Volume Ii Part 35 (1/2)

THE APPEAs.e.m.e.nT OF DEMETER

I

Demeter devastated our good land, In blackness for her daughter s.n.a.t.c.hed below.

Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray.

Now whether night advancing, whether day, Scarce did the baldness show: The hand of man was a defeated hand.

II

Necessity, the primal goad to growth, Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, Or why men drew the breath to carry pain.

High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, Idly the flax-wheel spun Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.

III

Lean gra.s.sblades losing green on their bent flags, Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled.

Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, Careless to lure or please.

A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.

IV

No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom, And whose pale place of habitation mute, She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit Anciently, gaped for bloom: Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw.

V

The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved.

Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved.

It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn.

Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone.

More than for her who grieved, She could for this waste home have piped the wail.

VI

Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet, And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled, Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round.

Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground Rocky in spikes rebelled Against the hand here slack as rotted net.

VII

The valley people up the ashen scoop She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win Her Mistress in compa.s.sion of yon group So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin, For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe, White as in chalk outlining little O, Dumb, from a falling chin; Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.

VIII

Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when Dark underwaters the recesses choke; With cluck and upper quiver of a hen In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak.

Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount Bountiful of old days, heard them recount This and that cruel stroke: Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.

IX