Classic Poem

Now Dawn came weeping forth, and on the crest
Of Ida faced a chill wind from the West.
Forth from the gray sea wrack-laden it blew
And howled among the towers, and stronger grew
As crept unseen the sun his path of light.
Then she who in the temple all that night
Had kept her rueful watch, the prophetess
Kassandra, peering sharply, heard the press
And rush of flight above her, and with sick
Foreboding waited; and the air grew thick
With flying shapes immortal overhead.
As in late Autumn, when the leaves are shed
And dismal flit about the empty ways,
And country folk provide against dark days,
And heap the woodstack, and their stores repair,
Attent you know the quickening of the air,
And closer yet the swish and sweep and swing
Of wings innumerable, emulous to bring
The birds to broader skies and kindlier sun,
And know indeed that winter is begun--
So seeing first, then hearing, she knew the hour
Was come when Troy must fall, and not a tower
Be left to front the morrow. And she covered
Her head and mourned, while one by one they hovered
Above their shrines, then flockt and faced the dawn.

First, in her car of shell and amber, drawn
By clustering doves with burnisht wings, a-throng,
Passes Queen Aphrodité, and her song
Is sweet and sharp: "I gave my sacred zone
To warm thy bosom, Helen which by none
That live by labour and in tears are born
And sighing go their ways, has e'er been worn.
It kindled in thine eyes the lovelight, showed
Thy burning self in his. Thy body glowed
With beauty like to mine: mine thy love-laughter
Thy cooing in the night, thy deep sleep after,
Thy rapture of the morning, love renewed;
And all the shadowed day to sit and brood
On what has been and what should be again:
Thou wilt not? Nay, I proffer not in vain
My gifts, for I am all or will be nought.
Lo, where I am can be no other thought."
Thus to the wooded heights of Ida she
Was drawn, hid in that pearly galaxy
Of snow-white pigeons.
Next upon the height
Of Pergamos uplift a beam of light
That for its core enshrined a naked youth,
Golden and fierce. She knew the God sans ruth,
Him who had given woeful prescience to her,
Apollo, once her lover and her wooer;
Who stood as one stands glorying in his grace
And strength, full in the sun, though on her place
Within the temple court no sun at all
Shone, nor as yet upon the topmost wall
Was any tinge of him, but all showed gray
And sodden in the wind and blown sea-spray.
Not to him dared she lift her voice in prayer,
Nor scarce her eyes to see him.
To him there
Came swift a spirit in shape of virgin slim,
With snooded hair and kirtle belted trim,
Short to the knee; and in her face the gale
Had blown bright sanguine colour. Free and hale
She was; and in her hand she held a bow
Unstrung, and o'er her shoulders there did go
A baldrick that made sharp the cleft betwixt
Her sudden breasts--to that a quiver fixt,
Showing gold arrow-points. No God there is
In Heaven more swift than Delian Artemis,
The young, the pure health-giver of the Earth,
Who loveth all things born, and brings to birth,
And after slays with merciful sudden death--
In whom is gladness all and wholesome breath,
And to whom all the praise of him who writes,
Ever.
These two she saw like meteorites
Flare down the wind and burn afar, then fade.
And Leto next, a mother grave and staid,
Drave out her chariot, which two winged stags drew,
Swift following, robed in gown of inky blue,
And hooded; and her hand which held the hood
Gleamed like a patch of snow left in a wood
Where hyacinths bring down to earth the sky.
And in her wake a winging company,
Dense as the cloud of gulls which from a rock
At sea lifts up in myriads, if the knock
Of oars assail their peace, she saw, and mourned
The household gods. For outward they too turned,
The spirits of the streams and water-brooks,
And nymphs who haunt the pastures, or in nooks
Of woodlands dwell. There like a lag of geese
Flew in long straying lines the Oreades
That in wild dunes and commons have their haunt;
There sped the Hamadryads; there aslant,
As from the sea, but wheeling ere they crost
Their sisters, thronged the river-nymphs, a host;
And now the Gods of homestead and the hearth,
Like sad-faced mourning women, left the garth
Where each had dwelt since Troy was stablishéd,
And been the holy influence over bed
And board and daily work under the sun
And nightlong slumber when day's work was done:
They rose, and like a driven mist of rain
Forsook the doomed high city and the plain,
And drifted eastaway; and as they went
Heaviness spread o'er Ilios like a tent,
And past not off, but brooded all day long.

But ever coursed new spirits to the throng
That packt the ways of Heaven. From the plain,
From mere and holt and hollow rose amain
The haunters of the silence; from the streams
And wells of water, from the country demes,
From plough and pasture, bottom, ridge and crest
The rustic Gods rose up and joined the rest.
Like a long wisp of cloud from out his banks
Streamed Xanthos, that swift river, to the ranks
Of flying shapes; and driven by that same mind
That urged him to it came Simoeis behind,
And other Gods and other, of stream and tree
And hill and vale--for nothing there can be
On earth or under Heaven, but hath in it
Essence whereby alone its form may hit
Our apprehension, channelled in the sense
Which feedeth us, that we through vision dense
See Gods as trees walking, or in the wind
That singeth in the bents guess what's behind
Its wailing music.
And now the unearthly flock,
Emptying every water, wood, bare rock
And pasture, beset Ida, and their wings
Beat o'er the forest which about her springs
And makes a sea of verdure, whence she lifts
Her soaring peaks to bathe them in the drifts
Of cloud, and rare reveal them unto men--
For Zeus there hath his dwelling, out of ken
Of men alike and gods. But now the brows,
The breasting summits, still eternal snows,
And all the faces of the mountain held
A concourse like in number to the field
Of Heaven upon some breathless summer night
Printed with myriad stars, some burning bright,
Some massed in galaxy, a cloudy scar,
And others faint, as infinitely far.
There rankt the Gods of Heaven, Earth, and Sea,
Brethren of them now hastening from the fee
Of stricken Priam. Out of his deep cloud
Zeus flamed his levin, and his thunder loud
Volleyed his welcome. With uplifted hands
Acclaiming, God's oncoming each God stands
To greet. And thus the Hierarchy at one
Sits to behold the bitter business done
Which Paris by his luxury bestirred.

But in the city, like a stricken bird
Grieving her desolation and despair,
As voiceless and as lustreless, astare
For imminent Death, Kassandra croucht beneath
Her very doom, herself the bride of Death;
For in the temple's forecourt reared the mass
Of that which was to bring the woe to pass,
And hidden in him both her murderers
Wrung at their nails.
And slow the long day wears
While all the city broods. The chiefs keep house,
Or gather on the wall, or make carouse
To simulate a freedom they feel not;
And at street corners men in shift or plot
Whisper together, or in the market-place
Gather, and peer each other in the face
Furtively, seeking comfort against care;
Whose eyes, meeting by chance, shift otherwhere
In haste. But in the houses, behind doors
Shuttered and barred, the women scrub their floors,
Or ply their looms as busily: for they
Ever cure care with care, and if a day
Be heavy lighten it with heavier task;
And for their griefs wear beauty like a mask,
And answer heart's presaging with a song
On their brave lips, and render right for wrong.
Little, by outward seeming, do they know
Of doom at hand, of fate or blood or woe,
Nor how their children, playing by their knees,
Must end this day of busyness-at-ease
In shrieking night, with clamour for their bread,
And a red bath, and a cold stone for a bed
Under the staring moon.

Now sinks the sun
Blood-red into the heavy sea and dun,
And forth from him, as he were stuck with swords,
Great streams of light go upward. Then the lords
Of havoc and unrest prepare their storms,
And o'er the silent city, vulture forms--
Eris and Enyo, Alké, Ioké,
The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey--
Hover and light on pinnacle and tower:
The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour
When Haro be the wail. And down the sky
Like a white squall flung Até with a cry
That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds,
As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds
Surging together, blotted out the sea,
The beachéd ships, the plain with mound and tree,
And slantwise came the sheeted rain, and fast
The darkness settled in. Kassandra cast
Her mantle o'er her head, and with slow feet
Entered her shrine deserted, there to greet
Her fate when it should come; and merciful Sleep
Befriended her.
Now from his lair did creep
Odysseus forth unarmed, his sword and spear
There in the Horse, and warily to peer
And spy his whereabouts the Ithacan
Went doubtful. Then his dreadful work began,
As down the bare way of steep Pergamos
Under the dark he sought for Paris' house.