Faint as a climate-changing bird that
All night across the darkness, and at
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest,
O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When here thy hands let fall the gather'd flower,
Might break thro' clouded memories once
On thy lost self.
A sudden
Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of
And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon,
When first she peers along the tremulous deep,
Fled wavering o'er thy face, and chased
That shadow of a likeness to the
Of shadows, thy dark mate.
Persephone!
Queen of the dead no more — my child!
Thine
Again were human-godlike, and the
Burst from a swimming fleece of winter gray,
And robed thee in his day from head to feet —"Mother!" and I was folded in thine arms. Child, those imperial, disimpassion'd
Awed even me at first, thy mother —
That oft had seen the serpent-wanded
Draw downward into Hades with his
Of fickering spectres, lighted from
By the red race of fiery Phlegethon;
But when before have Gods or men
The Life that had descended re-arise,
And lighted from above him by the Sun?
So mighty was the mother's childless cry,
A cry that ran thro' Hades,
Earth, and Heaven! So in this pleasant vale we stand again,
The field of Enna, now once more
With flowers that brighten as thy footstep falls,
All flowers — but for one black blur of
Left by that closing chasm, thro' which the
Of dark Aidoneus rising rapt thee hence.
And here, my child, tho' folded in thine arms,
I feel the deathless heart of
Within me shudder, lest the naked
Should yawn once more into the gulf, and
The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell,
Ascending, pierce the glad and songful air,
And all at once their arch'd necks, midnight-maned,
Jet upward thro' the mid-day blossom.
No!
For, see, thy foot has touch'd it; all the
Of blank earth-baldness clothes itself afresh,
And breaks into the crocus-purple
That saw thee vanish. Child, when thou wert gone,
I envied human wives, and nested birds,
Yea, the cubb'd lioness; went in search of
Thro' many a palace, many a cot, and
Thy breast to ailing infants in the night,
And set the mother waking in
To find her sick one whole; and forth
Among the wail of midnight winds, and cried,"Where is my loved one?
Wherefore do ye wail?"And out from all the night an answer shrill'd,"We know not, and we know not why we wail."I climb'd on all the cliffs of all the seas,
And ask'd the waves that moan about the world"Where? do ye make your moaning for my child?"And round from all the world the voices came"We know not, and we know not why we moan.""Where?" and I stared from every eagle-peak,
I thridded the black heart of all the woods,
I peer'd thro' tomb and cave, and in the
Of Autumn swept across the city, and
The murmur of their temples chanting me,
Me, me, the desolate Mother! "Where"? — and turn'd,
And fled by many a waste, forlorn of man,
And grieved for man thro' all my grief for thee, —The jungle rooted in his shatter'd hearth,
The serpent coil'd about his broken shaft,
The scorpion crawling over naked skulls; —I saw the tiger in the ruin'd
Spring from his fallen God, but trace of theeI saw not; and far on, and, following outA league of labyrinthine darkness,
On three gray heads beneath a gleaming rift."Where"? and I heard one voice from all the three"We know not, for we spin the lives of men,
And not of Gods, and know not why we spin!
There is a Fate beyond us." Nothing knew. Last as the likeness of a dying man,
Without his knowledge, from him flits to warnA far-off friendship that he comes no more,
So he, the God of dreams, who heard my cry,
Drew from thyself the likeness of
Without thy knowledge, and thy shadow
Before me, crying "The Bright one in the
Is brother of the Dark one in the lowest,
And Bright and Dark have sworn that I, the
Of thee, the great Earth-Mother, thee, the
That lifts her buried life from loom to bloom,
Should be for ever and for
The Bride of Darkness." So the Shadow wail'd.
Then I,
Earth-Goddess, cursed the Gods of Heaven.
I would not mingle with their feasts; to
Their nectar smack'd of hemlock on the lips,
Their rich ambrosia tasted aconite.
The man, that only lives and loves an hour,
Seem'd nobler than their hard Eternities.
My quick tears kill'd the flower, my ravings
The bird, and lost in utter grief I
To send my life thro' olive-yard and
And golden grain, my gift to helpless man.
Rain-rotten died the wheat, the
Vere hollow-husk'd, the leaf fell, and the sun,
Pale at my grief, drew down before his
Sickening, and that kept her winter snow. Then He, the brother of this Darkness,
Who still is highest, glancing from his
On earth a fruitless fallow, when he
The wonted steam of sacrifice, the
And prayer of men, decreed that thou should'st
For nine white moons of each whole year with me,
Three dark ones in the shadow with thy King. Once more the reaper in the gleam of
Will see me by the landmark far away,
Blessing his field, or seated in the
Of even, by the lonely threshing-floor,
Rejoicing in the harvest and the grange. Yet I,
Earth-Goddess, am but
With them, who still are highest.
Those gray heads,
What meant they by their "Fate beyond the Fates"But younger kindlier Gods to bear us down,
As we bore down the Gods before us?
Gods,
To quench, not hurl the thunderbolt, to stay,
Not spread the plague, the famine;
Gods indeed,
To send the noon into the night and
The sunless halls of Hades into Heaven?
Till thy dark lord accept and love the Sun,
And all the Shadow die into the Light,
When thou shalt dwell the whole bright year with me,
And souls of men, who grew beyond their race,
And made themselves as Gods against the
Of Death and Hell; and thou that hast from men,
As Queen of Death, that worship which is Fear,
Henceforth, as having risen from out the dead,
Shalt ever send thy life along with
From buried grain thro' springing blade, and
Their garner'd Autumn also, reap with me,
Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of
The worship which is Love, and see no
The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly-glimmering
Of that Elysium, all the hateful
Of torment, and the shadowy warrior
Along the silent field of Asphodel.
