Wild flight on flight
against the fading dawn
The flames' red wings
soar upward duskily.
This is the funeral
pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the
day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly
after. I am she
Who loves all beauty --
yet I wither it.
Why have the high gods
made me wreak their wrath --
Forever since my
maidenhood to sow
Sorrow and blood about
me? Lo, they keep
Their 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 done
And have no care
to-morrow. Yet for me
There is no rest. The
gods are not so kind
To 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 maid
Had wrought such havoc
on the earth as I,
Or troubled heaven with
a sea of flame
That climbed to touch
the silent whirling stars
And 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 love
To lift their breasts
with longing, any lips
To 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 cry
Against the fate that
made men love my mouth
And left their spirits
all too deaf to hear
The little songs that
echoed through my soul.
I have no anger now.
The dreams are done;
Yet since the Greeks
and Trojans would not see
Aught 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, wake
With "Helen!"
on their lips, and in their eyes
The vision of me.
Always I shall be
Limned on the darkness
like a shaft of light
That glimmers and is
gone. They shall behold
Each one his dream that
fashions me anew; --
With hair like lakes
that glint beneath the stars
Dark as sweet midnight,
or with hair aglow
Like burnished gold
that still retains the fire.
Yea, I shall haunt
until the dusk of time
The 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 stand
With 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 blood
That whiteness -- for
the thirsty sword shall fall
And he shall cry and
catch me in his arms,
Bearing me back to
Sparta on his breast.
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again!
No comments:
Post a Comment