Edith Wharton - Poems 02 Read online

Passed on from hand to hand, till men are dust

  And the last garland withers from my shrine.

  (Scribner’s Magazine 49, Mar 1911)

  

  Pomegranate Seed.

  Characters:

  Demeter

  Persephone

  Hecate

  Hermes

  In the vale of Elusis

  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 wild

  Last saw me, and mine aged footsteps pine

  For the bleak vale, my dusky-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,

  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, loaves 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

  When the wild chariot of the flying sea

  Bore me to Etna, ‘neath his silver slope

  Herding their father’s flocks three maids I found,

  The daughters of the god whose golden house

  Rears in the east its cloudy peristyle.

  “Helios, our father,” to my quest they cried,

  “Was last to see 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 fields of Enna came a maid

  Who seemed among her mates to move alone,

  As the full moon will mow the sky of stars,

  And whom, by that transcendence, I divined

  Of breed Olympian, and Demeter’s child.

  Demeter

  All-seeing god! So walks she in my dreams.

  Hecate

  Persephone (so spake the god of day)

  Ran here and there with footsteps that out-shone

  The daffodils she gathered, while her maids,

  Like shadows of herself by noon fore-shortened,

  On every side her laughing task prolonged;

  When suddenly the warm and trusted earth

  Widened black jaws beneath them, and therefrom

  Rose Aides, whom with averted head

  Pale mortals worship, as the poplar turns,

  Whitening, her fearful foliage from the gale.

  Like thunder rolling up against the wind

  He dusked the sky with midnight ere he came,

  Whirling his cloak of subterraneous cloud

  In awful coils about the fated maid,

  Till nothing marked the place where she had stood

  But her dropped flowers—a garland on a grave.

  Demeter

  Where is that grave? There will I lay me down,

  And know no more the change of night to day.

  Hecate

  Such is the cry that mortal mothers make;

  But the sun rises, and their task goes on.

  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 Tempe and Thessalian ways,

  Charged with grave words of aegis-bearing Zeus.

  Demeter

  (as if she has not heard him)

  If there be any grief I have not borne,

  Go, bring it here, and I will give it suck …

  Hermes

  Thou art a god, and speakest mortal words?

  Demeter

  Even the gods grow greater when they love.

  Hermes

  It is the Life-giver who speaks by me.

  Demeter

  I want no words but those my child shall speak.

  Hermes

  His words are winged 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.

  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 lacerate the ground,

  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 t
he daughter of thy tears?

  Demeter

  Such might is thine?

  Beyond Cithaeron, see

  The footsteps of the rain upon the hills.

  Hermes

  Tell me 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 shalt thou find Persephone enthroned.

  Beside the 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

  And not alone. The gods are justified.

  Demeter

  Ah, how impetuous are the wings of joy!

  Swift comes she, 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.

  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, prisoned in some Asian wild,

  After long days of cheated wandering

  Climbing a sudden cliff, at last beholds

  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

  Dost thou not hear the noise of birth and being,

  The roar of sap in boughs impregnated,

  And all the deafening 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?

  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,

  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 shalt 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 shalt 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 nurslings 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—

  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.

  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.

  (Scribner’s Magazine 51, Mar 1912)

  

  The Hymn of the Lusitania.

  In an article on “Peace Insurance by Preparedness Against War,” appearing in the Metropolitan Magazine for August, Theodore Roosevelt wrote: “Mrs. Wharton has sent me the following German poem on the sinking of the Lusitania, with her translation”:

  The swift sea sucks her death-shriek under

  As the great ship reels and leaps asunder.

  Crammed taffrail-high with her murderous freight.

  Like a straw on the tide she whirls to her fate.

  A warship she, though she lacked its coat,

  And lustful for lives as none afloat,

  A warship, and one of the foe’s best workers.

  Not penned with her rusting harbor-shirkers.

  Now the Flanders guns lack their daily bread,

  And shipper and buyer are sick with dread.

  For neutral as Uncle Sam may be

  Your surest neutral’s the deep green sea.

  Just one ship sunk, with lives and shell,

  And thousands of German gray-coats well!

  And for each of her gray-coats, German hate

  Would have sunk ten ships with all their freight.

  Yea, ten such ships are a paltry fine

  For one good life in our fighting line.

  Let England ponder the crimson text:

  TORPEDO, STRIKE! AND HURRAH FOR THE NEXT!