Artemis to Actaeon, and Other Verses Part 1

Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds.

by Edith Wharton.

I

ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON

THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs The mortal legend--thou that couldst not live Nor look on me (so the divine decree)!

That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough, The clod commoved with April, and the shapes Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark.

Mocked I thee not in every guise of life, Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in her well, Wooed through their laughter, and like echo fled, Luring thee down the primal silences Where the heart hushes and the flesh is dumb?

Nay, was not I the tide that drew thee out Relentlessly from the detaining sh.o.r.e, Forth from the home-lights and the hailing voices, Forth from the last faint headland's failing line, Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge And hid thee in the hollow of my being?

And still, because between us hung the veil, The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life, Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy thought.

And mine?

The G.o.ds, they say, have all: not so!

This have they--flocks on every hill, the blue Spirals of incense and the amber drip Of lucid honey-comb on sylvan shrines, First-chosen weanlings, doves immaculate, Twin-cooing in the osier-plaited cage, And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew: Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself!

And so they pale, for lack of warmth they wane, Freeze to the marble of their images, And, pinnacled on man's subserviency, Through the thick sacrificial haze discern Unheeding lives and loves, as some cold peak Through icy mists may enviously descry Warm vales unzoned to the all-fruitful sun.

So they along an immortality Of endless-envistaed homage strain their gaze, If haply some rash votary, empty-urned, But light of foot, with all-adventuring hand, Break rank, fling past the people and the priest, Up the last step, on to the inmost shrine, And there, the sacred curtain in his clutch, Drop dead of seeing--while the others prayed!

Yes, this we wait for, this renews us, this Incarnates us, pale people of your dreams, Who are but what you make us, wood or stone, Or cold chryselephantine hung with gems, Or else the beating purpose of your life, Your sword, your clay, the note your pipe pursues, The face that haunts your pillow, or the light Scarce visible over leagues of labouring sea!

_O thus through use to reign again, to drink_ _The cup of peradventure to the lees,_ _For one dear instant disimmortalised_ _In giving immortality!_ So dream the G.o.ds upon their listless thrones.

Yet sometimes, when the votary appears, With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes, _Too young_, they rather muse, _too frail thou art,_ _And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil_ _And nuptial garland for so slight a thing?_ And so to their incurious loves return.

Not so with thee; for some indeed there are Who would behold the truth and then return To pine among the semblances--but I Divined in thee the questing foot that never Revisits the cold hearth of yesterday Or calls achievement home. I from afar Beheld thee fas.h.i.+oned for one hour's high use, Nor meant to slake oblivion drop by drop.

Long, long hadst thou inhabited my dreams, Surprising me as harts surprise a pool, Stealing to drink at midnight; I divined Thee rash to reach the heart of life, and lie Bosom to bosom in occasion's arms.

And said: _Because I love thee thou shalt die!_

For immortality is not to range Unlimited through vast Olympian days, Or sit in dull dominion over time; But this--to drink fate's utmost at a draught, Nor feel the wine grow stale upon the lip, To scale the summit of some soaring moment, Nor know the dulness of the long descent, To s.n.a.t.c.h the crown of life and seal it up Secure forever in the vaults of death!

And this was thine: to lose thyself in me, Relive in my renewal, and become The light of other lives, a quenchless torch Pa.s.sed on from hand to hand, till men are dust And the last garland withers from my shrine.

LIFE

NAY, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more Pour the wild music through me--

I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind, Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn There came a groping shape of mystery Moving among us, that with random stroke Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe, Pierced, fas.h.i.+oned, lipped me, sounding for a voice, Laughing on Lethe-bank--and in my throat I felt the wing-beat of the fledgeling notes, The bubble of G.o.dlike laughter in my throat.

Such little songs she sang, Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe, They trickled from me like a slender spring That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread, Nor dreams of gla.s.sing cities, bearing s.h.i.+ps.

She sang, and bore me through the April world Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum In the meadows, under the low-moving airs, And breathings of the scarce-articulate air When it makes mouths of gra.s.ses--but when the sky Burst into storm, and took great trees for pipes, She thrust me in her breast, and warm beneath Her cloudy vesture, on her terrible heart, I shook, and heard the battle.

But more oft, Those early days, we moved in charmed woods, Where once, at dusk, she piped against a faun, And one warm dawn a tree became a nymph Listening; and trembled; and Life laughed and pa.s.sed.

And once we came to a great stream that bore The stars upon its bosom like a sea, And s.h.i.+ps like stars; so to the sea we came.

And there she raised me to her lips, and sent One swift pang through me; then refrained her hand, And whispered: "Hear--" and into my frail flanks, Into my bursting veins, the whole sea poured Its s.p.a.ces and its thunder; and I feared.

We came to cities, and Life piped on me Low calls to dreaming girls, In counting-house windows, through the c.h.i.n.k of gold, Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth, And made the heavy merchant at his desk Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life Mimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and we pa.s.sed.

We climbed the slopes of solitude, and there Life met a G.o.d, who challenged her and said: "Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed, And in my live flank dug a finger-hole, And wrung new music from it. Ah, the pain!

We climbed and climbed, and left the G.o.d behind.

We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea, With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow, And a silence that was louder than the deep; But on the utmost pinnacle Life again Hid me, and I heard the terror in her hair.

Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang, And clamoured "Play me against a G.o.d again!"

"Poor Marsyas-mortal--he shall bleed thee yet,"

She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need.

But evermore it woke, and stabbed my flank With yearnings for new music and new pain.

"Another note against another G.o.d!"

I clamoured; and she answered: "Bide my time.

Of every heart-wound I will make a stop, And drink thy life in music, pang by pang, But first thou must yield the notes I stored in thee At dawn beside the river. Take my lips."

She kissed me like a lover, but I wept, Remembering that high song against the G.o.d, And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb.

We came to cavernous foul places, blind With harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glare Of sinful furnaces--where hunger toiled, And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey, And death fed delicately on young bones.

"Now sing!" cried Life, and set her lips to me.

"Here are G.o.ds also. Wilt thou pipe for Dis?"

My cry was drowned beneath the furnace roar, Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped G.o.ds Laughed down on me, and mouthed the flutes of h.e.l.l.

"Now sing!" said Life, reissuing to the stars; And wrung a new note from my wounded side.

So came we to clear s.p.a.ces, and the sea.

And now I felt its volume in my heart, And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on me The song of the Infinite. "Now the stars," she said.

Then from the utmost pinnacle again She poured me on the wild sidereal stream, And I grew with her great breathings, till we swept The interstellar s.p.a.ces like new worlds Loosed from the fiery ruin of a star.

Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again, Under black skies, under a groping wind; And Life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast, Pressing numb lips against me. Suddenly A blade of silver severed the black peaks From the black sky, and earth was born again, Breathing and various, under a G.o.d's feet.

A G.o.d! A G.o.d! I felt the heart of Life Leap under me, and my cold flanks shook again.

He bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out, But Life warmed to him, warming me with her, And as he neared I felt beneath her hands The stab of a new wound that sucked my soul Forth in a new song from my throbbing throat.

"His name--his name?" I whispered, but she shed The music faster, and I grew with it, Became a part of it, while Life and I Clung lip to lip, and I from her wrung song As she from me, one song, one ecstasy, In indistinguishable union blent, Till she became the flute and I the player.

And lo! the song I played on her was more Than any she had drawn from me; it held The stars, the peaks, the cities, and the sea, The faun's catch, the nymph's tremor, and the heart Of dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk, Apollo's challenge on the sunrise slope, And the hiss of the night-G.o.ds mouthing flutes of h.e.l.l-- All, to the dawn-wind's whisper in the reeds, When Life first came, a shape of mystery, Moving among us, and with random stroke Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe.

All this I wrung from her in that deep hour, While Love stood murmuring: "Play the G.o.d, poor gra.s.s!"

Now, by that hour, I am a mate to thee Forever, Life, however spent and clogged, And tossed back useless to my native mud!

Yea, groping for new reeds to fas.h.i.+on thee New instruments of anguish and delight, Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed, Thine ear remember me, thy bosom thrill With the old subjection, then when Love and I Held thee, and fas.h.i.+oned thee, and made thee dance Like a slave-girl to her pipers--yea, thou yet Shalt hear my call, and dropping all thy toys Thou'lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more Pour the wild music through me--

VESALIUS IN ZANTE (See note at end)

(1564)

SET wide the window. Let me drink the day.