Part 15 (2/2)

”Three songs in my spirit: Elusive, tremulous, light.

You have felt their tremor; This gift is spended aright.”

The nightingale lifted her voice up, The moon fled out of the skies, The fig-tree split, and two tears rolled Out of the great stag's eyes.

Now, when she had done singing, She closed her eyes, and her breath Went out as she lay down backward And folded her hands in death.

LYME REGIS, _July_ 6, 1916.

FRAGMENTS FROM A DRAMA ON THE SUBJECT OF ORESTES

I.--WARNING UNHEEDED

_Ka.s.sandra._ I cried in the halls where the feast will be set; The hurrying servants whom I met Brushed me aside, asked why I tarried.

On their black woolly heads gold platters they carried, Piled high with rich fruits; betwixt jewelled hands, Goblets of crystal, white blossoming wands, Urns breathing incense: all these to be set Where Truth's feast and the feasters too soon shall be met.

The guest shall turn as he laughs and sups, Reaching his hand for the golden wine; His face shall change as he sees next to him A mouth that mocks, eyes that look through him, A head sink her glistening brow 'twixt the cups, Locks blackening his stoup with a liquor of brine.

In the scrolls of the platter of gold there has bled The juice of fruit battered and hairy and red; The goblets of crystal are fissured and cracked Like ice the bronze tyre of the chariot has wracked, And the blossoms curl withered because of the heat Of urns overset by the slip of red feet When the reveller fell forward unable to save His eyes from the torch, his groin from the glaive.

_Chorus._ For Truth rejected returns as Pain.

_Ka.s.sandra._ Under the trestles the guests lie slain; The curtains upon the gold cords pull Heavily, sagging like nets that are full, For curved in the trough and propped in the fold The red, red catch lies tossed and rolled; The halls and corridors reek with the flood; The pillars are trickled with cyphers of blood; Rent garlands lie trampled over the floors; Rusty footprints lead out through the high bronze doors To the starlit night and the whispering plain:

_Chorus._ For Truth rejected returns as Pain.

_Ka.s.sandra._ I weep for the ruin of a high, proud house; Moths fret the still curtains; down the throne runs a mouse; The sun fades on the floors heaped high with dead leaves; The moon runs on the rills that run from the eaves; Brown clogs the peristyle; the air has a tang; Weeds rot on the terrace; the hanging gates clang; The wind is a weariness; man lives in vain

_Chorus._ Where Truth rejected returns as Pain.

1914-1916.

II.--ORESTES TO THE FURIES

Ye are no madman's dreams, then!...

Out sword! Backward tread O curs that circle the bright blade ye dread.

Back to where dead-eyed Hate, your shameful priest, Prepares your bowl of blood, your fleshy feast: Where in the thronged and long-hushed marketplace Ten thousand faces gaze on one pale face; Where the lost victim feels the lonely ban Of death terrific loosed by man on man; Where black blood froths, where drives the whirring wheel; Where hands, ears, lips fall lopped of instant steel; Where the intent and dazzling pincher plies Till to the silent tortures Anguish cries At once for death! and when sharp death is given, Others, corded and swooned, antic and sick, are driven Under the axe, whose sheeny flash and fall Bids the block ring as pile beneath the maul, Till Man's protest dies to a whisper, dumb Beneath the maddened rolling of Death's drum!

<script>