Classic Poem

Darkening the open door, in thought he gazed
On his ripe meadows, on the mountain road,
On the still trees above the shaded well;
Then inward to the twilight room he turned
Where Metaneira sat —
" Strange that a woman
Who fears not child-bearing, neither the pain
Nor peril, cannot face, save panic-pale,
The bringing up of children day by day.
With danger courage comes, and with thine hour
Comes on brave yearnings for this child unborn,
But no heart comes for the safe homely years —
Small fingers at thy bosom, growing hands
That cling to thine, and running feet beside thee,
And face upturned to love thee with quick smiles.
The boy we have, what dread was thine to rear!
Yet he takes life as one who loves to live;
Joy is the breath of him. This other child
As fair, I think, befalls, if but thy fear
Cloud not its spirit. "
Leaning from the low couch
She answered —
" I feared no danger, nor shunned pain;
I thought only of what a man may share
With woman, the precious burden of childhood —
Not the nine months, the birth more exquisite
Of the young soul slowly finding the world.
O Celeus, when I brood on the frail bark
We dare be pilot for, and blindly grope
With clumsy guesses toward the eternal shore,
I think how reckless in the eyes of gods
Human desire must seem, and human love.
So thinking, I feel terror and loneliness;
Then I reach out for help to thee, but thou
Answerest as though these were but simple things,
And life simple, and children in the world
No care. "
" The gods who send desire, " he said,
" Fear not to trust us with the incarnate dream.
But art thou lonely, Metaneira — thou
Who wouldst not keep handmaid, nor slave nor free,
Near, if thy child need rearing? Lonely art thou?
Nay, jealous as the wild deer for thy young!
So fearful when the boy was born, and now
Thou hast sent thy woman away, even ere the birth.
Do I not know? "
" Celeus, " she cried, " wherefore
Chide me for what is love? To thee the day
Brings a plain round, things simply to be done,
What happens, happens, and so to dreamless rest.
But I see what might happen, and the hours
Come fateful with hard choices, good and ill,
And the day's labor is, by taking thought,
To seize the good. Therefore with all my love
I watch the lightest breath the infant draws;
The ill that might molest him comes on me,
I feel the blow that falls not. What hireling
Cares for another's child so? Bruise and tumble
Are natural luck, they say; and the child's soul
Takes its luck too. I have sent them all away.
Nay, but the loneliness I feel is more —
A mystery that lifts me from the world,
A strangeness as if earth were not my home,
And our love but a visitant from afar. "
Celeus with earnest eyes looked from the door,
And saw Eleusis under summer skies,
The meadows and the mountain road — the world
Wherein he native was, and she was strange.
Then turning toward her —
" Thou art a wistful woman;
Dreams and weird thoughts are more to thee than breath,
And the unsecret earth before thee, thou
Veilest with phantoms, with imagined clouds.
Wherefore dost thou reach ever out from life
With eyes for what cannot be seen, with hearing
For whispers and echoes where none else hears sound?
Our loves, that made us one, in this alone,
Drive our two hearts asunder. Sorrow I see,
And mischief, yet the common fate is plain;
Nothing waylays nor haunts us; life, in itself
Clear, would ask but courage to be lived.
Earth is our brother, and light over all
Draws from our dust the destined fruit and bloom —
Dreams, fears and hopes, rooted in what we are.
So I have thought, and the one child we have
Through his seven years confirms me. Hast thou seen
How humanly he learns the arts whereby
Man and the gods within him build his world?
His hopes are better than the things he has,
And what he has, helps him to reach his hopes.
Nothing will harm him, no shadow threaten,
Save his own errors; nothing this child unborn
Will harm, if but the darkness of thy mood
Blight not its soul. Fate is man's handiwork,
I believe, whereon the gods look, and forgive,
And a dark fancy prophesying ill
Is but a true suspicion of ourselves:
The gods, whose eyes are clear, clearly behold
The seeds within us of our cherished doom;
They with immortal sorrow watch us all
Thwarting the good they will us; and most they grieve
When love like thine, exquisitely alert,
Brings headlong on its danger, fancy-framed. "
She answered sadly — " Celeus, the boy and thou
Feel not the mystery that oppresses me;
Would that I had thy nature, the sunshine,
The faith opening like earth after fresh rain;
But my love reaches, and I feel thy hand
Helping, but cannot find thy heart. "
His hand
Reached out.
" I would a woman were here, " he said,
" To share thy loneliness; I would the gods
Would send, however humble, a comrade for thee,
Comrade for thee, and helper for the child. "
With large eyes she questioned him — " A stranger? "