POMEGRANATE SEED.

Demeter

Hecate

Persephone

Hermes.

In the vale of Eleusis.

Demeter.

Hail, goddess, from the midmost caverned vale
Of Samothracia, where with darksome rites
Unnameable, and sacrificial lambs,
Pale priests salute thy triple-headed form,
Borne hither by swift Hermes o'er the sea:
Hail Hecate, what word soe'er thou bring
To me, undaughtered, of my vanished child.

Hecate.

Word have I, but no Samothracian cave,
Last saw me, and mine aged footsteps pine
For the bleak vale, my dusty-pillared house,
And the cold murmur of incessant rites
Forever falling down mine altar-steps
Into black pools of fear ... for I am come
Even now from that blue-cinctured westward isle,
Trinacria, where, till thou withheldst thy face,
Yearly three harvests yellowed to the sun,

2.

And vines deep-laden yoked the heavier boughs —
Trinacria, that last saw Persephone.

Demeter.

Now, triune goddess, may the black ewe-lambs
Pour a red river down thine altar steps,
Fruit, leaves and honey, at the cross-roads laid,
With each young moon by pious hands renewed,
Appease thee, and the Thracian vale resound
With awful homage to thine oracle!

What bring'st thou of Persephone, my child?

Hecate.

Thy daughter lives, yet never sees the sun.

Demeter.

Blind am I in her blindness. Tell no more.

Hecate.

Blind is she not, and yet beholds no light.

Demeter.

Dark as her doom is, are thy words to me.

Hecate.

Would I might lift the darkness from her eyes
As lightly as I lift it from my speech!

When on the headlong coursers of the sea
To the white slope of Etna I was borne,
There, in a valley leaning to the shore,
Herding their father's flocks three maids I found,
The daughters of the god whose golden house
Rears in the east its cloudy peristyle,

3.

Who to my questioning one-voiced replied:

"Helios last saw Persephone on earth."

Demeter.

On earth? What nameless region holds her now?

Hecate.

Even as I put thy question to the three,

Etna became as one who knows a god,

And wondrously, across the waiting deep,

Wave after wave the golden portent bore,

Till Helios rose before us.

Demeter.

O, I need

Thy words as the parched valleys need my rain!

Hecate.

May the draught slake thee! Thus the god replied:

When the first suns of March with verdant flame

Relume the fig-trees in the crannied hills,

And the pale myrtle scents the rain-washed air —

Ere oleanders down the mountain stream

Pass the wild torch of summer, and my kine

Breathe of gold gorse and honey-laden sage;

Between the first white flowering of the bay

And the last almond's fading from the hill,

Along the meadows sown with daffodil,

The fields of Enna, came a singing maid,

Who seemed among her mates to move alone,

As the full moon will mow the sky of stars,

5.

Demeter.

Yet happier they, that make an end at last.

Hecate.

Behold, along the Eleusinian vale

A god approaches, by his feathered tread

Arcadian Hermes. Wait upon his word.

Demeter.

I am a god. What do the gods avail?

Hecate.

Oft have I heard that cry — but not the answer.

Hermes.

Demeter, from Olympus am I come,

By laurelled Temple and Thessalian ways,

Charged with grave words of aegis-bearing Zeus.

Demeter.

I want no words but those my child shall speak.

Hermes.

His words are wingèd seeds that carry hope

To root and ripen in long-barren hearts.

Demeter.

Deeds, and not words, alone can quicken me.

Hermes.

His words are fruitfuller than deeds of men.

Why hast thou left Olympus, and thy kind?

Demeter.

Because my kind are they that walk the earth

For numbered days, and lay them down in graves.

6.

My sisters are the miserable women
Who seek their children up and down the world,
Who feel a babe's hand at the faded breast,
And live upon the words of lips gone dumb.
Sorrow no footing on Olympus finds,
And the gods are gods because their hearts forget.

Hermes.

Why then, since thou hast cast thy lot with those
Who painfully endure vain days on earth,
Hast thou, harsh arbitress of fruit and flower,
Cut off the natural increase of the fields?
The baffled herds, tongues lolling, eyes agape,
Range wretchedly from sullen spring to spring,
A million sun-blades wound the fissured soil,
And the shrunk fruits untimely drop, like tears
That earth at her own desolation sheds.
These are the words Zeus bids me bring to thee.

Demeter.

To whom reply: No pasture longs for rain
As for Persephone I thirst and hunger.
Give me my child, and all the earth shall laugh
Like Rhodian rose-fields in the eye of June.

Hermes.

What if such might were mine? What if, indeed,
The exorable god, thy pledge confirmed,
Should yield thee back the daughter of thy tears?

7.

## Demeter.

Such might is thine?

Beyond Cithaeron see
The footsteps of the rain upon the hills.

## Hermes.

Tell me but whence thy daughter must be led.

## Hecate.

So much at least it shall be mine to do.

If ever urgency hath plumed thy heels,
By Psyttaleia and the outer isles

Westward still winging thine ethereal way,
Beyond the moon-swayed reaches of the deep,

And that unvestiged midnight that confines
The verge of being, succourable god,

Haste to the river by whose sunless brim
Dark Aides leads forth his languid flocks.

There shall thou find Persephone enthroned.

By the wan ruler of the dead she sits,
And shares, unwilling, his long sovereignty.

Thence lead her to Demeter and these groves.

## Demeter.

Round thy returning feet the earth shall laugh
As I, when of my body she was born!

## Hecate.

Lo, thy last word is as a tardy shaft

Lost in his silver furrow. Ere thou speed

Its fellow, we shall see his face again,

8.

And not alone. The gods are justified.

Demeter.

Ah, how impetuous are the wings of joy!

Swift comes it, as impatient to be gone!

Swifter than yonder rain moves down the pass
I see the wonder run along the deep.

The light draws nearer ... Speak to me, my child!

Hecate.

I feel the first slow rain-drop on my hand.

She fades. Persephone comes, led by Hermes.

Persephone.

How sweet the hawthorn smells along the hedge ...

And, mother, mother, sweeter are these tears.

Demeter.

Pale art thou, daughter, and upon thy brow

Sits an estranging darkness like a crown.

Look up, look up! Drink in the light's new wine,

Let it be warm in all thy frozen veins.

Feelest thou not beneath thine alien feet

Earth's old endearment, O Persephone?

Persephone.

Dear is the earth's warm pressure under foot,

And dear, my mother, is thy hand in mine.

As one who, wildered in some Asian wild,

After long days of cheated wandering

Climbing a sudden cliff, at last beholds

9.

The boundless reassurance of the sea,
And on it one small sail that sets for home,
So look I on the daylight, and thine eyes.

Demeter.

Thy voice is paler than the lips it leaves.
Thou wilt not stay with me! I know my doom.

Persephone.

Ah, the sweet rain! The clouds compassionate!
Hide me, O mother, hide me from the day!

Demeter.

What are these words? It is my love thou fearest.

Persephone.

I fear the light. I fear the sound of life
That thunders in mine unaccustomed ears.

Demeter.

Here is no sound but the soft-falling rain.

Persephone.

Doest thou not hear the noise of birth and being,
The roar of sap in boughs impregnated,
And all the <u>awful</u> rumour of the grass?

Demeter.

Love hear I, at his endless task of life.

Persephone.

The awful immortality of life!

The white path winding deathlessly to death!

Why didst thou call the rain from out her caves
To draw a dying earth back to the day?

deafening

10.

Why fatten flocks for our dark feast, who sit
Beside the gate, and know where the path ends?
O pitiless gods — that I am one of you!

Demeter.

They are not pitiless, since thou art here.

Persephone.

Who am I, that they give me, or withhold?
Think'st thou I am that same Persephone
They took from thee?

Demeter.

Within thine eyes I see
Some dreadful thing —

Persephone.

At first I deemed it so.

Demeter.

Loving thy doom, more dark thou mak'st it seem.

Persephone.

Love? What is love? This long time I've unlearned
Those old unquiet words. There where we sit,
By the sad river of the end, still are
The poplars, still the shaken hearts of men,
Or if they stir, it is as when in sleep
Dogs sob upon a phantom quarry's trail.
And ever through their listlessness there runs
The lust of some old anguish; never yet
Hath any asked for happiness; that gift
They fear too much! But they would sweat and strive,

11.

And clear a field, or kill a man, or even
Wait on some long slow vengeance all their days.

Demeter.

Since I have sat upon the stone of sorrow,
Think'st thou I know not how the dead may feel?
But thou, look up; for thou shall learn from me,
Under the sweet day, in the paths of men,
All the dear human offices that make

Their brief hour longer than the years of death.

Thou shall behold me wake the sleeping seed,
And wing the flails upon the threshing-floor,
Among young men and maidens; or at dawn,
Under the low thatch, in the winnowing-creel,
Lay the new infant, seedling of some warm

Noon dalliance in the golden granary,
Who shall in turn rise, walk, and drive the plough,
And in the mortal furrow leave his seed.

Persephone.

Execrable offices are theirs and thine!
Mine only murslings are the waxen-pale
Dead babes, so small that they are hard to tell
From the little images their mothers lay
Beside them, that they may not sleep alone.

Demeter.

Yet other nurslings to those mothers come,
And live and love —

12.

Persephone.

Thou hast not seen them meet,
Ghosts of dead babes and ghosts of tired men,
Or thou wouldst veil thy face, and curse the sun!

Demeter.

Thou wilt forget the things that thou hast seen.

Persephone.

More dreadful are the things thou hast to show.

Demeter.

Art thou so certain? Hard is it for men
To know a god, and it has come to me
That we, we also, may be blind to men.

Persephone.

O mother, thou hast spoken! But for me,
I, that have eaten of the seed of death,
And with my dead die daily, am become
Of their undying kindred, and no more
Can sit within the doorway of the gods
And laughing spin new souls along the years.

Demeter.

Daughter, speak low. Since I have walked with men
Olympus is a little hill, no more.
Stay with me on the dear and ample earth.

Persephone.

The kingdom of the dead is wider still,
And there I heal the wounds that thou hast made.

13.

Demeter.

And yet I send thee beautiful ghosts and griefs!
Dispeopling earth, I leave thee none to rule.

Persephone.

O that, mine office ended, I might end!

Demeter.

Stand off from me. Thou knowest more than I,
Who am but the servant of some lonely will.

Persephone.

Perchance the same. But me it calls from hence.

Demeter.

On earth, on earth, thou wouldst have wounds to heal!

Persephone.

Free me. I hear the voices of my dead.

She goes

Demeter (after a long silence.)

I hear the secret whisper of the wheat.

The End.