poor body caged Keeps peering out with eyes that are not mine; And Love itself, immured and bruised and sealed In trampled earth, still through the darkness feels The stir mysterious, still at the call Implacable awakes, and from grim depths Still stretches forth, and reaches for the sun! Deliriously, see, I lose myself In Spring, the odorous birth and burgeoning, The lyric sap that sweetens into leaves, The innocent quick gladness that is Earth's ! The Monk speaks: If April, year by year, renews the world, Why should its beauties not renew a soul? 106 A DIALOGUE IN SPRING The Woman speaks, mournful-eyed: No, these are not for withered hearts and old, Yet I, today, with wider-seeing eyes, Must watch the rapture and the careless joy, The call of children, and the flute of birds, The flash of rivers, and the gleam of flowers, The happy sunlight and the silent hills, The virginal soft greenness, and the song Of waters low . . . The very wine of life They are to me in my new . . . loneliness ! The Monk speaks: God giveth, and God taketh still away ! You seek the Shadow, woman — but the Veil Before His face, and not the Face itself ! The Woman speaks: Nay, shall I not more desperately now Cling to earth's beauty and these broken threads Of momentary bliss, since they must go? In mirth so wide may I not lose myself, And let some April twilight lull away Each tear and mem'ry old, and bring me peace? May I not make my heart still rapturous With Spring, at one with all that stirs toward birth A DIALOGUE IN SPRING With ineradicable dreams still young? For once, some wayward touch of Spring it was In my hot breast that brought to youth its pang, To my great love its unappeased regret; And now through Spring alone it lies for me And my pale heart to know life's passionate bliss Of Motherhood, the presage and the hope, The far horizon luring fainting hearts. So let me drink my little day of youth While bird and child and sunlight hold their lure Of beauty, bitter-sweet ! The Monk speaks: And this it is That you call Happiness? The Woman speaks: Yes; pitiful The old enchantment seems, yet still it snares All sorrow lightly to endure the links Of age, stings us, life's disillusioned, still To cling to twilight hopes, and be content ! Yes, broken, touched with autumn, many-teared, Today I am at one with youth and joy, And through my being, quietly as rain, The old, sad, immemorial rapture wakes ! 107 108 A DIALOGUE IN SPRING A bell sounds from the grey tower to the right, and the monk turns. For one moment he waits and looks back in wonder, but the woman, whose eyes are intent on the valley, jails to see that he is about to speak, and he leaves her. The woman remains, in silence, without moving. 4* FROM THE POETS' CORNER {Westminster Abbey) HpIME was I teased Thee to reveal Thine unknown Face to me; Yet grant not, God, that foolish prayer I asked long since of Thee ! n Leave me Thy nights, thus gemmed with stars, Thy glooms, through which to grope, Since from the dusk of Doubt can sing The nightingales of hope ! THE FUGITIVE 109 THE FUGITIVE A HUNTED thing, through copse and wood Night after night he skulked and crawled, To where amid dark homesteads stood One gloomy garden locked and walled. He paused in fear each step he took, And waited till the moon was gone; Then stole in by the little brook That still laughed down the terraced lawn. And up the well-known path he crept, And through the tangled briars tore; And he, while they who sought him slept, Saw his ancestral home once more. There song and lights were still a-stir, And by her he could see one stand (And he had fared so far to her ! ) Who laughing bowed and took her hand. Then out by copse and wood he crept, While yet the dawn was cold and dim ; And while in her white room she slept, Twas his old hound crawled back with him. HO A SONG FOR THE ROAD A SONG FOR THE ROAD r T" s HE outland road lies white and long beneath the open sun, The dust swings up between us where the mile-stone seasons run, And bent on our grim errands empty-handed outward trend Earth's children of unrest that night and noonday ask the End. Yet day by day strange marvels lie beneath the vaulted blue, And dusk by dusk our road is hung with wonders born anew ; But time and fog between us swing and far we have to fare, Perplext by one low door remote and what awaits us there. Yet comrade swart, since step by step and side by side with you I faced the open day and night, and knew the fears you knew, — A SONG FOR THE ROAD ill On this, the Unreturning Road, O what's the odds, old friend, Since in some tavern dark and lone we slumber at the end ! — O what's the odds, that of our Host we have not yet been told, That cramped the rooms of his dark house, O cramped the rooms and cold, And one by one 'tis good-night all when we have passed his door — Let's take the day, and go our way, and ask nor want for more! So now we have the jovial wind about us noon and night, A snatch of song, old comrade mine, a merry strain and light, To wake and shake the roadway ere the falling dusk may bring Its pensive note and wistful where the outland lanterns swing ! And while we have good sun and star and jocund blue above, While Earth's red wine of life still runs, our fill of opiate love — 112 A SONG FOR THE ROAD Let's drink our fill, for once and all, and in Death's dubious glooms Undo our pack of Memory and warm those darkened rooms ! ART'S FUTILITIES T N youth we have the soul, but not the art ; When patient age has learned all art's demands No youthful dream within the old-grown heart Remains to busy our perfected hands! * REMORSE O ED lips that dumbly quiver for his kiss, And fondly now but touch his graveyard stone, Ah, lips he loved of old, remember this : He had not died, if he had only known! A RHYMER'S EPILOGUE 113 A RHYMER'S EPILOGUE VOU ask if I at Song's behest Bared here my heart for men to see. Bared here my heart ! — This stands a jest, Old Friend, between my God and me ! For I ten hundred hearts can claim; Mad blends of Rogue, Ascetic, Saint, White Virtue crowning like a flame Black gulfs unprobed I dare not paint ! Villon to-day, to-morrow Paul, The Wolf confounded with the Lamb: Indeed, Dear Friend, I showed not all, WTio know not yet the thing I am ! SAPPHO IX LEUCADIA "5 CHARACTERS Sappho. Omaphale. Erinna. Atthis. Me gar a. Phaon. Pittacus. Alcaens. Phocus. Inarchns. The poetess of Lesbos. A beautiful woman, still in her youth, passionate in word and mood and action. A young girl of Pharos, dark and slender, simple, rustic, almost uncouth in her shrinking timidity. Three young Lesbian women who study under Sappho. A Lesbian sailor; a swarthy, high-spirited, audacious, passionate man of the sea and lover of women, in the careless prime of his youthful strength. Tyrant of Mytilene; lean, calm, dispas- sionate, ambitious; of middle age. The Lesbian poet; a thin, thoughtful, stoical man ; an embittered scholar of middle age, plotting against Sappho. An idle and drunken poet of Samnos; fat and garrulous. An old Captain of the Guard of Pittacus; stolid, grisled, brawny. Hoplites, Sailors, a Soothsayer, Lesbian Men and Women. 116 Sappho in Leucadia ACT ONE Scene: The white-rocked cliff of Leucate, on the Island of Leucadia, overlooking the Ionian Sea. It is a quiet night in early Spring, and the cliff is bathed in the clear, blue-white moonlight of the Mediter- ranean. On the right stands the Leucadian Temple to Apollo, showing a wall of pale marble touched here and there with gold. On the left is the curving line of the cliff -edge, witli the sea beyond. Across the centre distance stretches a shadowy line of Leuca- dian sweet-apple grafted on quince-trees, in full bloom. Under this canopy of pale blossoms, silent and motionless, at first, sit Sappho and Phaon, watching the sea. Xear by stands a bronze fire-basin, set in a block of marble, the embers within it still gently smouldering. The only sound, as the curtain goes up, is the soft and rhythmical wash of the waves on the sea-beach below, which continues in a gentle 117 Il8 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA undertone throughout the act. Once the curtain is tip the quietness is broken by the entrance of two swarthy, slender-bodied boys, who walk slowly across the stage. One youth, trailing a shepherd's crook on his arm, blows a plaintive-noted air on a seven- piped syrinx. He stops before the cliff-edge, drops his crook, and peers below. Then he flings a stone out into the sea, waiting for the sound of its fall. The second youth continues to play on his rough wooden flute. The music he makes is the blithely sorrowful music of a contented and primitive people. The boys pass on, still playing. Sappho stirs and sighs, and raises her arms to Phaon' s shoulders. On her head she wears a rope of violets woven into a chaplet. Her gown, however, is Grecian in its severity, almost plastic in its loose, full lines and statue-like lack of color. Phaon, in contrast to this, is robed in the softest of Tyrian purples above a mild Phoenician azure. Rings of beaten gold, a roughly jewelled knife-belt, and a polished bronze clasp mounted with alternating emeralds and sap- phires, tend to make his figure one of almost Oriental richness. Sappho Oh, Phaon, was the world not made for love On such a night? The moonbeams and the sound Of music and the whispering of the waves — SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA They seem a woman's breast that throbs and burns And cries for love ! Phaon 119 On Leucate. This is our last glad night Sappho Then lean to me again And say you love me as no woman, as No goddess clothed in glory, e'er was loved. Kindle and keep me burning like a flame Until I fall into your arms and lie As still as ashes. Kiss me on the mouth And say I am your first love and your last, The only love that all your life has known. Phaon Moon-white and honey-paie and delicate Your body seems, and yet within it burns A fire more fierce than Etna's. He stoops above her, but she thrusts him back with a sudden fear. Sappho Nay, I know These lips were not the first you crushed and kissed ! 120 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Phaon But you — have you ne'er sung of other lips ? Sappho (with the deep voice of utter earnestness and conviction) I have known Love, but never love like this ! I have loved oft and lightly so at last I might love you ! These other men were not A god to me ! They were the trodden path, But not the Temple ! They were but the key And not the chamber ! They were but the oil And not the guarded lamp, the shallow tarn But not the mystic and impassioned Sea ! They were the mallet, not the marbled line, The unconsidered sail, but not the port; They were the flutters of a wing unfledged, The footsteps of a child who scarcely dreamed Of this predestined race with utter Joy! They only served to bring me near to you, And on their weakness raise and throne your strength ! She clings to him again, passionately, -fiercely. Look, Phaon, in my eyes, and say once more You will not change, that you will never change ! You are a sea-god, not a man, I think, So bronzed and sinewed, so unruled and fierce SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 121 And jealous of your strength, so made to crush And hold and battle for the thing you love ! Oh, is it true that Aphrodite leaned Across your oar, that night in Mysia, And gave you of her ointment whereby Youth And Strength and Courage should be ever yours ? Are you more beautiful than other men, Or do I dream these god-like graces round About your wilful body? Phaon Beautiful You are, so beautiful must ever be Your dreams ; the thoughts in your own heart Are hallowed with its spirit, as the Sea Leaves brighter color on the stones it laves ! Sappho Yet men whose years are spent upon the Sea Inconstant live ! They know as many loves As lands ! O Phaon, love but me, but me ! Phaon One land alone, the gods have now decreed, And but one woman ! Lesbos is the land, And you, you, you, the woman, that I love ! 122 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Sappho and Lesbos — they shall ever seem The only music made by lonely waves Sounding on lonely shores ! Sappho I am afraid, Sometimes I am still half afraid of joy So great as this. Why should I be content Without Erinna, Atthis, Megara, And all my singing children ? . . . And you say Unhappy lovers come to this same cliff And leap into the Sea? Phaon And if they live The fires of love are quenched, 'tis held; no more They sigh and wait, no more their bodies burn . -. . Sappho {peering across the cliff, with musing and mournful eyes) And if they die they wait and weep no more ! O Phaon, why should we be talking here Of tears and sorrow ! They seem out of tune With languorous nights like this and love like ours ! For I am happy, Phaon ... All the world Seems over-run with rapture, as with wine. It makes me look and wonder, leaves me thrilled SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 1 23 With wordless yearnings, with some vague content That seems too god-like in its unconcern, Too rare, too exquisite, for earthly hearts ! She turns from the Sea to the Temple and the higher slope oj the cliff. Xow Happiness and Leucate shall mean The same to me. Xow all that life may bring Must seem a broken shadow of this month, This lotos-month of Love, this last soft night Of silence and of moonlight and of You ! She pauses and stirs and sighs, tremulously. What have you done to me ! I live in dreams Yet walk in light. I ache and burn with bliss. I could reach out my arms to all the world And take it to my breast and sing to it, — Yes. sing with music that would make it young And leave it glad, as in its Golden Age; Sing as the Sea has known no throat to sing, Sing, sing as Night has heard no lover sing ! Phaon But since you came from Lesbos there has been Xo music ! 124 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Sappho No ; nor need of music here ! For lips that press on lips can ne'er lament, And song, Alcaeus says, is born of grief. You, you it was that made the throbbing lyres All vain and empty seem, you, you it was That stilled the singing voices, that dusk hour Amid the tangled mastic, when you bore Me up the cliffs in your bronzed arms and kissed Me on the mouth, and taught me that our mad, Glad, careless youth was lost, and left our world A world of moving shadows and of dream, And made me love you as I love you now — O Phaon, tell me you will never change ! Phaon See, slow of speech I am, as all men are Who fare upon the ocean and have known Its loneliness ! I scarce can say the words That seem to die upon my lips, and yet You know I love you — love you ! Sappho (rapturously) Breathe those words A thousand times, and still some music new Shall throb and murmur through each uttering ! SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 125 Yes; yes; I know how at our feeble lips The words e'er beat and nutter and fall back, The wings of love are held like prisoners ! If mortals all were lovers there should be Xo music and no need of music here ! That much this honeyed month with you, my own, Has taught me ! Phaon Have you never dreamed of home And Lesbos? Sappho Only of those days when you And I were happy there — those golden days Down by the sea, those idle afternoons When you and I and all the world were young, And from the sands we watched the opal sails And waded out into the pale green waves, Wet to our golden knees. Then you would stoop And lift me to the wave-worn galley deck, Lapped by the tremulous low Lesbian surf. And then when evening came, back through green waves We plunged and swam with laughter, side by side ! Phaon You seemed more water-nymph than woman, more A child of Cyprian foam than mortal flesh ! 126 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Sappho And often, when you pointed out the path Your outbound sail would take, to Leucate, Past Chios and Nakaria, on and on, Past Myconos and Xaxos, cleaving west Through all the flashing Cyclades, and on Still westward, on past Creta low and dim Along the southern skyline, and still on Past thunderous Malea, beating up The blue Ionian, on, until you saw The tall Leucadian cliffs so white and calm Above the azure water — then I thought You were indeed a god, of wind and storm, With all your sea-bronze and your fearless eyes. Round you a wonder fell, the wonder of Dark shores I knew not of, and day by day I watched for your return, and vaguely mourned Each wind and tide that carried you away ! Yes, like a god you seemed in that glad youth Of dreamy hours and languorous afternoons When close beside the murmuring sea we walked. Then all the odorous summer ocean seemed A pale green field where foam one moment flowered Along the shallows and the golden bars, And then was gone, and ever came again — A thousand blossom-burdened Springs in one. A god you seemed to me, and I was more Than happy, and at little things we laughed ! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 127 Phaon And how we plunged and splashed deep in the cool Green waves — like Tethys and Oceanus, You said it was, upon the uttermost Last golden rampart of the world ! Sappho (still musingly) Yes . . . yes . . . Then would we rest, and muse upon the sands, Heavy with dreams, and touched with some sad peace Born of our very weariness of joy, While drooped the wind and all the sea grew still, And unremembered trailed the idle oar, And no leaf moved, and hushed were all the birds, And on the shoals the soft low ripples lisped Themselves to sleep, and sails swung dreamily, And the azure islands floated on the air! Phaon Was't years ago, or only yesterday? Sappho Then all your body seemed a temple white To me, and I a seeker who could find No god beyond the marble, no soft voice 128 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Beyond the canxn silence — yet I kneeled And asked no more, and knew that I must love ! The bloom of youth was on your sunburnt cheek, The streams of life sang through your violet veins, The midnight velvet of your tangled hair Lured like a cooling rill my passionate hands. The muscles ran and rippled on your back Like wind on evening waters, and your arm Seemed one to cherish, or as sweetly crush. The odor of your body sinuous And saturate with sun and sea-air was As Lesbian wine to me, and all your voice A pain that took me back to times unknown. And when you swam bare-shouldered out to sea, Then, then the ephemeral glory of the flesh, The mystic sad bewilderment of warmth And life amid the coldness of its world Was like a temple with the god restored. It seemed so pitiful, so fragile there, Poised like a sea-bird on some tumbling crest, Calling so faintly back across the storm, That one must love it as a tender flower, That one must guard it as a little child. It must have been some spirit of the Sea Crept through our veins in those long afternoons, For wave by wistful wave strange moods and dreams Stole over us — and then you turned and kissed Me on the mouth ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 129 Phaon (bending over her) ... As I must ever do — But listen where some restless woman sings I Out of the gloom, softened by distance, sounds the voice of a woman, singing to a cithara. The two figures on the cliff are poised motionless, listening, and slowly a drifting cloud dims the clear blue-white light of the full moon. The Voice sings When you lie in dewy sleep, And the night is dark and still, O that Voice which seems to creep From beyond some barrier hill ! O that sound, not wind or sea, From no bird or woodland blown, Bearing you away from me, Crying " One shall go alone ! " — Like a ghost that will not rest, Calling, calling us apart, Where you dream, Love, on my breast, Where you breathe close on my heart ! O that Cry, so far and lone, Mourning as the night grows old, 130 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA For the tears as yet unknown, For the parting still untold ! Then for nights you know not of, You who lie so near in sleep — Long I watch beside you, Love, Long and bitterly I weep ! Phaon (repeating the words) Long I watch beside you, Love, Long and bitterly I weep ! But yours this music is — it is the song CaUed " Sleep and Love ! " Sappho I was a dreaming girl When first I wove the fancy into words — I scarcely knew the meaning of the mood I toyed so lightly with ! Phaon To me it seems Too mournful. The night has been slowly turning darker. They stand outlined against the distant sea, still silver-white with the moon. A sense of awe creeps into their voices as they speak. SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 131 Sappho Yes, to-night it casts a chill Across my spirit. It thrusts upon my- heart The weight of all the tears that eyes have wept Because of love, since first the world began. Felt you my body shiver ? And a cloud Has crept across the moon ! What makes the night Seem passion-worn and old and touched with calm, So suddenly? Phaon 'Tis nothing but a cloud Across the moon's face. The liquid notes of a nightingale float through the night. Sappho starts up, raptly, listening to the bird. Sappho Listen. . . . Like the plash Of water turned to music still it sounds ! A nightingale ! It is a nightingale — To swear the world is young again, and love Shall live forever. Oh, my Phaon, come And creep a little closer, while it sings ! She moves slowly in the direction of the sound, Phaon still clinging indolently to her hand as she draws away. 132 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon 'Twill only lure you on, and creep away Between the leaves, and seem an empty Voice Along the echoing hillside. Sappho Come, oh, come ! She goes slowly, with intent and upturned face, walking heedless towards the sound as Phaon speaks again. It grows still darker, and the figures seem almost ghostly in the half-light. Phaon Then I must burn a signal to my men, For I see lights on shore, new lights at sea, And torches moving by the outer cliff. He twists three handfuls of dried grass loosely together, and three times burns a signal from the cliff-edge, lighting his beacon on the smouldering urn-fire at the atlar. The drifting flame lights up his bronzed face and figure. As he stands there, peering out for an answer- ing signal, Inarchus and a group of armed hoplites enter from the rear. The men carry flaring torches. Their armor sounds noisily through the quietness, SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 133 and Phaon wheels about with resentment, eyeing the intruders almost angrily, but otherwise unmoved. Inarchus {with the gruff, deep-chested voice 0} a grizzled veteran, blujj, matter-of-fact, authoritative) You, there — what man are you ? Pfiaon First tell me then What fish are you? Inarchus Men, hold your torches close ! They swing about, circling Phaon with light. He starts back in anger as the smoking torches flare in his face. Phaon Stand back ! Stand back there with your stinking brands, Or by the gods, you go across this cliff, And drink a tierce of brine ! The men jail back a little, but Inarchus remains unmoved. What seek you here? 134 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Inarchus Is your name Phaon? Phaon Phaon once it was ! The hoplites remain motionless, while Inarchus bends over a scroll of parchment, under one of the torches. Inarchus Phaon, of Chios born, but many years Of Lesbos, once a ferry-man to Mysia, And now the master of a ship that plies From Lemnos down to Cyprus, and still out As far as Sicily, and north at times as far As Leucate? Phaon I am that selfsame man. Inarchus Ho, Lesbians, stand close ! . . . Then you are charged Of seizing and of taking off, by force, To sea with you the girl Omaphale, Daughter of Rhodopus of Pharos, born A free-man . . . SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 135 Phaon Stop! Who makes this chaTge? Inarchus {ignoring his query) . . . The girl Thus seized, abducted, and betrayed, was held Against her will . . . Phaon What woman need I hold Against her will ? Inarchus . . . And on your ship was forced To suffer . . . Phaon (his quick anger now aroused) Stop ! Enough ! This woman came Unforced and willingly ! Inarchus (cynically) This shall be seen. Phaon Has she thus spoken? Inarchus She has spoken naught . . . 136 SAPPHO IN ZEUCADIA Phaon Then who confronts me with this charge? Inarchus 'Twas laid By one in Lesbos. Phaon Not the girl herself? Inarchus By one who is esteemed of Pittacus Himself, who makes the woman's cause his own ! Phaon And is this man sometimes Alcaeus called? Inarchus Alcaeus, if you will. Phaon I thought as much ! Inarchus The charge was laid . . . SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 137 Phaon (passionately) ... By one who learned to fawn Round Tyrants that have taught him not to snarl ; By one who strums on harps and boasts how calm And water-cool his numbers are, yet was Lycimnia's, Clito's, Stheno's lover; by The priest of half-way passion, who is hot And cold by turns ; by him who struts and mouths Of closet intrigues up and down the streets Of Mytilene ! Inarchus Cease ! For Justice mouths Still up and down the streets of Mytilene ! Sir, I am of the guard of Pittacus. To him three witnesses have duly sworn You carried off this girl, while mad with wine . . . Pliaon They lie, each one of them ! hwrdius . . . While mad with wine, You seized and took this girl, the sister of Scylax, the youth Alcaeus schools in song. Hence, by the new decree of Pittacus, Who stands behind Alcaeus that the law 138 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A May be upheld, all crime in drunkenness Enacted shall be met by punishment Two-fold ! Phaon A blow for wine, and then a blow, I take it, for the fall the wine compelled ! And so Alcaeus thus resents the hand That holds what ne'er was his . . . and so he fights ! Inarchus He stands within the law, my hot-eyed youth ! He knows his ground, and he in Lesbos said You should be branded like a slave re-caught, Ay, dragged back unto Justice by the hair ! Phaon* s quick southern blood is now on fire, and he snatches out the short-bladed Lesbian sword that hangs at his waist. He turns on them. Phaon Enough of this ! Who drags me by the hair ? Who brands me like a slave? You lead these men, You seem to be the mouth-piece of this king In Lesbos who ordains how men shall love And shall not love ! I say this woman came To me of her free will. And you have said SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 139 That like a street- cur with a bone, I caught And seized and carried her away ! You stand And cry such things ! Great gods, no breathing man Speaks words like this to me — you hireling dog Of harlot-mongers, we shall fight this out ! Inarch us I do not fight with brawlers of the sea, With every cut-throat who has smelt of pitch And carried off a woman ! Phaon Mark you this: Here stands a hawser-puller you shall fight ! Here stands an anchor-scraper who will make You eat your liar's oaths, or die of it ! Inarchus (who now holds himself in with a visible effort) No, I am here the servant of the Law , . . Phaon Then say this woman was not seized by me, Or Law and you are liars ! Inarchus What you seized Or left unseized, is not for me to say ! 140 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon And there again you lie. . . . You could have sought This woman out, and from her mouth have learned The truth itself. Instead of that you take The pay of slanderers, and nose through mire For money ! Inarchus Check this passion, or by all The gods of war, your tongue shall taste my steel! Phaon I feed on steel when cowards such as you Hold forth a platter ! Come ! I love to spit Fat-legged defamers, pompous cavillers, Red-nosed deriders . . . Inarchus (beyond control now) Stop; we two shall fight; We two shall fight, you Fury of the Deep, You tunny spiced with brine ! Come ; we shall fight ! Inarchus discards his heavy metal shield, and flings down his spear, keeping only his short-bladed Grecian sword. The torch-bearers fall back and range them- selves in a wider but regular circle about the two com- batants. Inarchus faces the infuriated Phaon with the contemptuous pity of a seasoned soldier for an unequal SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 141 foe, with the forbearance oj a misunderstood man forced into an v.ndesired fight. Then the momentary silence is broken by the zvice of Sappho, sounding clear, mellow, unexpected, out of the gloom. It is a call that is rich and low, alluring and warm. As Phaon hears it he remembers. A change creeps over him; lie awakens, as from a dream, and uncon- sciously draws back. Then his arm slowly falls, down to his side. Sappho My Phaon, are you coming? I have found The thicket, and the nightingale has sung Of love, love, love to me, until my arms Are aching for you? Are you coming soon? Phaon Her voice? {Inarchus wheels about in amazement) Inarchus What girl is this that floats between The trees? Phaon It must not be ! Xo, no ; not now ! Inarchus Who is this virgin lost in th' moonlight there? — How many women woo you, in the year? 142 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon She must not know ! This can not be to-night! It must not be ! Inarchus How now? What must not be? Phaon I was a fool ... I cannot fight with you ! Inarchus gods of war, what weather-cocks we are S — This fight you hungered for, and you shall have I Phaon No; I was blind; I must not, can not, fight! Oh, more in this there is than you can know; Yet listen, for beneath the gods I speak The utter truth ! If I have done aught wrong 1 shall still answer for it. But this girl Omaphale, of her own choosing, made My ship her home till one short journey's end ! It was a youthful folly, and naught else, A wildness of the blood, a weakness shown And set aright. A coast girl she had been, And swam out like a nereid to my prow When we were in the harbor. She would sit SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 143 Upon the galley's thwart and shyly laugh And talk with me. She month by month would watch For my return. Then one day when we sat Alone upon the deck, and her dark hair Fell loose about her, drying in the sun, A silence crept upon us, and her face Went suddenly white and she cried out to me: " Oh, I would go with you unto the ends Of all the world ! " And when I wakened she Lay weeping there upon my arm ! Inarchus And so? Sappho (from without) Are you not coming, Phaon? Phaon Coming — yes. Inarchus When you, good youth, have passed a further word Or two with me ! Phaon Then quick, what would you hear? 144 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Inarchus Put up your sword ! ... I am the instrument And not the State you answer to. These things Must still be told to them who know the Law . They shall be told . . . So late, my Phaon? Phaon Sappho What keeps you waiting there Phaon 'Tis a crying ewe Strayed from its flock ! Quick, closer here. My ship Lies yonder in the bay. At dawn we sail For Lesbos. There I pledge to meet this charge And show it false. Inarchus (impatiently) How will you show it false? Phaon By bringing my accusers and this girl Together, face to face. If she then says That I compelled her into crime, I stand Prepared for punishment. Alcaeus then SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 145 Can be disposed of one who crossed his path More times than once. . . . Nay, send these very men Aboard my ship, to guard the homeward course — But as you are a man of justice, breathe Xo word of this mad charge to . . . {Sappho has entered while he speaks, and stands before the group, for a moment perplexed. Then she holds torch after torch to the immobile faces of the hoplites, still puzzled) Sappho Are these? But what men Phaon Fresh seamen, for the ship, I signalled for. Sappho Their faces all look strange. I thought I knew Each man among them, all who used to sing On deck with me the Sailors' Song to Dusk ! They all look hard and cold. . . . And this great cliff Is but the rampart from which cruel Love Thrusts out its lost, as from the frowning walls Of War the dead are flung ! She shudders and shrinks away, then starts, looks upward, and motions, almost imperiously, for the silent Phaon. 146 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA But hark; there flutes And calls the nightingale again. ... So come. . . . This is our last night, Love, on Leucate ! She links her arm in Phaon's, and they stand listening, with uplifted faces swept by the clear, blue-white moonlight breaking through soft cloud-rifts. The foot-soldiers stand motionless, their torches flaring. Curtain SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 147 ACT TWO An almond and olive grove above the JEgean Sea, near Mytilene, two weeks later. In the foreground is an open space, soft with turf, shadowed on the right by a row of cypresses, through which the pale marble of a headland Pharos towers and glimmers. On the left stretches the calm turquoise of the water. Violets can be seen thick along the cliff -edge, and flowers in profusion add to the coloring of the tropical background. It is late afternoon as the curtain goes up, and Alcaeus is discovered striding back and forth, lean and pale and impatient. A moment later Omaphale creeps in, looks about, and turns to Alcaeus with what is half a sob and half a gasp of disappointment. She is a slender, white-faced young girl with tragic and haunted eyes. Omaphale He is not here? Alcaeus Did Zetes of the Guard Give you the message ? 148 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Omaphale (still peering about) Yes. ... He is not here ! Alcaeus Then what we two would speak of must be held In secrecy. Omaphale I know . . . But where is he? You promised that my Phaon would be here ! Alcaeus Your Phaon ! Girl, when was this Phaon yours ? Omaphale I loved him, sir Alcaeus She loved him ! So, indeed, Have other women done, and little good E'er came of it. If this man could be torn To pieces as Actaeon, or as Pentheus was, And parcelled out to them he claimed to love, Still would there be some woman unpossessed Of this capricious eel, this ferry-man That swims in amorous tears ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 149 Omaphale But you have said That you would bring him back to me ! Alcaeus I said That if you acted as I may ordain Your lover should once more be brought to you. Omaphale What is it I must do? Alcaeus If still you wish To wed this Phaon, 'tis within the power Of Pittacus to make you man and wife — If such you ask. Omaphale What must I do? Alcaeus You wish To make him yours, to see him bound to you? Omaphale I care not if he weds me, or he comes And takes me quite unwed ... if only he Will love me ! 150 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Alcaeus Yet if wedded to this man You still may hold him, and you will be his Through every change of heart, and he must house And clothe and feed you, as the law commands. Omaphale As he may house and feed a hungry dog, And love it not ! I care not for the law — If he will love me, that is all I ask. Alcaeus You harp on love as though it were the last And only thing in life ! Omaphale It is — to me ! Alcaeus (aside) It was — to me. But I am wiser now. Come closer while I speak — it must be brief. If still you love this man you shall be made His wife. To-night in Mytilene meets The Assembly, and its Council can decree That Phaon marry you, if you but swear That having lured you from your father's home, By force he took you off to sea, and there . . . SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 1 5 Omaphale This is not true ! Alcaeus But truth it must be made ! Omaphale No, no ; I went of my own will ! Alcaeus Then weak You were, and foolish ! Omaphale (softly) Yes ... but happy, too ! Alcaeus Why were you happy? Omaphale Was I not with him? Alcaeus Then do as I have said, and you may be Once more with him, Swear that, against your will He took you out to sea — and in one day All Lesbos will acclaim you as his wife ! 152 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Omaphale And him — what will I be to him ? These words Are not the truth ! Why should I seek to hold His love by lies? Alcaeus You knew, and lost, his love — That is the final truth we two must face. But still the man himself comes back to you If you but raise a finger ! Omaphale Lost his love? Alcaeus Then you can keep him close ; then you can guard His coming and his going, and ward off Another woman's witcheries ! Omaphale (wanly) Ward off Another woman's witcheries ! . . . You mean He loves some other woman now? Alcaeus He loves Another woman. SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 153 Omaphale All ... all these long months — Was she with him for all these endless months? Alcaeus They were together ! Omaphale (bewildered) And I lost his love ! Alcaeus (bitterly) Then say the word, and tear him from her arms, And teach him what it is to feel the teeth Of hunger in his heart, to know the ache Of empty nights, the dragging days of pain More desolate than any Hell, the years Embittered, ay, the broken life that crawls And whines for death ! Omaphale You hate this man! Alcaeus (remembering himself, and reining in his fury) I hold him one who should be envied more Than Pittacus himself ... I hate him not. 154 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Omaphale From you he took this woman — Hwas from you! Alcaeus Mine she had never been ! Omaphale {remembering) But now is his! Alcaeus — Until you say the word that brings him back ! Some one approaches . . . Quick ! We must be brief. Will you, before the Council, make this charge ? Omaphale Would I against him make this charge ? No ; no ! I cannot ! Oh, I cannot ! It would mean His empty body, his unanswering eyes, His sullen unconcern, his growing hate For me, his gaoler, and his greater love For that far happier woman still withheld ! 'Twould be like creeping to the tomb of one We loved and lost, and gnawing on the bones That once embraced us ! No ... It shall not be ! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 155 Alcaeus The law itself may act ! ... if you will not. Omaphale I cannot act against the man I love. Alcaeus Quick, Pittacus approaches; we must not Be seen together. Turn and walk away Between the olive-trees, and look not back Until you seem alone. And not a word Of what I said until you meet me here At nightfall. ■©* Omaphale (bewildered and broken) Phaon loves another ! Alcaeus Quick, And think upon these things, until we meet. As Omaphale creeps slowly and dispiritedly away, Pittacus and Inarchus, in full armor, enter, followed by Phocus, carrying a leather)! wine-sack. He is fat and blowsy, and prone to drop off into sudden sleep. Alcaeus greets the Tyrant and his Body- 156 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A guard, and stands beside Pittacus. Both seem lean and moody men preoccupied with their own thoughts and ends. Phocus settles himself beside a stunted olive-tree and slumbers. Inarchus 'Tis here between the Pharos and the Sea These women sing ! Pittacus We know they sing, but what ? Inarchus By Pluto's bones, 'tis more than I can say ! But here, as you and Pittacus desired, I placed a guard, disguised as shepherd-boys; And honest Phocus as a swine-herd sat Close by and listened, since he has the gift Of making song, like good Alcaeus here. Alcaeus Now, by Apollo's harp, this is too much ! Pittacus Then tell us what was heard. SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 157 Inarckus In the cool of early day They come with cithara and harp and lyre .And plectrum, with outlandish instruments Of string and wood, inlaid with ivory. And some with gold, and squat between this grove And yonder cypresses. Pittacus {impatiently) But what was said Between these women? What songs were sung? Inarckus I am a rough man, sir, a son of War, Unschooled in twiddling thumbs on things of gold .And ivory. 'Twere best ask Phocus here; (He kicks Phocus to aicaken him) His trade is making song ! Ho, Phocus, wake. Phocus By Bacchus, now, I must have had a wink Of sleep! (He yawns and stretches, lazily) Inarckus Tell us what amorous breed o' song Your swine-herd ears were fed on vester-morn ! 158 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phocus What breed o' song ! Song fit for one that was In truth a swine-herd ! Sirs, such sorry stuff That I all but foreswore Euterpe's cause And turned to honest labor — for this talk Of Sappho and her school disgorges me ! Alcaeus (aside) But, mark you, not of words ! Phocus I could have shown Your Lesbos, ay, and Athens, what true song And singing is, but paugh ! they'd know it not ! This world of ours grows worse, sirs, year by year, And all they take to now is sham and sound ! Pittacus (to Alcaeus) Oh, muffle somewhat these Mygdonian pipes ! Phocus Why, song's not what I well remember it — There was in Samnos, when I was a boy, A lean old goat-herd — what a drunkard, too ! SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 159 Alcaeus (to Pittacus) Who died of a grape seed in the wind-pipe, sir ! Phocus — Who strung, across a shark's-jaw on a box Of cedar dipped in beeswax, rive short strings, And twanged them with a little brazen thumb, And made up songs about the early days, When life was worth the living, giving us Most wondrous music — that I mind right well ! Pittacus But we are like all Greece ; we still would know Of Sappho's singing ! Phocus Sappho's singing — paugh ! The lady, mark you, sir, I much esteem, And hold no quarrel with — 'tis but this stuff Of burning fire and brimstone, and the mouth Of black volcanoes boiling up with love That scorches half of Lesbos ! I could take A syrinx made of willows and out-sing This walking cithara, if only men Would come and listen ! (He drinks and settles bach, as if making ready to sleep) 160 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Alcaeus As we do, alas ! Pittacus Enough of this fat wine-sack ! Let me know What you have noted ! Inarchus Sir, as I have said, This Sappho that you bade me watch so close Comes forth and talks with them, all draped in flowers, And schools them in the mincing of big words To foolish sounding music ! What might pass Between them more I know not. But 'tis here They come and sit and brood above the sea, Like mooning cliff-birds ! Pittacus Men and girls alike? Inarchus No; girls alone — grown girls — fine amorous-eyed Deep-bosomed women, who should love and mate With men like me, and bear us soldiers, sir, To laugh at Solon, and have Lesbos feared ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA l6l Pittacus And who shall fear an island full of harps? Inarchus I am a bluff man, sir, and what it means, This singing of white virgins, I know not ! But when I was a youth no girls sat down With girls, and strummed on wires of twisted gut Alcaeus Mark you his words ! There lies the only way This woman can be met and overthrown ! Since Athens crowned her for her singing here They wait upon her like a goddess ! Pittacus True! And for a crown of olive ! Yesterday My chariot-wheels rang through deserted streets And not a slave-girl watched me as I went. But on the wharves all Mytilene cheered; The harbor rocked with roses, and the ships Lay smothered under blossoms, and a barge Of myrtle-branches and shrill-singing girls Went from the Western Quay, and boys swam out 162 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Beyond the Second Bar — all, all to meet Her sail — the sail of Sappho coming back To Lesbos ! Alcaeus Yet you always scoffed at Song ! Pittacus And every way she turned were cries and tears, And every street she walked was paved with leaves Of oleander ! Alcaeus And you scoffed at Song! Pittacus I knew no need of Song. I had my work — My work that led me on by paths austere And walked beside me with its patient eyes And seemed forever mirthless. Yet when life Grew wise and hard and empty, and the friends Of youth all fell away, 'twas in this friend, 'Twas in this comrade with the quiet eyes And solemn brow, I found my final peace. Alcaeus And she will come and overthrow that peace With other friends — for she is loved of all Your people, and she sways them at a word ! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 163 Pittacus Ay, sways them as a wine-vat sways a mob ! Alcaeus But still she sways them ! Should they see her go From Lesbos, as you threatened, at a word The island would take fire and rage and sweep With one unending " Down with Pittacus ! » Pittacus I have scant fear of that ! Much more I fear What this poor land may fall to ! Think of it In hands like Sappho's, drugged with sighs and song As well ask butterfiies to fight for us, Ask larks to haul the iron-rimmed wheels of state ! Too well I see it ! This shall be the home Of weaklings ; while some sturdier land unknown To us shall cub rough-hearted men of war, Men strong and ruthless, ravenous, uncouth, To sweep upon us with their hurrying hordes And grind our gentle hands and golden harps Beneath barbarian heels. Wine, wine I hate, And Sappho hate — and both shall be put down ! Alcaeus You of To-morrow dream : she sings To-day ! — I thought and sang of both, and neither won ! 164 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Pittacus Ah, yes ! This crown they gave her — was it not Once offered you? Alcaeus I sang not for the mob ! They howled for love and wine and rhapsody; And to the songs I make must ever cling Some touch of tears and twilight. It may be That I, like Phocus there, was born before My time. So when I saw that I should stand Against a woman, I withdrew ! Pittacus Withdrew, And let a Sappho win ! It has been said You loved this woman? Alcaeus Sir, she has been loved By many, and because of that, perchance, She is as hard to combat as to win ! Pittacus I fear no woman ! Alcaeus Since you fought with none ! Nay, strike not openly, but undermine SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 165 In secrecy this wall that neither you Nor I can ever scale. Pittacus What mean you? Speak! Alcaeus I mean it has been said this woman's wiles Are strange; she makes our wives forget their homes And voung girls who have never loved awake And cry for tender words, and maidens, too, That kissed o'er close, still seek another's mouth ; Half-mad with music, makes our women leave Their waiting lovers and creep after her With pleading eyes, and cling about her neck And call her beautiful and passionate names ! And all the world has known that all her songs Are drenched in tumult and with rapture washed. Pittacus Nay, start me not to storming on this string That I have thumbed so often ! She it is Who leads my men away, and plants their spears In colonnades, where rose and meadow-sweet May climb, and little garden-birds may chirp ! She is the author of our idle days, Our festivals of folly crowned with flowers, Our bacchanalian midnights mad with wine 1 66 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A And song and reeling dance; our lovers pale And silent in the gloom, who neither laugh Nor move where gleam the white of arms And marbled throats and limbs voluptuous ! Oft have I stumbled on this cyathus That over-runs with fire, and marked the ways Of those who follow her, the fearless laugh, The muffled stir of torches through the leaves, The flight, denial, capture, and the faint Last struggles of some lover lost in sighs And swooning unconcern — and through it all The throbbing of the lyres, the drone and beat Of citharas, the broken woodland chants, The midnight sorceries, where they who weave O'er-sweetened words to music sit and dream By drooping oleanders, flinging lust And enervating passion out across This land of lovers ! Paugh, I hate it all ! Alcaeus Your people should be told, then: " Here is one ^Tio would corrupt the rose of Lesbian youth, Who leaves a blight upon our homes, a taint Upon our island ! " Pittacus Yes; but to what end? SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 167 Alcaeus That where we idle wait the gods may act ! The seed thus planted quietly shall grow, Shall spread suspicion, and shall pave the way For grim uprootings. When the time is ripe Proclaim the woman for the thing she is ! Phocus I must have slept a wink, and known it not ! {He rises and quietly drinks as the sound of music and chanting voices floats sojtly up from the sea below them) Pittacus Listen, what sound is that? Alcaeus It is the song All Lesbos sings at sunset ! Pittacus All Lesbos sings? Alcaeus The Sailors' Hymn to Sunset it is called; From every harbor where a tired oar drips, 1 68 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Or rope is tied, or weary anchor dropped, This selfsame music rises from the sea. P hocus (aside, muttering) That is the wide-mouthed rubble that the men Of this mad Lesbos take, and leave unsung My Shepherds' Song to She-Goats, writ by me In pure iLolic, in Ionic, too, That ripples like a rill ! (He sighs and sleeps) Pittacus "Whence came this song ? Alcaeus It comes from Sappho! Listen; next to that They call the Song For Lovers, and its mate, The Sailors' Hymn to Sunrise, 'tis most sung. The two men turn towards the Sea, listening. And wonderful it is ! From ship to ship, From cape to misty cape, from wharf to wharf, From harbor-town to headland and still on To harbor-town it rises, eve by eve. It mounts and swings until a chain of song Round Lesbos has been woven ! Phocus stirs and wakens, rubbing his eyes. Then he shows that he is listening to the speakers preoccupied on the cliff. SAPPHO IX LEU CADI A 1 69 Pittacus I thought as much ! This woman stands a menace and a shame — She must be silenced. Alcaeus Then, before I go, Let me one sentence add : 'Twere best to strike At her through Phaon — cut the cypress low, And let the ivy wither, where it lies. Of Phaon's deeds you know: should he go down, Her desperate love for him would spell her own Untimely ruin. Let them fall as one! Pittacus She has her following, such as it is ! We must strike cautiously. This Phaon boasts That he has talked with goddesses, you say? Alcaeus He is the man who claims Poseidon speaks With him across his gunwale. Still he tells How on a night of storm and rain he found A woman muffled in a gloomy cloak, Waiting without a word beside his boat — Who made a sign, whereat he rowed her out, 170 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Against his will, into the driving spray. And all the while her woman's dreaming eyes Shone out like stars, and through the tempest flashed Her white face like a flame, and filled his heart With fear and wonder. And they reached the land; And she passed silently out through the night, And left no sign or footprint on the sand; And he has claimed she was a goddess. Pittacus (cynically) He May need her help ! Alcaeus We boast no goddesses To fight for us, in either love or war; So we must stand prepared, and wait our hour . . Pittacus And when the time is ripe . . . Alcaeus The gods may act Where we have been most idle. I must go ! (Exit) SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 171 Phocus (peering blearily after Alcaeus) Now, by the horn of Bacchus, here will be Ervngo-root to spice to-morrow's talk ! (He laughs) But soft — there's one as lean as I am fat. Omaphale creeps in, as he speaks. Her face is color- less, her liair dishevelled. She is about to speak to Pittacus, but shrinks away, with a gesture oj fear and despair. A look of hopelessness is on her face, as she advances toward the cliff-edge. Pittacus (wrapt in thought, unconscious of Inarch us standing so close beside him, in the statue-like im- mobility of the long-trained soldier) The gods may act. . . . And out of hate and love, Entangled and embattled, she may fall, As others fell ! (He sees Omaphale) And there, I take it, walks One of her Maenad band, chalk-faced and frail And rapt of eye, a Bassarid grown sick Of too much love ! Inarch us It is Omaphale ! Pittacus Omaphale ! For something lost she seeks ! 172 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Inarchus What seek you, girl ? Omaphale (abstractedly) The Sea ! Inarchus (bluntly) For Phaon's ship? Omaphale He has been taken from me. . . . No, the Sea Is all they left me. . . . 'Tis the only way ! She shudders and draws back, as she peers jrom the verge. But oh, I cannot do it ! I am weak ! The water is so far ! The wheeling birds Still make me dizzy ! Oh, it is too hard ! She lowers her hands, looks up at the sky, the cliff, the sea, gazing slowly about her. Then she closes her eyes, and gropes brokenly toward the sea, her hands once more out-stretched. But now, it must be done ! She is on the very verge when Inarchus seizes her. She struggles fiercely as he drags her back. Oh, let me go ! I only ask to die — that, that is all ! SAPPHO IX LEU CADI A 173 Phocus The girl would kill herself ! Omaphale {struggling ) I want to die! Pittacus What is this madness, girl? (She is silent) What is your name? And why should one so young fight bitterly To go to such a death ! Phocus (sadly) She has been crossed In love, as I in Samnos once was crossed ! Omaphale, wild-eyed and dumb, gazes at them. She breaks away, but is caught by Inarchus. Inarchus What shall I do with her? Pittacus The girl is weak; She shakes and quivers like a captured bird ! 174 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A We may have been too rough ! Some woman's hand Should hold her, and a woman's comrade voice Should question with her softly ! Tell me, girl, What happened you? Phocus Ho, here are women now ! Quick, call them you. From me they might construe One word as an advance, and hold me to it ! Erinna, Atthis and Megara, crowned with flowers, have entered while he speaks. They carry musical instruments. Erinna (dropping her cithara) What has this woman done, to be so held? Inarchus Just what she did I know not, but I think She must be mad, for she would throw herself From off the cliff ! Erinna Why, she is but a girl ! Omaphale turns away, with still another effort to reach the cliff-edge. O Atthis, hasten by the Shepherd's Path, and call To Sappho! Exit Atthis SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 175 Phocus Why call for Sappho? Erinna Knows she not The most assuaging words, the softest tones, To utter to a heart that sorrows wring? Phocus What, Sapphic music at a time like this ! The girl wants wine, good wine, to warm her blood And make her spirits dance ! He ojfers her his nine-flask, but the girl turns away, still silent. The girl is mad ! He offers it again. There is no question but the girl is mad ! He drinks, deeply, and replaces flask, with lips smacking. Erinna Oh, see if Sappho comes. Me gar a Tis Atthis calls. She answers; yes, 'tis Sappho. 176 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Atthis {entering, breathless) She is here. They step back. Sappho enters with an armful of golden samphire, and a lyre oj silver and gilded cedar- wood. She looks from jace to face. There is a suggestion oj power, oj imperiousness, in her bearing. Sappho Why have you called me, Atthis ? Was it you, Erinna ? Erinna Yes, 'twas I. Sappho, whose eyes had met those of Pittacus, in a steady, combative gaze, now sees Inarchus and his captive for the first time. Sappho What girl is this, And why is she held thus, a prisoner ! Phocns Here is a girl, stark mad, who wants to die — And so all Lesbos bellows out for you ! Sappho For me? But why for me? SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 177 Phocus (mincingly) She has a wound That begs the oil of Sapphic song ! She needs A chain of golden music round her thrown, To charm her back to life. Thus have I seen Phoenician jugglers pipe and soothe an asp To sleep most beautiful ! So, since she will Not drink of wine, let music do its worst ! Sappho Peace, peace; this girl is shaking like a leaf, She has been tortured by more things than fear ! Why, child, look up at me ! You are too young To know what sorrow is ! These eyes are still Too soft to peer into the awful Night That never answers us, and never ends ! Sappho kneels and takes the girl's hands, with a sign for Inarch us to release her. Inarchus glances at Pittacus. The latter nods, as if in assent. Inarchus holds the girl by only one arm. Phocus Now, by Astarte's eyes, here stands a test ! Here is the first, so called, most eloquent Of Lesbian singers with a pretty task : 178 SAPPHO IN LEV CADI A To medicine a grief, to make this girl Content with life, as wine might do for me ! {He drinks) Pittacus You, Sappho, you forever sing of life And of its joys. Let, then, your lyric gift Lure back to love of life this broken girl — Ay, let it stand a test, as Phocus says ! Sappho I seek no triumph, I should ask no test At such a time ! For even Pittacus I could not toy upon a wounded heart ! Pittacus But you will talk with her, will plead with her? Sappho As I would plead with any troubled soul ! Release the maiden — she will not escape. Why, you are nothing but a girl ! Sappho holds the girVs face between her hands, gazing into it. Then she continues to speak, gradually growing oblivious of those about her. All life Should mean so much to one who still has youth ! These saddened lips were made for happiness SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 179 And tender words and kisses touched with fire ! Such eyes as these should never mournful seem ! What sorrow is it makes them swim with tears And shakes your slender body? Speak to me What is it that has made all life so dark? Omaphale No longer, now, he loves me. Sappho Tell me more. Omaphale His love is dead, and I must die with it. Sappho No, no; think not because some foolish word Has passed between you — Omaphale Dead, his love is dead ; He is another's now ! Sappho But love is love; Although the torch may fall, the sacred fire Endures and burns; the broken dream comes back; 180 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A The voices of the Spring may pass away, But other Springs shall bear another song And life shall know some newer love ! P hocus (aside) Now, by the horn of Bacchus, here is Song Put into use ! Sappho Nay, speak to me ! Omaphale He loves Another ! Let me die ! Sappho (pleadingly, softly) . . . And say farewell To light and warmth and greenness, and go down To some grey world of ghosts you know not of ! Think, think, what life still means . . . think of the joy Of breathing in such beauty, dusk and dawn, Moonbeam and starlight, sun and wind and sea, The marbled cities and the silences, The sting and sweep of the storm on night of rain, The wild surf and the brine-smell and the ship That brings the heart we love, the tangle old SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 181 Of tears and laughter, rapture and regret, The sheer glad careless god-like going-on From day to golden day, the grapeless wine Of music, dreaming music, to upbuild Ethereal homes for us when we have tired Of too much joy, the throats of song to lift Us out of loneliness and give our tears A touch of beauty, and the last great gift, The gift of Love, that makes death pitiful, And paves the world with wonder ! Omaphale All I asked Was that he love me — and he loves me not ! Pittacus {aside to Inarchus) Behold where Phaon comes, mark well each word That passes here between the two ! Enter Phaon, who stands unnoticed on the outskirts of the preoccupied group. Sappho Tell me The name of him who has forgotten you ! Omaphale I cannot tell ! Sappho Say where he may be found. 182 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Omaphale shakes her head, obdurately. Sappho still looks at her silent face, in wonder. Then you can hate him not ? You love him still ? Could you not steal unto his couch and plunge A knife into his sleeping heart? And she, The one who came between you — would you kill This cruel woman with her careless smiles? Omaphale I love this man so much that I would die To see him happy ! Sappho But what man is this Who merits such mad love? Omaphale (looking away and seeing Phaon, in one in- voluntary scream) Phaon ! Sappho Why Phaon? What is Phaon unto you? Omaphale O Phaon, tell them that you were, you are, The man I loved . . . tell them ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 183 Sappho (pointing to Phaon) Know you this man ? Pittacus Come, answer quickly, child ! Sappho Know you this man ? Enter Alcaeus, who watches silent and uneasy. Omaphale He was — no, no ; this means some woe I cannot understand. What makes your face So white ? You shrink and quiver and your eyes Are like dead women's eyes ! This means some harm To him! No, no, / nercer knew this man! Pittacus You knew him not? OmapJtale (the falsehood only too obvious) No ! No ! I knew him not ! (To Alcaeus) You, you can tell them he is innocent ! She starts towards Phaon with outstretched hands, but is held back by the stolid Inarchus. Alcaeus The girl is lying. 1 84 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Sappho Lying? Alcaeus Yes; she says These words to shield the man. Sappho Whatman? Whatman? Pittacus What man would hide and skulk and wait behind A woman's lie? Alcaeus The man who took this girl And loved her till she grew a weariness To him, the man who bore her off to sea Against her will, and found in other lands Another lover . . . Sappho Then his name ! His name ! Alcaeus His name is Phaon. Omaphale No — he took me not Against my will. I loved him, and I went. SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 185 Phaon The woman speaks the truth ! I skulk behind No lies; and you, my sweet Alcaeus, you Shall answer for this thing, or — Pittacus Silence ! Sappho (starting back, shaking) So, This is the truth ! — And this the man I sousrht ! "■o 1 Pliaon (to Alcaeus) Oh, you, you half-way lover of women, you Shall answer for these lies — you Janus-face ! Omaphale (weeping before Pittacus) We went as lovers, sir, as happy lovers ! Sappho This is the truth, indeed, the woman speaks ! Oh, this is more than I can bear ! They went As lovers, till he looked about and found Another lover from another land ! 1 86 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Phocus {wagging his head) If you would shake the tree, then must you sort The fruit ! Omaphale Will you forgive me, Phaon? Sappho Go — Go to your lover ! Go, I give him back To you ! Go there into his arms again ! He waits for you — he is impatient, see ! Phaon Stop — this is mockery ! Sappho See, I have sung You back upon his breast. Look, I have saved You from the Sea, that you may kiss his mouth ! Yes ! Yes ! I, I have saved you for this man ! With words as soft as first-born love I brought You back to him ! Most bravely, was it not, Great Pittacus, I cooed and pleaded here, I sounded like a gymnast of the wires, The glory and the wonder of all life ! — But I shall wring your State with no more song, And I shall mouth no more, and plead no more ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 187 She flings her harp flashing and twirling into thesEgean. This is the end of love ! This is the end Of faith in man, in life, in every god That mocks your temples ! Phocus {aside) ,£tna, to a turn ! Erinna (seeping) O Sappho, come away! Atthis Oh, come with us ! Sappho Yes. I will come with you; the ghost of me Will walk and talk with you — but I am dead ! This man has killed all life, all love, in me, All happiness, all music, and all song ! Phaon Nay, hear me, but a word . . . Sappho Wait, I shall speak! Alcaeus, Phocus, you have wooed me both — 1 88 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Sought me for many years, and day and night Sighed after me ! Behold, I am for sale, For sale to him who takes me where I stand ! I, Sappho, Queen of Song, ay, Queen of Love, The Tenth Muse after whom the others walk, Am I not worth the taking, one of you? Alcaeus {his lean face blanching at her words) And you will hold to this? Sappho I hold to it ! I hold to anything that crushes him That I have learned to hate ! You fear this man ? Are both of you afraid? P hocus Now, by the horn Of Bacchus, lady, I did love you well — But weeping for it left me scant o' breath 1 Phaon, who Jtas snatched out his sword, now turns on the more dangerous and determined Alcaeus. Phaon I care not who he is, but by the gods Of seamen I will spit the first rash fool Who listens to this woman ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 189 Sappho One of you, Which one of you will take me where I stand? Phaon Who does so, first must taste this bitter steel ! Alcaeus {aside to Phaon) This is no place for brawling ! Phaon {desperately) What, you still Would w t oo your old-time love? Alcaeus I stand unarmed — And thank your gods for it ! But meet me here At dawn, and you and I shall fight this out, And I shall kill you ! Phaon Kill me ! I could mow 7 My way through fields of music-tinkler's throats, Dig through a mountain made of poet's hearts, Ay, swim and bathe in chorus-monger's blood, And face a dithyrambic sea of all The lean-gilled singers that have harped through Greece ! 190 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Sappho {distraught) Kill him, Alcaeus, for he killed my joy In life; he killed my hope of happiness; He killed my new and tender love ... he killed The careless singing voices of my heart ! . . . Oh, kill him . . . kill him ... as he killed my soul ! White with fury, she rends and tears her robes, and sinks back exhausted jrom her frenzy as the curtain jails. Curtain. SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 191 ACT THREE Scene: the same as in Act II, early the next morning. Erinna and Atthis, white and worn with watching, jace the sea. Erinna See, Atthis, it is morning ! Atthis What a night Of sorrow ! Erinna Like a child she wept and cried For Phaon, and then paced the echoing gloom, And asked if it were cruel thus to kill The man who made her suffer ! Then her wrath Broke forth again, and down on him she called The curses of the gods, then calmer grew, And fell to weeping. Atthis I have sometimes thought Her love was like her music when she sang I9 2 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA To us at midnight. 'Tis o'er passionate, And seems as deep as life, as dark as death, And wild beyond all words ! In this our world There are two kinds of women : one men seek And desperately love, and some day leave, Or some day meet their death for; likewise one They seek not drunkenly, and yet when known, They labor for, and cleave to, all their years, And fight back from the world's end to rejoin. The eternal mother calm of brow, the one, And one, the eternal lover ! Erinna Sappho has The strength and fire of each ! I love her so I could not see her faults. Atthis She asks too much, And ever gives too much. She is of those Who threaten when they most alluring seem, Who menace even when they yield the most. Volcanic are such women : that same fire Which makes them dangerous and dark and cruel Still leaves them warm and rich and bountiful, And Love creeps closer, presses ever up, Up to the central fires, and mile by mile The soft audacious green of vineyard dares SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 193 The dreaming crater. Then the outbreak comes, And through the red-lipped lava and the ruin The world remembers ! Erinna Nay, you do her wrong. She bleeds when she is wounded, but her ways Are soft and gentle. Midnight scarce had gone Ere she grew calm and sought Alcaeus out. And called him from his home, and through the gloom Of his walled garden pleaded that he would Be merciful to Phaon. Atthis He, merciful! Erinna Alcaeus said that honor bade him meet The man who challenged him, yet gave his word, His cryptic word, that Phaon should not die, If she but yielded him the little ring Of beaten gold she wore upon her wrist ! Atthis I fear this self-contained and watchful man, Whose words are but a sheath to hide his thoughts. 194 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Erinna I, too, I fear the outcome of it all ! Atthis If Sappho were but here ! Erinna (looking about) And Phocus, too — He should have come to us, an hour ago ! When once her woman's rage has burned away, She will go back to Phaon, for such love As she has known can wither not and die In one short night. Atthis If only Pittacus Would come to Sappho's aid ! Erinna Not Pittacus! Nay, Pittacus is hard and granite cold, His breast is adamant, his hand is steel, And he has dreamed that while this land endures His name and that of Lesbos shall be linked ! He wills that on each temple " Pittacus " Shall be inscribed in letters all of gold; And bitter in his mouth has been the praise SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 195 Of Sappho; he has grown to hate her name, Yet fears to act. But he may make this night A pretext . . . See, 'tis Phocus come at last. Enter Phocus, panting Phocus Ho, what a climb ! Had I not stumbled on A snoring herdsman with a wine-sack full Of better life than his, I should be prone Beside the City Wall ! Oh, what a climb ! Erinna But quick, what news? Phocus News? News enough to swamp A galley! Pittacus is on his way; Alcaeus by the herd-path also comes, And Mytilene crowds upon the heels Of Sappho, caterwauling ribald song, And growling curses back upon the Guard ! And Phaon, it is said, was put in arms, And then again was not, and still again 'Tis held he was deported in the night, And still, once more, again, that Pittacus Has issued mandates there shall be no fight — 196 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA While others whisper Phaon hurries forth To meet Alcaeus and right out his right Before 'tis known of ! Erinna {at the sound of singing) Listen ! Hear you not ? — The Sailor's Hymn to Sunrise? Atthis Yes, I hear! Phocus But I have further tidings ! First, a sip O' herdsman's comfort ! — Pittacus, 'tis said, Commands these men must neither meet nor fight. He knows his words are useless — mark you that ! But purposes to wait, and make no move Till this fine-feathered, anchor-fouling, swart, Hot-headed son o' brine called Phaon comes, As he will surely come, and bleats and yawls For clash o' swords. Thereat the waiting Guard Shall clap him into irons; the charge to be Attempt at murder on a citizen, The penalty whereof, and mark you this, Is exile ! Erinna Atthis, I must go at once And seek out Sappho : she must know of this ! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 197 Phocus Nay, wait till I unload ! Tis whispered round That yester-night the Council secretly Decreed that Phaon and Omaphale Should in the streets be married, publicly ! Now, once in Samnos . . . Erinna (to Atthis) Wait on my return ! Exit Erinna Phocus (swelling with importance) And mark you this : the less your Sappho says Concerning what has been, or is to be, The better with you all ! For Pittacus And lean Alcaeus tooth and nail are set On her undoing. Mark you that again ! Atthis It shall not be. No; she and happiness Must walk together. She must live to sing And make life beautiful with music still ! Phocus To sing? Ay, there's the long and short of it ! (He drinks from his flagon) 198 SAPPHO IN LEUCADJA What song is there in these besotted days? A life most scandalous, and then a trick O' mouthing vowels, then a wanton youth And green-sick maid or two to syllable Your milk-and-water sorrows, warble out Your lecherous odes, and, ho, you have a poet ! Atthis A poet who is fat and full of words ! Phocus (swaggering) Now Pittacus has told me, man to man, When seeking of my counsel, that our tunes Have turned too amorous, and must be stopped. And I'm behind him in it ! You talk of song, But once in Samnos was a lean old man Who strung across a shark's jaw on a box — Atthis See, see; they come . . . And Sappho is not here! Enter Alcaeus, armed, attended by only a young servant. Alcaeus He is not here, this man that vowed to face A sea of lilied singers. SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 199 Phocus Fear you not ! This hot-eyed tunny out of Pluto's ditch Is foaming, lashing, frothing hitherward Along the Shepherd's Path {The sun rises) . . . And as he sware He breaks upon us with the rising sun. Enter Phaon, followed by a handful of Lesbian sailors; sunburned, graceful, light-hearted fellows, but now watchful and furtive-eyed. Phaon At dawn it was to be. Well, it is dawn. He whips out his sword, almost gaily, tries its edge on his thumb, and wheels about. Alcaeus, nervous and unstable, not yet sure of his ends, faces his opponent. Alcaeus One word, before this fight begins . . . Phaon Words ! Words ! I want no words ! My life to-day is worth A minnow's ransom ! There's a narrative In naked steel comes nearer to my wish Than words ! 200 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Alcaeus But things there are that we must say By word of mouth. Still let judicial steel . . . Phaon {shortly) These words, then, if you must : I have been told We two are destined not to fight this fight ; That one who much esteems you will step in And stop this combat, as you stand informed ! Alcaeus This is not true ! Phaon {determined) Then show it to be false ! Quick ! I shall brook no quibble or delay ! Fight ! Fight, I charge you ! Quick, defend yourself ! Alcaeus {aside to servant) The Guard ! What keeps the Guard ! {To Phaon) But I would know For what we two are fighting here? Phaon For what? You know full well — a woman ! SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 201 Alcaeus Then, we fight For issues closed ! This woman came to me. PJuion To you? So soon? Within a night? Alcaeus Within A night, since you have said it ! Phaon Liar; still You swim in lies ! Alcaeus And gave this band of gold To be a token — Look well over it ! Phaon looks at the urist-band, incredulous ; Alcaeus, thus gaining time, peers out anxiously, awaiting Pittacus and the Guards. Phaon {quivering) Ha ! Xow ; yes, now we fight ; we doubly need To know which man must die ! We doubly need To know how stand the gods, if this be true ! No more of empty words ! Come, fight it out ! 202 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Alcaens, about to expostulate, finds no time for words. Phaon, advancing, compels him to fight. The crowd draws closer, in an irregular circle, with groans and cheers as the short-bladed swords clash and strike. Foot by foot Alcaeus is forced back. It is obvious that PJiaon is driving him towards the cliff-edge. He is foiled in this by the sudden en- trance of Pittacus, breathless, followed by his Guard. The huge Inarchus strikes down the sword of Alcaeus, who is already cut on the arm. Phaon, seized from behind, still slashes with his sword. Pittacus What brawl is this that stains our Lesbian peace? A Voice A fight for a woman ! Another Voice Let them fight it out ! A Citizen 'Twas Phaon forced him to it ! A Sailor Fight it out ! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 203 A Citizen He fell upon him ! A Citizen Ay, he up with sword And at him like a Fury ! Have it out ! A Sailor They fight in honest combat ! Have it out ! A Citizen Alcaeus was compelled to draw ! A Sailor You lie; He came at dawn to meet this man. Pittacus Be still ! Who sought a Lesbian's life shall pay for it. Guards, put this man in chains, and hold him close. The hoplites seize and manacle the struggling Phaon. The sailors crowd close, but dare not interfere. Pittacus (aside to Alcaeus) The gods have acted . . . With my second blow We shall be masters ! And this man you hate Will go from Lesbos stained in thought and name. 204 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Alcaeus Omaphale — you hold her close ? Pittacus We hold Her close, assuredly. The girl must stand The column of our acts. This Sappho heads An army without arms, that secretly Opposes, threatens, thwarts me. Here, to-day, It shall be brought to issue. We shall learn What hand rules Lesbos still — and more there is In this, than but a foolish woman's fall ! Alcaeus Then, I were best away. Pittacus Go, have your wound Attended, for excuse. (Aloud) But, stop; were you Assaulted by this man? Alcaeus (showing wounded arm) This speaks for me ! Sappho enters, panting, her face pale. She is followed by Erinna and a group oj Lesbians, bearing sickles and grape-knives. SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 205 Pittacus Assault it was. Sappho (authoritatively. Her gaze has been on Plmon) Why is this man in chains? Pittacus He broke a law of Lesbos. Sappho (tauntingly) Did he drink A sip of wine? Or sing a happy chord Of shepherd music? Phocus Shepherd music ! Oh ! Oh ! Shepherd music ! That was good ! 'Twas more Like spouting sulphur crowned with Typhon's fire I Pittacus (judicially, realizing the people before him must be convinced oj the justness of his action) This man defied the State and broke the peace Of Lesbos, and must suffer. I have sought To make this island one of temperate ways, And late and early I have strained and toiled To reach this end. Its wastrel years have left Its name a by-word on the lips of Greece, 206 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A And not until its must-vats are no more, And all its vaults of flagoned indolence Are emptied, and its vineyards are destroyed, And all its simpering harps made into swords, Shall we dare hope to be a State again ! Sappho (defiantly) Then, it is worse to crush a thousand grapes, O, man of war, than twice a thousand lives ? Quick, Phocus, give me of your wine to drink To one who knows his Lesbos ! That puts blood, Good Lesbian blood, in me ! Yet we had thought 'Twas Bacchus who once called this island " home," And blessed our vines ! We thought Methymna saw The harp of Orpheus float to Lesbian shores, The god's own head washed high upon our sands — And from the dead mouth sounds of music creep And crown our island with its gift of song ! The Lesbians That is the truth ! Shepherds Our Sappho speaks the truth ! Sappho Rail not at wine ! When Athens threatened us, And sentineled our shores, and sail by sail SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 207 Shut off the Sea, and flung our ramparts down And left us huddled close, without defence, And all our cattle died for want of rain, And drought drove all our people from the hills, And Lesbos had no water, none to lave The dying, none to give unto the sick, And none to mix the waiting lime and sand Whereof to build a wall against the foe — Mark you the tale — 'twas from the sunburnt hills Our fathers tore the abundant grapes, and crushed The precious liquor from them, vat by vat, And mixed their mortar, and threw up their walls And fought the Athenians back into the Sea ! Nay, rail no more at wine, chaste Pittacus ! The Lesbians And that is truth! Still Sappho speaks the truth! Pittacus To-morrow, then, shall turn it to a lie ! Sappho My people, listen close ! This man of war, This man who walks in steel and sleeps in stone, While we are ramparted by rustling leaves And love and careless flowers, this same man Who would make fortresses of garden walls, And grape-fields into flashing battlegrounds, 208 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Who would turn amphora and urn and bowl To sword and pike and helmet — he would leave Our towns no longer thronging-masted marts, But tankards of dissension and of blood ! He would upon the lamb drape lion-skins, And have us known for what we can not be ! Pittacus No — have us known not as we now are known ! Sappho He to the kilns would fling our carven fauns And to the fire our stately marbles give — Our chiselled dreams that cannot draw a sword, Our Parian mutes that may not bear a pike ! — And make them into lime for arsenal walls, And school us how to loa the a purple grape ! Wine — Wine ! This island sings on, floats on, wine ! Wine roofs our homes, an d feeds our hungry mouths ; Our galleys freight it to the thirsty world, It makes the sorrowful no longer sad; It leaves pain unremem bered, makes us seem The equal of the gods; the aged, young; The sickly, well; the silent, full of song; The parted lover grieve not for his love ! It is a secret god who stoops to make Us rich with music ! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 209 Phocus (aside) Now, by the horn, her words At last are wisdom ! Pittacus Stop, enough of this f There shall be parted lovers that no wine May comfort . . . Let the prisoner stand forth. Sappho (desperately — in a mad torrent oj defiance) And this is wisdom, this the heart and core Of that calm highest fruitage that you flaunt Upon your thought-fed tree of knowledge ! Oh, It maddens me ! These icy grandeurs make Me like a Maenad, make me storm and rage And wonder how the ruddy blood of life Could run so slow and pale ! You never laugh And never weep, men say. . . . You never know The meaning and the glory of the morn, The passion and the pathos of the dusk, The rapture and the wonder of all life ! You are a burnt-out kiln, a river-bed Of aching emptiness, a dried-up vat, A hearth without a fire, a thing of bones ! You have not found the secret and the sweep Of Music, learned the meaning of the Spring, Or known its soft renewals born of love 2IO SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A And sorrow ! You have never watched the Sea Without some miser's thought of tax and toll, Nor bent above the crimson of the rose Without some rapine thought of battle-fields ! Though you should live till your last hair is white. And I and this same man you hold in chains Should die this moment ... we have known of life And earth far more than you could ever know 1 A cry of approval breaks jrom the people. Pittacus Enough of this ! Am I a king of sots? Our cities and our veins have come to flow With waten* wine instea d of good red blood ! We are Sidonian idlers of the night Who pay out gold to have our fighting done By soldiers bred abroad. We are a land That women lead, who strum on droning gut And pipe through foolish tubes along our fields For years untilled, our roads all left unpaved, Our towns and harbors still unfortified. We sit and loiter by the walls that lean No longer mended, and ungathered wait The olive-crops while broken lutes are patched And some new song is learned. Now it must cease! Sappho He says, my people, we must sing no more. SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 21 1 Lesbians And breathe and eat no more ! P hocus (aside) And drink no more? Pittacus I am a patient man, and just, I think. I seek to find the light, and sometimes learn Through error, and advance through unbelief. In things imperial I have been taught To heed my people's wishes, and to yield — But on one base I stand immovable; And now I charge you with its final truth : The State, that learns to act, endures and lives; But one that sits and drones away its nights In wine and amorous dreams, must die of it! Phaon Yet here two men would act : and one you hold In chains — and you a lover of the strong ! But let me at him, and I'll leave him there As swine-fat for your chariot's axletree ! Sappho Yes, one you hold in chains, and say not why ! 212 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Pittacus What I have done was done for Lesbos' sake. Sappho (to the people) Who has done most for Lesbos, Pittacus Or Sappho? The People Sappho ! Sappho ! Sappho Who has taught You to be happy? The People Sappho it has been ! Sappho What are my sins, then, that you strike at me Thus covertly, and put this man in chains? She steps towards Phaon, who turns away from her, with a gesture oj repudiation. Pittacus (seizing his chance) Is this man aught to you? SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 213 Sappho (slowly, after a silence) The man is naught to me ! Pittacus Then what he suffers must be naught to you ! Sappho (dazed) And what I suffered, too, is naught to him ! Pittacus (more assured, realizing Sappho's bewilderment) Your sins are those of Lesbos, that must cease. Sappho And when two lovers kiss, I am the cause? Pittacus Enough ! I say you are a blight and shame To Lesbos, and this man who lived so deep Has lived not in the law. Let him stand forth. You are exiled. In seven days a ship Shall leave this harbor, going forth at night; And under guard you shall go forth with it From Lesbos, and on pain of death return ! Sappho Exiled ! He, Phaon, is exiled from home ! 214 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Pittacus The people of this isle shall speak of you As of the dead. Sappho (rebelliously) My people, have you heard? Erinna O Sappho, say no more, lest some new blow Upon you fall ! Sappho Why should I fear a man Who stands in fear of me? {To Erinna) Now shall I taunt Him till he sends me forth at Phaon's side ! Pittacus (nettled into anger) What man is this who fears you? The people cheer for Sappho, and crowd closer, but the hoplites hold them back with drawn swords, circling about their Tyrant. Sappho (heatedly) 'Tis a man Named Pittacus, who rules by hate and fear And guile — whose guards, see, even now must hold SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A . 215 His subjects back with naked swords ! A king That Athens calls the Fish-Xet Fighter since He bore beneath his arm a hidden seine And when he fought with Phryno cast his net About the stronger man, enmeshed his sword, And like a harbor-sweeper, gilled and caught And claimed his sickly conquest. . . . We were free To choose our lovers and our leaders once, And sing when we were happy ! Lesbians, Here is a man that Pittacus has said Shall into exile go ! And I have said He is unjustly sent and shall not go! Which shall it be, my people? There is a cry or two of " Pittacus " from the waiting guards, followed by a roar of exultant " Sappho! " " Sappho! " Pittacus pales at the sound, and motions to Inarchus. Pittacus Guards, stand forth ! (Aside to Inarchus) I must act quick, or all can still be lost! This woman is a tigress, lashing bars Her fun' yet may break. One whip I have Reserved until the end, one brand of fire To beat her back. You hold in readiness This girl, Omaphale. When I shall give The signal, let her stand before the crowd ! 2l6 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Inarchus The trull shall be produced ! Sappho Behold the king Who casts his people forth without a trial. Pittacus (wheeling) This woman lies ! No Lesbian has known His wrath without just cause ! Sappho Then tell us why This man in chains is exiled ! Pittacus Since he sought A Lesbian's life. Sappho That worthy Lesbian In turn sought his. Pittacus Enough of this; he forced The fight upon Alcaeus ! SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 21 7 Sappho Lies ! All lies ! 'Twas 7, I forced this fight upon them both ! I bent them to my will ; I harried them, And thrust and drove them at each other's throats ! I was the arm behind their lifted sword; I was the rage behind their cries of hate ! And you, who talk of justice, you who turn To smite the path, and let the serpent go, You shrink and wait behind your sullen guard, And dare not act ! Pittacus {enraged) Act, act I shall! You hear This woman's words ? From her own mouth she stands Accused, arraigned, convicted of her crime ! Sappho Nay, not a woman, but the mangled husk, The trampled marc, of one ! Pittacus You are exiled/ A murmur rises from the crowd. 2l8 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Sappho (aside) 'Tis come, Erinna ! He and I shall go Out to the lonely places of the world, And learn to live again. . . . Great Pittacus, I thank you for this banishment ! It means Release, re-birth, to me ! I glory in it ! Pittacus Ay, glory in it, for behold, you win ! You override my word, and doubly win ! You said this Phaon here should not be sent From Lesbos. Then in Lesbos he remains ! You shall be listened to. . . . Your word is law ! Release this man, her vow leaves innocent. 'Tis she who goes from Lesbos, and at dusk! 'Tis she who now shall watch across the spray The failing lights, the slowly sinking hills, The home that is to her no longer home ! Sappho Alone into the world ... yet not alone, For where Love is shall be no banishment, And where Love waits and walks no loneliness ! Pittacus Entombed and coffined from this day you are, And we shall speak of you as of the dead ! SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 219 Sappho Oh, Phaon, did you hear? Time was you turned And fought for me, at words like this ! Phaon Time was I loved you, too ! Sappho Time was you loved me, too ! Phaon You flung that love away ! Sappho Xo; no; it seemed Not mine . . . and for the moment I was not Myself ... it drove me unto madness. Phaon {raging) Drove You unto madness . . . then unto the man You met at midnight in his garden's gloom ! Is that not true? Sappho Yes; that is true. 220 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon You sought The buyer e'en before the price was paid ! Sappho Stop! Phaon Stop ? Why should I stop ? Have you once stopped When passion drove you into other arms ? — You palmer- worm that feeds on passion, then Advances in a night to newer fields ! Oh . . . Phaon! Sappho Phaon . . . When it took you forth at night To seek Alcaeus, when you whirled your wrath About me like a flail, for having known A girl, and told you not ! Sappho (panting) This . . . this from you ! I have forgiven much. . . . But now there is A bourne past which I cannot go, a depth To which I dare not stoop ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 221 Phaon {bitterly) And yet you stooped And crept to your Alcaeus ! Sappho Phaon ! Stop ! 'Twas love of you, 'twas foolish love of you, That took me to him. Phaon Then must love of him Take you from me ! Sappho I love him not ! Phaon {laughing bitterly) You love Then neither him, nor me, nor any man To whom you sold your kisses? Sappho Oh . . . Enough! Phaon Enough? More than enough ! To me you are A corpse corrupting, something hateful grown, A woman who has passed away — dead, dead To me! 222 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Sappho I . . . dead to you? Pittacus {stepping forward) And dead you are To Lesbos and the people that your days Have smirched and slavered, like a serpent's trail ! Sappho turns, in a mounting frenzy, toward the murmur- ing crowd, iter speech growing ever more and more impassioned. You hear, my people, you with whom I sang And lived and loved and sorrowed — I shall be But as the dead to you? Erinna {wailing) No; Sappho, no ! The crowd take up the cry, until it becomes a roar. They advance on the armed hoplites, shouting defiance, with cries of " Sappho! " " SappJw! " TJie guard close in, grim and silent, ready for the final stand or charge. The Lesbians She shall not go ! SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 223 Other Lesbians No, she is one of us ! Other Lesbians Long live the age of love ! The Sailors Let's fight for it ! The hoplites are borne back by the force of the crowd, Inarchus stands ready, awaiting a sign jrom Pittacus. A Sailor The sea ! The sea for Pittacus and all His tribe ! A Lesbian Ay, fling them o'er the cliff ! A Sailor Put down The Tyrant ! A Lesbian Put an end to tyranny ! Pittacus signals to Inarchus, and the girl Omaphale is dragged forward through the crowd. She stands 224 SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A there, white and fragile, a slender barrier between the two bands of combatants, Sappho, remembering, becomes almost statuesque in her immobility. Pitta- cus, seizing the moment, leaps fearlessly into tlie crowd. Pittacus Is this the Kingdom, this the Age of Love You usher in ? Behold this broken girl, A maid deserted for the Queen of Song You clamor of; a girl unwed and wronged By him, this flashing Phaon of the seas, This empty shell, this sabre of a man ! . . . Sappho Cease ! Pittacus . . . Whom she raged and stormed and plotted for . . . Sappho Cease ! Pittacus . . . Whom she honeyed, humored, played you for . . Sappho Cease ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 22$ Pittacus . . . Whom she bound and blinded with her love, Whom she has gripped and held from this wronged girl, Whom still she shakes the columns of this State To cling to, since our Council has decreed That Phaon and this girl Omaphale In public shall be wed, as is the law ! Erinna Wait, Sappho — plead with Phaon ; plead with him For but a word, to make this folly clear ! Sappho I, plead with Phaon? And relate how I Have loved him hopelessly, and once forgave His wandering, and wooed him back to her, From exile, and would sing their marriage ode, And humbly ask a word on why he cleaves To earlier lovers ? . . . Oh, this is the end ! Sappho's fury now amounts to a white heat as she speaks. It disregards the issue at hand; it disregards the people awaiting her word : it is the last bitter cry of a woman broken by fate. I hate this man called Phaon, hate him . . . hate Him as the living hate the thought of Hell ! 226 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA And where he goes, or whom of all his loves He weds ... is naught to me ! Go, marry him, Meek, white-faced child . . . and learn how men are false, And how the world is built on lies . . . and how This thing called Love is but a hollow lie, And Hope is but a lie, and Happiness The crowning lie of all your world of lies ! Erinna and Atthis, on either side, support her quivering body. Quickly the disordered guard re-forms into a solid line. The people jail back, murmuring but bewildered, while Sappho starts up, involuntarily, as Phaon is crowded back and turns away with Omaphale at his side. Sappho {weakly) Yet Phaon, it was all for you ... for you ! Oh, do not go without a look, a word ! Pittacus, at this cry of the humbled and broken woman, is sure of his victory, and at once signals to Inarchus and his men. Phaon hesitates and turns to Sappho, but the levelled spears of the guard are before him. SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 227 Pittacus This last word must be mine! It calls the chains To bind this woman, who all time is dead To Lesbos ! Guards, surround the prisoner. Sappho, rising and towering above them in her last su- preme outburst of indignation and passion, ecstatic in her rage. I, dead to Lesbos ! Tyrant, I am one Who broods and wanders here as long as waves Wash on your island's shore ! Drive back the sea, — But dream not you have driven Sappho forth To be forgotten ! Where a lover waits Beside a twilit grove, I shall be there ! I, where he woos a woman, I shall breathe Out through his lips ! Yes, where a singing girl Goes with her heavy pitcher to the spring At earliest dawn, I shall beside her walk, And at the well-curb I shall wait for her ! When sailors lift their sails, 'tis I shall breathe Across the waves to them ! When man and maid Are joined in one, my voice shall chant their hymn ! And where the olive-pickers in the sun Together sing, I shall be in their midst ! And where a net is dipped, the beryl waves Shall break in little murmurs with my name ! And where the goat-herd tends his flock, and croons 228 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA The songs that once were mine, and where the men Who shape the timbers in the shipyard's din Make labor glad with music, / shall live ! Yes, where a youth still loves, a girl still waits, If Sappho, I shall not have passed away I Curtain SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 229 ACT FOUR The scene is the same as in Act One, on the cliffs of Leu- cadia. It is one year later, close to the hour of sunset. The rising curtain discloses Erinna and an old Soothsayer, muffled and cloaked. As the curtain goes up lie is stooping over the bronze fire-basin set in marble, stained ana blackoted with smoke. Erinna sits watching. Erinna But are you man or woman? Soothsayer Neither. Man I used to be ! But much of me has died ! Erinna How long have you been blind? Soothsayer {bitterly) It seems to me That I have been a blind man from my birth. 230 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Erinna Yet by the drifting flame and flight of birds You have foretold the future, and worked cures Where other charms have failed? Soothsayer Ay, by the flight Of birds, by smoke, by cocks devouring corn, By winds, by meteors, by red-hot iron, By divers entrails, and the drip of wax In water, I have many wonders worked ! He gropes and feels about the altar, nervously. What is it, maiden, that you wish to know? Erinna First tell me, what am I? Soothsayer (peering into space) I seem to see A thrush that crouches by a nightingale, Yet neither sings. Erinna But once I used to sing. SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A 23 1 Soothsayer You are a singer, eh? When I was young I knew a man of Leucas who would take A hollow shin-bone pierced with many vents And play us cunning tunes. In Lesbos, too, I heard a girl called Sappho sing . . . Erinna Heard Sappho ! Soothsayer Ay, the Tenth Muse after whom The older Nine once walked ! Erinna Yes, yes ; I know — Sir, it is for a sister that I ask This augury. Soothsayer What has befallen her? Erinna She is sick In heart Soothsayer Aught else? 232 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Erinna And most unhappy. Soothsayer Ah, Unhappy ! Has she loved, or has she known A man unworthy her? Erinna Such man she knew ! And now the loneliness of all the world Weighs on her soul and turns her troubled dreams To olden days and dark imaginings. Soothsayer And now her love is dead? Erinna That would I know. She mourns by day, and never speaks his name, But in the night she weeps and cries to him And through her dreams his name forever sounds. Yet when she wakes her heart seems dead again, And hour by hour she broods beside the sea. Soothsayer Thinks she this lover dead? SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 233 Erinna He is not dead. Soothsayer How could she know he is not dead? Erinna I sent To Lesbos and made sure he lives. Soothsayer And when You told her of it ? Erinna Then she neither wept Nor laughed nor spake ! Soothsayer She must have suffered deep ! Erinna O tell me how much longer it will last, And what will come of it ! Soothsayer Take then this seed And cast it on the flame. 234 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Erinna What seed is it ? Soothsayer Sea-fennel mixed with myrrh. But was it cast ? Erinna goes to the altar and casts the seed on the smoul- dering fire. Erinna 'Tis on the flame. Soothsayer The smoke . . . how does it rise? Erinna It rises in a column, thin and straight. Soothsayer And still so rises? Erinna No ... for now it drifts And wavers, in a broken cloud. Soothsayer Enough ! Now take this sparrow. Hold it in your hand, And face the east. . . . Now let the bird go free ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 235 Erinna 'Tis free ! 'Tis gone ! Soothsayer How has it flown? Erinna It flew Beyond the cliffs ! 'Tis lost within the Sea ! What can such things portend? The Soothsayer is silent, wrapt in thought. What do they mean? Soothsayer It means good news, and bad. . . . Go you and bring This woman to me ... I must speak with her ! Erinna Then gently, speak to her the darker news; Oh, give her peace — for she has need of it ! {Exit) Soothsayer {disclosing himself as Phaon) This is the hour where life and death divide, Where all the rivers of the world hold back And wait some new beginning ... or the end ! 236 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA O Aphrodite, you who leaned across My oar with luminous eyes and filled the gloom With glory, help me, help me in this hour ! Sappho enters, slowly, with Erinna. Sappho is robed in white, and on her hair is a heavy crown of dark violets, making paler her pale face. She does not look towards Phaon — her dreamy gaze is bent on the Sea. Sappho What sail is that? I thought I knew each ship That passes here ! Erinna 'Tis one from Lesbos come. Sappho From Lesbos ! Lesbos ! O how frail a thing To face so many seas, to creep so far From home ! I wonder if its timbers thrill And ache for Lesbos now? If through its keel Some wordless anguish burns, when e'er the name Of Lesbos comes to it ... as in my heart ! Erinna This prophet fares from Lesbos, and would speak With you alone ! (Exit) SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 237 Sappho slowly turns and studies the soothsayer, who remains cloaked. TJie sunlight falls clear and gold on the two figures. Sappho (murmurs) This sail from Lesbos fares ! Phaon Ay, from the land that cast Alcaeus out, A broken exile, into Sicily; The land that once was known as Sappho's isle, And shall again be hers. ■&* Sappho What man are you? Phaon One who would wait and seek you out beyond The uttermost unkeeled domains of Xight ! Sappho Who . . . Phaon One who comes to bear you home again, Still crowned with ivy and wild olive as You came from Athens ! 238 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Sappho Phaon ! Phaon Sappho ! Sappho Oh, Why have you followed me? Why have you come To this grey land that is my Underworld Of ghosts and dreams ? Phaon To take you home again ! Sappho It is too late ! Phaon Nay, you have been recalled — I bear the Lesbian Council's word to bring You out of exile ! Lesbos cried for you Till Pittacus himself was forced to bow Unto their clamor ! Athens also rose And said you should return. . . . And I, Who loved you once, and love you evermore. Now plead with you to come. SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 239 Sappho (musingly) It is too late ! Dear hills of sun and gloom and green . . . soft hills That I shall see no more ! Phaon Nay, Sappho, come — They wait and ask for you, but not as I. They beg the glad bird-throated girl they crowned With violets, the Voice they listened to At twilight when the brief day's work was done. I beg the woman who made all my world A dusk of warmth and rapture . . . her to whom My lonely heart has yearned ! Sappho {looking up) Omaphale — Where waits Omaphale ? Where are the loves You laughed and whispered to this many a year? Phaon There is but one great love in any life, The rest are ghosts, to mock its memories. All through the weary months I wanted you, Cried out for you, and had to come to you ! 240 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Sappho {slowly) And had to come to me ! And wanted me ! Phaon Great wrong I wrought you, but I was deceived, And deeply I have suffered ! Sappho Suffered? When? Phaon The loss of you . « . the ache and emptiness Of one who knew all love, and is denied; The torture of the days that are no more ; The terror and the anguish born of ways That one great love illumed, that one lost voice Still like a fading lute with sorrow haunts ! Turn not away . . . look at me, Sappho. . . . Come, Come back with me where still the singing girls Laugh, ruddy-ankled, round the Lesbian vats, And every hill and lowland is your home, And deep throats from the laden galleys sing By night of love and women as of old ! Sappho (still wrapt in thought, wistfully) How far away those twilight voices are! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 24 1 Phaon But still they chant your words, and wait for you, And down the solemn Dorian scale the pipes Wander and plead, and note by note still wake With soft ^Eolian rapture. Still come back Where droning flute and harp shall drowse away This wordless hunger that has paled your face, Where every lover knows your music still, And every meadow keeps your voice alive, Where lonely cliffs reach out their arms for you ... Come back, and be at rest I Sappho O island home Where we were happy once ! Phaon And shall again Be happy, where the golden vetch is thick Along the cliffs, and cool the olive-groves, And all the shadowy fir-lands and the hills Lean tender purple to /Eolia's coast, And all the harbor-lights still wait and watch, Like weary eyes, for you to come again ! Sappho Yes, well I know them where their paths of gold Once lay like wavering music on the sea ! 242 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon And there like wine made sweet with honey, life Shall flow reluctantly ! Sappho O sea-washed home Where we, so long ago, were happy once ! Phaon I brought a sorrow to that home, I know — But I have suffered for it, and have learned How all the paths of all the oceans lead To you — you — you ! Sappho Oh speak not thus to me ■ It is too late, my Phaon. 'Twas your hand That crushed the silver goblet of my heart, And now the wine is spilt; the page is read, And from the tale the earlier glory gone ; The torch has failed amid the falling dusk, The dream has passed, and rapture is a word Unknown to my sad heart, and music sounds Mournful as evening bells on lonely seas. Phaon But Lesbos calls, and still you will not hear; Our home is waiting, and you will not come ! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 243 Sappho Lightly you loved me, Phaon, long ago; And there were other arms unknown to me That folded over you, though none more fond Than mine that fell so wing-like round your head. And there were other eyes that drooped as mine Despairingly before your pleading mouth. Phaon " I have loved oft and lightly that, at last, I might love you ! " Can you remember not? Sappho But many were the nights I wept, and learned How sorrowful is all divided love, How we who give too often . . . never give, How one voice must be lost, and being lost, May be remembered most. Phaon But you alone It was, pale-throated woman, that I loved ! Through outland countries have I seen your eyes, And like a flower through all my perilous ways Your face has gone before me, and your voice Beyond dim islands and mysterious seas 244 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Has drawn me to you, calling from the dunes Where Summer once hung low above our hands, And we, as children, dreamed to dreaming waves, And all the world seemed made for you and me ! Sappho It is too late; the wine of life is spilt, The shore-lark of our youth has flown away, And all the Summer vanished. One brief year Ago I could have gone to any home, A wanderer with you o'er troubled seas; And slept beside your fire content, and fared Still on again between green hills and strange, And echoing valleys where the eagled pines Were full of gloom, and many waters sang, — Still on to some low plain or highland coign Remembered not of men, where we had made Our home amid the music of the Spring, Letting life's twilight sands glide thro' the glass So golden-slow, so glad, no plaintive chime Could e'er be blown to us across the dusk, From Life's grey towers of many-tongued regret ! Then I had been most happy at your side, Easing my exiled heart with homely thoughts And turning these sad hands to simple things. In our low oven that should gleam by night SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 245 Baking my wheaten loaves, and with my wheel Spinning the milky wool, and light of heart Dipping my brazen pitcher in the spring That bubbled by our door. And then, perchance, (O anodyne for all dark-memoried days !) To feel the touch of little hands, and hold A child — your child and mine — close on this breast, And croon it songs and tunes quite meaningless Unto the bosom where no milk has been — Yes, fonder than the poolside lutings low Of dreaming frogs to their Arcadian god ! There had I borne to you a sailor folk, A tawny-haired swart brood of boys, as brave As mine old Phaon was, cubbed by the sea And buffeted by wind and brume; and I, On winter nights when all the waves were black, In musing wise had told them tales and dreams Of Lesbian days, e'en though the words should sound To my remembering heart, so far from home, As mournful as the wind to imprisoned men; — Old tales they should re-tell long ages hence Unto their children's children by the fire When loud the dark South-West that brings the rain Moaned round their walls ! And in more happy days By some pale golden summer moon, when dim The waters were — mysterious eves of dusk And music, stars, and silence and regret — 246 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Singing into my saddened heart should come Soft thoughts, to bloom in words as roses break And blow and wither and are gone ; and we Reckless of time, should waken not and find Our hearts grown old, but evermore live on As do the stars and Earth's untroubled trees, While seasons came, like birds, and went again, — Though Greece and her green islands were no more, And all her marbled power should pass away, And empires, like an arch, should crumble down, And kings should live and die, and one by one Like flames their lofty cities should go out ! Phaon Your voice still falls on my dry heart like dew ! I hear you speak, and know not what you say, For like a bell your name swings through my dreams ! And all my being throbs and cries for you ! Come back with me ; but come, and I will speak A thousand gentle words for each poor tear That dimmed your eyes ! Come back, and I will crown Your days with love so enduring it shall light The eternal stars to bed ! Sappho Ask me no more, — I warmed the whimpering whelps of Passion once In this white breast of mine — but, now, full grown, SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A They seem to stalk me naked through the world ! Too fond I now should bend unto the fierce Necessity of bliss, and in each glow Of golden anguish yearn forever toward Some quiet gloom where we can never walk! These feet of mine have known too many homes To claim one door, and close it on the world ! This bosom now is hot as /Etna's, torn And seared with fires that long since passed away! Yet had you only loved me, as I asked — How humble I had been, how I had tried From this poor broken twilight to rebuild The Dream, and from its ashes to restore The Temple ! Phaon But I loved you then, and love You now ! The torn plume of the wing I take, The ruined rose, and all the empty cruse; Here I accept the bitter with the sweet, The autumnal sorrow with the autumnal gold; Tears shall go unregretted, and much pain Gladly I take, if grief, in truth, and you Can still come hand in hand to me. Sappho No! No! For good were life if every lonely bough Could lure again its vanished nightingale ! 247 248 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA — If all that luting music of first love Could be recalled down years grown desolate I Lightly they sing who love and are beloved; And men shall lightly listen ; but the heart That has been broken and must hide its wound In music, is remembered through the years ! It was not much I asked in those old days — For men have wider missions than we know. 'Tis not, thro' all their moods, they hunger for Our poor pale faces. As a flame at sea They seek us in the fog, and then forget. 'Tis when by night the battle-noise has died; 'Tis when the port is won, and wind and storm Are past; 'tis when the heart for solace aches; 'Tis when they stop to rest in darkling woods, Or under alien stars the fire is lit, And when regret makes deep some idle hour. Then would we have our name sing throbbingly Thro' some beloved heart, soft as a bird, — And swing with it — swing sweet as silver bells ! Not all your crowded day I hoped to see You turn to me: but when some little flower Shone through the dust and lured a softer mood, I hoped your troubled eyes would seek my eyes ! And in those days that I first cried for you And went uncomforted, had you returned, I could have washed your careless feet with tears, And unto you still grown, and gone thro' sun SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 249 And gloom beside you, and still in the bliss Of motherhood and most mysterious birth Forgotten ancient wrongs ! Phaon Why brood on things Turned into dust and ashes long ago, When softly dawn by golden dawn, and eve By opal eve, Earth whispers : Life is ours ! Sappho Once I could listen to you, e'er you go; — Phaon And still you bid me go ? Sappho Oh, had you gone While still the glory of my dreaming fell Like sunlight round you, — had you even died, I should have loved you now, as women love The wonder and the silence of the West When with sad eyes they breathe a last farewell To where the black ships go so proudly out, — W 7 atching with twilit faces by the Sea Till down some golden rift the fading sails Darken and glow and pale amid the dusk, And gleam again, and pass into the gloom ! 250 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon Then once you loved me ! Let me know no more ! The cry of that old love shall lead you back To me, and make us one ! Sappho Nay, Home I go — Home, Home afar, where unknown seas forlorn On gloomy towers and darkling bastions foam, And lonely eyes look out for one dim sail That never comes, and men have said there is No sun. — And though I go forth soon no fear Shall cling to me, since I a thousand times Ere this have died a little day by day; And sun by sun the grave insatiable Has taken to its gloom some happier grace, And hour by hour some glory old engulfed, And left me like a house untenanted. Phaon No more of this ! I need you ; still turn back With me, and let one riotous flame of bliss Forever burn away these withered griefs, As fire eats clean the autumn mountain-side; For all this sweet sad-eyed dissuasiveness Endears like dew the flower of final love ! SAPPHO IN LEV CADI A 25 1 Sappho {abstracted) — Yes, I have died ere this a thousand times; For on the dusky borderlands of dream, Across the twilight of dim summer dawns Before the hooves of pearl throbbed down the wind, And listening to the birds amid green boughs Where tree and hill and field were touched with fire, — Hearing, yet hearing not, thro' all the thin Near multitudinous lament of Dawn's Low rustling leaves, stirred by some opal wing, — Oft have I seemed to feel my soul come home ! And faint and strange on my half- wakened ears Would fall the flute and pipe of early birds; And strange the odor of the opening flowers; And strange the world would lie, and stranger still The quiet rain along the glimmering grass: And Earth, sad with so many memories Of bliss, and beautiful with vague regrets, Would take on poignant glories, strange as death ! Phaon What is this dim-eyed madness and dark talk Of death? Sappho Hush ! I have seen Death pass a hand Along old wounds, and they have ached no more ! 252 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA And with one little word lull pain away, And heal long-wasting tears ! Phaon But these soft lips Were made not for the touch of mold ! Sappho Time was I thought Death stern, and scattered at his door My dearest roses, that his feet might come And softly go ! Phaon This body white was made Not for the grave, — this flashing wonder of The hand for hungry worms ! Sappho Oh, quiet as Soft rain on water shall it seem, and sad Only as life's most dulcet music is, And dark as but a bride's first dreaded night Is dark — mild, mild as mirrored stars ! But you, ■ You will forget me, Phaon ; there the sting ! The sorrow of the grave is not its green, SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 253 Nor yet the salt tear on its violet; It is the years that bring the grey neglect, When tangled grasses smooth the lessening mound, When leaf by leaf the tree of sorrow wanes, And on the urn unseen the tarnish comes, And tears are not so bitter as they were I Time sings so low to our bereaved ear, So softly breathes, that, bud by falling bud, The garden of our Grief all empty lies, And unregretted dips the languid oar Of Charon thro' the gloom, and then is gone ! Phaon Red-lipped and breathing woman, made for love, How can you talk of Death, or dream that one Who ever looked upon you can forget? Sappho You will forget me, though you would or not ! Yes, in some other Spring when other lips Let fall my name, you will remember not ! — Yet come and let me look into your eyes, Thus quietly, as women view the dead, And dream of far-off things ! As in farewell, Still let me feel your hand about my hand i 254 SAPPHO IN LEU CADI A Phaon Your touch burns thro' my blood like fire. You have Not changed. Still must I kiss the heavy rose Of your red mouth ! Sappho No, not till Death has leaned And kissed it white as this white cliff, and robed This body for its bridegroom ! Phaon Honey-pale And passion-worn you seem, and I am blind With looking on your beauty. Sappho, come — Come close into my arms. Sappho It is too late; Forth to a sterner lover must I fare ! Phaon Mine flamed your first love, and shall glow your last ! Sappho Then meet this One, and know! SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A 255 Phaon The hounds of Hell And Aidoneus himself — Sappho Hush ! Phaon You I seek ! The cadence of your voice enraptures me, The very breathing of your bosom turns My blood to sweeping fire, and leaves me faint With longing, makes me flash and burn with love ! And still you would elude me — but this arm Is strong, and I shall know no other god — ■ Sappho Cease ! son of passion ! Phaon Not until these arms, Shall hold and fold about you, not until — Sappho By all the hours you darkened, by the love You crushed and left embittered, hear me speak ! 256 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon {bitterly) Thus women change — and in their time forget ! Sappho There lies the sorrow — if we could forget ! For one brief hour you gave me all the love That women ask, and then with cruel hands Set free the singing voices from the cage, And tore the glory from the waiting rose; And through life's empty garden still I dreamed And called for Love, and walked unsatisfied. Love ! Love ! 'Tis we who lose it know it best ! By day a fire and wonder, and by night A wheeling star that sinks in Mystery. Love ! Love ! It is the blue of bluest skies ; The farthest green of waters touched with sun I It is the calm of moonlight and of leaves, And yet the troubled music of the Sea ! It is the frail original of faith, The timorous thing that seems afraid of light, Yet, loosened, sweeps the world, consuming time And tinsel empires, grim with blood and war ! It is the voiceless want and loneliness Of blighted lands made wonderful with rain ! Regret it is, and song, and wistful tears ; The rose upon the tomb of afterthought, The only wine of life, that on the lip SAPPHO IN LEU CAD I A Of Thirst turns not to ashes ! Change and time And sorrow kneel to it, for at its touch The world is beautiful . . . the world is bom! Phaon Your words were ever tuned to madden men, And I am drunk with these sweet pleadings, soft As voices over many waters blown ! And thus you come to me against your will ! Sappho Hear me, for by those gods you fear the most There is a fire within me burns away All pity, and some Hate, half-caged, may eat Thro' its last bar ! Phaon Not till your mouth's Sad warmth droops unto mine ! Sappho Yours once I was, And once I watched you spurn and tread me down And long amid my perished roses lay, Broken with sorrow, but still held my peace ! But now I warn you that the tide has turned ! 257 258 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Touch nevermore these hands, for my torn heart Is desperate, and given not to words ! Quite humble have I been, and duly spake My lips as you once asked that they should speak! But now this empty husk from which you drained Life's darkest wine, shall die in its own way. Yes, yes; as water sighs and whispers through Some hollow-throated urn, so now through me Shall steal contentment, Touch me not ! Stand back Or if you will, locked arm in reckless arm, Come with me, down, down to this crawling Deep ! Phaon What madness can this be ? Sappho The ocean waves Are softer with their dead, and autumn winds More kindly are with leaves, than mortal love With women, for it kills and buries not Phaon You murmur of the dead, when warm and quick You breathe before me, and bewilder thought ! With but the wine-like rapture of your voice You make me desperate ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 259 Sappho Nay, touch me not ! Phaon You shall come with me, Sappho ! I alone Dare not go back. I carry in my breast The edict of the Council. It commands I bring you safely home, and should I fail A thousand hands would beat me to the sea. But in this breast I bear a second scroll, A more imperious message, writ and sealed Of Love itself. I shall no longer be Denied or trifled with, though I must tear You like a rooted flower from where you wait; Though I must take you, like a fluttered bird, And bruise you in the taking ! Come with me ! Sappho Lay not unholy hands upon the dead. Phaon Yes, I shall bear you forth, as from a wall That totters or a chamber wrapped in flame ! He seizes her resisting body. His strength overpowers her, and she lies back in his arms, panting. There she catches sight of the knife in his belt. 260 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Sappho Nay, Phaon, I shall go, if you but wait — Phaon Too long I waited ! Sappho Take me not by force, Oh, not by force now, Phaon ! Let me come Quite willingly, made ready for your arms — Phaon I shall release you not ! Sappho But let me breathe One brief farewell, one broken last good-by To all my older life. . . . Then you can come And take me where you will, and not a word Of anger or lament shall pass my lips ! She forces him about so that they face the sea. Then I shall go almost without regret; For ghost-like even now I am ; these eyes Wave-worn as Leucothea's eyes must seem, And I am tired, and it is good to sleep. So alone, sad Mother Ocean, let me rest; SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 261 Alone, grey Mother, take me in your arms — Whose sorrow must have been as deep as mine, Who loved in times I know not of, and lost, And still must murmur of it night and day Along your mournful-noted shores ! Phaon What gods Are these you call upon in ecstasy? Sappho I call not on your gods, or mine. For they Live high above our Earth, and scarce would knew The odor of my incense, or how white My piteous altars stood ! Too like the Moon That looks so disimpassioned over men And their tumultuous cities crowned with pain, Smile down the gods on our tight-lipped despairs ! Yet far I am from home to go, and far From any voice to comfort me beyond The cypress twilight and the hemlock gloom ! But take me, Mournful Mother, while I feel Burn through my blood this bitter ecstasy ! Oh, take me, Mother Ocean, in your arms, And let the cooling waters lave and wash All sorrow from my eyes and rock the pain From my poor heart ! 262 SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA Phaon Upon my heart your heart Shall rock in weary slumber and forget These ghostly sorrows ! He crushes her half-passive body still closer. Give me of your lips As once, on Leucate, so long ago ! Sappho Oh, free me, Phaon ! Phaon Not until you lie At rest, and willingly, within my arms! Sappho Oh, free me, but a moment ! Phaon Nevermore l Sappho This is the costliest last kiss of all Your life . . . and mine ! SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA 263 Phaon I care not what it costs, It crowns me with a peace — above the gods ! She shudders, but lies passive in his arms, her own creeping about him. Her hand falls to his knife, which slie withdraws, raises, and sinks deep in his side. His arms droop away, he crumbles down at her feet, without a word, dead. She scarcely moves as she gazes at the body. The two figures are bathed in the full golden light of the sunset. The voice of Erinna calls from the distance. Sappho turns with a haunted look, raises her arms, and leaps into the sea. Faintly, from the harbor beyond the cliff sounds the chords of " The Sailors' Hymn to Sunset" as the light slowly pales and passes. Curtain 264 THE THREE VOICES THE THREE VOICES VKTHEN the fire sinks flame by flame And the shadows, Dear, grow long, Shall I turn for praise or blame To the Brazen-Throated Throng? When the last poor deed is done, Shall I look, O Good and True, To the old friends one by one, The Silver-Throated Few? Nay, all that I strove to do, However it end, was done For You and the love of You, The Golden-Throated One ! RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. ^g*^> U3E &uSw^ ' I8Aug'5$$;s ■B16 195*1 LD 21-100m-2,'55 (B139s22)476 General Library University of California vis ^v UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORN1A LIBRARY