Excerpt
Helen of Troy
Wild flight on flight against the fading dawnThe flames' red wings soar upward duskily.This is the funeral pyre and Troy is deadThat sparkled so the day I saw it first,And darkened slowly after. I am sheWho loves all beauty—yet I wither it.Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath—Forever since my maidenhood to sowSorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keepTheir bitter care above me even now.It was the gods who led me to this lair,That tho' the burning winds should make me weak,They should not snatch the life from out my lips.Olympus let the other women die;They shall be quiet when the day is doneAnd have no care to-morrow. Yet for meThere is no rest. The gods are not so kindTo her made half immortal like themselves.It is to you I owe the cruel gift,Leda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire,To you the beauty and to you the bale;For never woman born of man and maidHad wrought such havoc on the earth as I,Or troubled heaven with a sea of flameThat climbed to touch the silent whirling starsAnd blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.Have I not made the world to weep enough?Give death to me. Yet life is more than death;How could I leave the sound of singing winds,The strong sweet scent that breathes from off the sea,Or shut my eyes forever to the spring?I will not give the grave my hands to hold,My shining hair to light oblivion.Have those who wander through the ways of death,The still wan fields Elysian, any loveTo lift their breasts with longing, any lipsTo thirst against the quiver of a kiss?Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again,To make the people love, who hate me now.My dreams are over, I have ceased to cryAgainst the fate that made men love my mouthAnd left their spirits all too deaf to hearThe little songs that echoed through my soul.I have no anger now. The dreams are done;Yet since the Greeks and Trojans would not seeAught but my body's fairness, till the end,In all the islands set in all the seas,And all the lands that lie beneath the sun,Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,Men's lives shall waste with longing after me,For I shall be the sum of their desire,The whole of beauty, never seen again.And they shall stretch their arms and starting, wakeWith "Helen!" on their lips, and in their eyesThe vision of me. Always I shall beLimned on the darkness like a shaft of lightThat glimmers and is gone. They shall beholdEach one his dream that fashions me anew;—With hair like lakes that glint beneath the starsDark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglowLike burnished gold that still retains the fire.Yea, I shall haunt until the dusk of timeThe heavy eyelids filled with fleeting dreams.
I wait for one who comes with sword to slay—The king I wronged who searches for me now;And yet he shall not slay me. I shall standWith lifted head and look within his eyes,Baring my breast to him and to the sun.He shall not have the power to stain with bloodThat whiteness—for the thirsty sword shall fallAnd he shall cry and catch me in his arms,Bearing me back to Sparta on his breast....