# Hephaestus, Persephone at Enna, and Sappho in Leucadia/Hephaestus

HEPHAESTUS
HEPHAESTUS
Take her, O Ares! As Demeter mourned Through many-fountained Enna, I shall grieve Forlorn a time, and then, it may be, learn, Some still autumnal twilight by the sea Golden with sunlight, to remember not! As the dark pine forgoes the pilgrim thrush I, sad of heart, yet unimpassioned, yield To you this surging bosom soft with dreams, This body fashioned of Aegean foam And languorous moonlight. But I give you not The eluding soul that in her broods and sleeps, And ne’er was mine of old, nor can be yours. It was not born of sea and moon with her, And though it nests within her, no weak hand Of hers shall cage it as it comes and goes, Sorrows and wakens, sleeps, and sings again. And so I give you but the hollow lute, The lute alone, and not the voices low
That sang of old to some forgotten touch. The lamp I give, but not the glimmering flame Some alien fire must light, some alien dusk Enisle, ere it illume your land and sea. The shell I give you, Ares, not the song Of murmuring winds and waves once haunting it; The cage, but not love’s wings that come and go. I give you them, light brother, as the earth Gives up the dew, the mountain-side the mist!
Farewell sad face, that gleamed so like a flower Through Paphian groves to me of old—farewell! Some Fate beyond our dark-robed Three ordained This love should wear the mortal rose and not Our timeless amaranth. ’Twas writ of old, and lay Not once with us. As we ourselves have known, And well your sad Dodonian mother found, From deep to deep the sails of destined love Are blown and tossed by tides no god controls; And at the bud of our too golden life Eats this small canker of mortality!
I loved her once, O Ares— I loved her once as waters love the wind; I sought her once as rivers seek the sea; And her deep eyes, so dream-besieged, made dawn And midnight one. Flesh of my flesh she was, And we together knew dark days and glad. Then fell the change;—some hand unknown to us
Shook one white petal from the perfect flower, And all the world grew old. Ah, who shall say When Summer dies, or when is blown the rose? Who, who shall know just when the quiet star Out of the golden West is born again? Or when the gloaming saddens into night? ’Twas writ, in truth, of old; the tide of love Has met its turn, the long horizon lures The homing bird, the harbour calls the sail. Home, home to your glad heart she goes, while I Fare on alone, and only broken dreams Abide with me! And yet, when you shall tread Lightly your sunlit hills with her and breathe Life’s keener air, all but too exquisite, Or look through purpling twilight on the world, Think not my heart has followed nevermore Those glimmering feet that walked once thus with me, Nor dream my passion by your passion paled. But lower than the god the temple stands; As deeper is the sea than any wave, Sweeter the summer than its asphodel, So love far stronger than this woman is. She from the untiring ocean took her birth, And from torn wave and foam her first faint breath; Child of unrest and change, still through her sweeps Her natal sea’s tumultuous waywardness! And losing her, lo, one thin drifting cloud Curls idly from the altar in that grove Where burn the fires that know not change or death!
Yet she shall move the strange desires of men; For in her lie dim glories that she dreams Not of, and on her ever broods a light Her Cyprian eyes ne’er saw; and evermore Round her pale face shall pleading faces press; Round her shall mortal passion beat and ebb. Years hence, as waves on islands burst in foam, Madly shall lives on her strange beauty break.
When she is yours and in ambrosial glooms You secretly would chain her kiss by kiss, Though close you hold her in your hungering arms, And with voluptuous pantings you and she Mingle, and seem the insentient moment one, Yet will your groping soul but lean to her Across the dusk, as hill to lonely hill, And in your warmest raptures you shall learn There is a citadel surrenders not To any captor of the outer walls; In sorrow you shall learn there is a light Illumines not, a chamber it were best To leave untrod. To leave untrod. O Ares, dread the word That silences this timorous nightingale, The touch that wakens strings too frail for hands; For, giving her, I gain what you shall lose; Forsaking her, I hold her closer still. The sea shall take a deeper sound; the stars Stranger and more mysterious henceforth Shall seem, the darkening sky-line of the West
For me, the solitary dreamer, now shall hold Voices and faces that I knew not of. More, henceforth, shall all music mean to me, And she, through lonely musings, ever seem As beautiful as are the dead. But you— You in your hand shall guard the gathered rose, Shall hold the riven veil, the loosened chord!
So love your hour, bright god, ere it is lost, A swan that sings its broken life away. In that brief hour, ’tis writ, you shall hear breathe Songs blown from some enchanted island home, Then mourn for evermore life’s silent throats,— Aye, seek and find the altar when its fires Are ashes, and the worship vain regret! A mystic law more strong than all delight Or pain shall each delicious rapture chill, Exacting sternly for each ecstasy; And when her voice enwraps you and in arms Luxurious your softest languor comes, Faintly torn wings shall flutter for the sun, Madly old dreams shall struggle toward the light, And, drugged with opiate passion, you shall know Dark days and shadowy moods when she may seem To some dusk underworld enchaining you. Yet I shall know her as she was of old, Fashioned of moonlight and Aegean foam; Some visionary gleam, some glory strange Shall day by day engolden her lost face. The slow attrition of the years shall wear
No tenderest charm away, and she shall live A lonely star, a gust of music sweet, A voice upon the Deep, a mystery! But in the night, I know, the lonely wind Shall sigh of her, the restless ocean moan Her name with immemorial murmurings, And the sad golden summer moon shall mourn With me, and through the gloom of rustling leaves The shaken throats of nightingales shall bring Her low voice back, the incense of the fields Recall too well the odour of her hair. But lo, the heart doth bury all its dead, As mother Earth her unremembered leaves; So the sad hour shall pass, and with the dawn Serene I shall look down where hills and seas Throb through their dome of brooding hyaline And see from Athens gold to Indus gray New worlds awaiting me, and gladly go,— Go down among the toilers of the earth And seek the rest, the deeper peace that comes Of vast endeavour and the dust of strife. There my calm soul shall know itself, and watch The golden-sandalled Seasons come and go, Still god-like in its tasks of little things; And, woven not with grandeurs and red wars, Wanting somewhat in gold and vermeil, shall The Fates work out my life’s thin tapestry, As sorrow brings me wisdom, and the pang Of solitude, O Ares, keeps me strong!