SEMICHORUS.

As a wood-dove newly shot, She sobbed and lifted her breast; She sighed and covered her eyes, Filling her lips with sighs; She sighed, she withdrew herself not, She refrained not, taking not rest;

SEMICHORUS.

But as the wind which is drouth, And as the air which is death, As storm that severeth ships, Her breath severing her lips, The breath came forth of her mouth And the fire came forth of her breath.

SECOND MESSENGER.

Queen, and you maidens, there is come on us A thing more deadly than the face of death; Meleager the good lord is as one slain.

SEMICHORUS.

Without sword, without sword is he stricken; Slain, and slain without hand.

SECOND MESSENGER.

For as keen ice divided of the sun His limbs divide, and as thawed snow the flesh Thaws from off all his body to the hair.

SEMICHORUS.

He wastes as the embers quicken; With the brand he fades as a brand SECOND MESSENGER.

Even while they sang and all drew hither and he Lifted both hands to crown the Arcadian's hair And fix the looser leaves, both hands fell down.

SEMICHORUS.

With rending of cheek and of hair Lament ye, mourn for him, weep.

SECOND MESSENGER.

Straightway the crown slid off and smote on earth, First fallen; and he, grasping his own hair, groaned And cast his raiment round his face and fell.

SEMICHORUS.

Alas for visions that were, And soothsayings spoken in sleep.

SECOND MESSENGER.

But the king twitched his reins in and leapt down And caught him, crying out twice 'O child' and thrice, So that men's eyelids thickened with their tears.

SEMICHORUS.

Lament with a long lamentation, Cry, for an end is at hand.

SECOND MESSENGER.

O son, he said, son, lift thine eyes, draw breath, Pity me; but Meleager with sharp lips Gasped, and his face waxed like as sunburnt grass.

SEMICHORUS.

Cry aloud, O thou kingdom, O nation, O stricken, a ruinous land.

SECOND MESSENGER.

Whereat king Oeneus, straightening feeble knees, With feeble hands heaved up a lessening weight, And laid him sadly in strange hands, and wept.

SEMICHORUS.

Thou art smitten, her lord, her desire, Thy dear blood wasted as rain.

SECOND MESSENGER.

And they with tears and rendings of the beard Bear hither a breathing body, wept upon And lightening at each footfall, sick to death.

SEMICHORUS.

Thou madest thy sword as a fire, With fire for a sword thou art slain.

SECOND MESSENGER.

And lo, the feast turned funeral, and the crowns Fallen; and the huntress and the hunter trapped; And weeping and changed faces and veiled hair. MELEAGER.

Let your hands meet Round the weight of my head, Lift ye my feet As the feet of the dead; For the flesh of my body is molten, the limbs of it molten as lead.

CHORUS.

O thy luminous face, Thine imperious eyes! O the grief, O the grace, As of day when it dies! Who is this bending over thee, lord, with tears and suppression of sighs?

MELEAGER.

Is a bride so fair? Is a maid so meek? With unchapleted hair, With unfilleted cheek, Atalanta, the pure among women, whose name is as blessing to speak.

ATALANTA.

I would that with feet Unsandaled, unshod, Overbold, overfleet, I had swum not nor trod From Arcadia to Calydon northward, a blast of the envy of God.

MELEAGER.

Unto each man his fate; Unto each as he saith In whose fingers the weight Of the world is as breath; Yet I would that in clamour of battle mine hands had laid hold upon death.

CHORUS.

Not with cleaving of shields And their clash in thine ear, When the lord of fought fields Breaketh spearshaft from spear, Thou art broken, our lord, thou art broken; with travail and labour and fear,

MELEAGER.

Would God he had found me Beneath fresh boughs Would God he had bound me Unawares in mine house, With light in mine eyes, and songs in my lips, and a crown on my brows!

CHORUS.

Whence art thou sent from us? Whither thy goal? How art thou rent from us, Thou that wert whole, As with severing of eyelids and eyes, as with sundering of body and soul!

MELEAGER.

My heart is within me As an ash in the fire; Whosoever hath seen me, Without lute, without lyre, Shall sing of me grievous things, even things that were ill to desire.

CHORUS.

Who shall raise thee From the house of the dead? Or what man praise thee That thy praise may be said? Alas thy beauty! alas thy body! alas thine head!

MELEAGER.

But thou, O mother, The dreamer of dreams, Wilt thou bring forth another To feel the sun's beams When I move among shadows a shadow, and wail by impassable streams?

OENEUS.

What thing wilt thou leave me Now this thing is done? A man wilt thou give me, A son for my son, For the light of mine eyes, the desire of my life, the desirable one?

CHORUS.

Thou wert glad above others, Yea, fair beyond word, Thou wert glad among mothers; For each man that heard Of thee, praise there was added unto thee, as wings to the feet of a bird.

OENEUS.

Who shall give back Thy face of old years, With travail made black, Grown grey among fears, Mother of sorrow, mother of cursing, mother of tears?

MELEAGER.

Though thou art as fire Fed with fuel in vain, My delight, my desire, Is more chaste than the rain, More pure than the dewfall, more holy than stars are that live without stain.

ATALANTA.

I would that as water My life's blood had thawn, Or as winter's wan daughter Leaves lowland and lawn Spring-stricken, or ever mine eyes had beheld thee made dark in thy dawn.

CHORUS.

When thou dravest the men Of the chosen of Thrace, None turned him again Nor endured he thy face Clothed round with the blush of the battle, with light from a terrible place.

OENEUS.

Thou shouldst die as he dies For whom none sheddeth tears; Filling thine eyes And fulfilling thine ears With the brilliance of battle, the bloom and the beauty, the splendour of spears.

CHORUS.

In the ears of the world It is sung, it is told, And the light thereof hurled And the noise thereof rolled From the Acroceraunian snow to the ford of the fleece of gold.

MELEAGER.

Would God ye could carry me Forth of all these; Heap sand and bury me By the Chersonese Where the thundering Bosphorus answers the thunder of Pontic seas.

OENEUS.

Dost thou mock at our praise And the singing begun And the men of strange days Praising my son In the folds of the hills of home, high places of Calydon?

MELEAGER.

For the dead man no home is; Ah, better to be What the flower of the foam is In fields of the sea, That the sea-waves might be as my raiment, the gulf-stream a garment for me.

CHORUS.

Who shall seek thee and bring And restore thee thy day, When the dove dipt her wing And the oars won their way Where the narrowing Symplegades whitened the straits of Propontis with spray?

MELEAGER.

Will ye crown me my tomb Or exalt me my name, Now my spirits consume, Now my flesh is a flame? Let the sea slake it once, and men speak of me sleeping to praise me or shame,

CHORUS.

Turn back now, turn thee, As who turns him to wake; Though the life in thee burn thee, Couldst thou bathe it and slake Where the sea-ridge of Helle hangs heavier, and east upon west waters break?

MELEAGER.

Would the winds blow me back Or the waves hurl me home? Ah, to touch in the track Where the pine learnt to roam Cold girdles and crowns of the sea-gods, cool blossoms of water and foam!

CHORUS.

The gods may release That they made fast; Thy soul shall have ease In thy limbs at the last; But what shall they give thee for life, sweet life that is overpast?

MELEAGER.

Not the life of men's veins, Not of flesh that conceives; But the grace that remains, The fair beauty that cleaves To the life of the rains in the grasses, the life of the dews on the leaves.

CHORUS.

Thou wert helmsman and chief, Wilt thou turn in an hour, Thy limbs to the leaf, Thy face to the flower, Thy blood to the water, thy soul to the gods who divide and devour?

MELEAGER.

The years are hungry, They wail all their days; The gods wax angry And weary of praise; And who shall bridle their lips? and who shall straiten their ways?

CHORUS.

The gods guard over us With sword and with rod; Weaving shadow to cover us, Heaping the sod, That law may fulfil herself wholly, to darken man's face before God.

MELEAGER.

O holy head of Oeneus, lo thy son Guiltless, yet red from alien guilt, yet foul With kinship of contaminated lives, Lo, for their blood I die; and mine own blood For bloodshedding of mine is mixed therewith, That death may not discern me from my kin. Yet with clean heart I die and faultless hand, Not shamefully; thou therefore of thy love Salute me, and bid fare among the dead Well, as the dead fare; for the best man dead Fares sadly; nathless I now faring well Pass without fear where nothing is to fear Having thy love about me and thy goodwill, O father, among dark places and men dead.

OENEUS.

Child, I salute thee with sad heart and tears, And bid thee comfort, being a perfect man In fight, and honourable in the house of peace. The gods give thee fair wage and dues of death, And me brief days and ways to come at thee.

MELEAGER.

Pray thou thy days be long before thy death, And full of ease and kingdom; seeing in death There is no comfort and none aftergrowth, Nor shall one thence look up and see day's dawn Nor light upon the land whither I go. Live thou and take thy fill of days and die When thy day comes; and make not much of death Lest ere thy day thou reap an evil thing. Thou too, the bitter mother and mother-plague Of this my weary body—thou too, queen, The source and end, the sower and the scythe, The rain that ripens and the drought that slays, The sand that swallows and the spring that feeds, To make me and unmake me—thou, I say, Althaea, since my father's ploughshare, drawn Through fatal seedland of a female field, Furrowed thy body, whence a wheaten ear Strong from the sun and fragrant from the rains I sprang and cleft the closure of thy womb, Mother, I dying with unforgetful tongue Hail thee as holy and worship thee as just Who art unjust and unholy; and with my knees Would worship, but thy fire and subtlety, Dissundering them, devour me; for these limbs Are as light dust and crumblings from mine urn Before the fire has touched them; and my face As a dead leaf or dead foot's mark on snow, And all this body a broken barren tree That was so strong, and all this flower of life Disbranched and desecrated miserably, And minished all that god-like muscle and might And lesser than a man's: for all my veins Fail me, and all mine ashen life burns down. I would thou hadst let me live; but gods averse, But fortune, and the fiery feet of change, And time, these would not, these tread out my life, These and not thou; me too thou hast loved, and I Thee; but this death was mixed with all my life, Mine end with my beginning: and this law, This only, slays me, and not my mother at all. And let no brother or sister grieve too sore, Nor melt their hearts out on me with their tears, Since extreme love and sorrowing overmuch Vex the great gods, and overloving men Slay and are slain for love's sake; and this house Shall bear much better children; why should these Weep? but in patience let them live their lives And mine pass by forgotten: thou alone, Mother, thou sole and only, thou not these, Keep me in mind a little when I die Because I was thy first-born; let thy soul Pity me, pity even me gone hence and dead, Though thou wert wroth, and though thou bear again Much happier sons, and all men later born Exceedingly excel me; yet do thou Forget not, nor think shame; I was thy son. Time was I did not shame thee, and time was I thought to live and make thee honourable With deeds as great as these men's; but they live, These, and I die; and what thing should have been Surely I know not; yet I charge thee, seeing I am dead already, love me not the less, Me, O my mother; I charge thee by these gods, My father's, and that holier breast of thine, By these that see me dying, and that which nursed, Love me not less, thy first-born: though grief come, Grief only, of me, and of all these great joy, And shall come always to thee; for thou knowest, O mother, O breasts that bare me, for ye know, O sweet head of my mother, sacred eyes, Ye know my soul albeit I sinned, ye know Albeit I kneel not neither touch thy knees, But with my lips I kneel, and with my heart I fall about thy feet and worship thee. And ye farewell now, all my friends; and ye, Kinsmen, much younger and glorious more than I, Sons of my mother's sister; and all farewell That were in Colchis with me, and bare down The waves and wars that met us: and though times Change, and though now I be not anything, Forget not me among you, what I did In my good time; for even by all those days, Those days and this, and your own living souls, And by the light and luck of you that live, And by this miserable spoil, and me Dying, I beseech you, let my name not die. But thou, dear, touch me with thy rose-like hands, And fasten up mine eyelids with thy mouth, A bitter kiss; and grasp me with thine arms, Printing with heavy lips my light waste flesh, Made light and thin by heavy-handed fate, And with thine holy maiden eyes drop dew, Drop tears for dew upon me who am dead, Me who have loved thee; seeing without sin done I am gone down to the empty weary house Where no flesh is nor beauty nor swift eyes Nor sound of mouth nor might of hands and feet, But thou, dear, hide my body with thy veil, And with thy raiment cover foot and head, And stretch thyself upon me and touch hands With hands and lips with lips: be pitiful As thou art maiden perfect; let no man Defile me to despise me, saying, This man Died woman-wise, a woman's offering, slain Through female fingers in his woof of life, Dishonourable; for thou hast honoured me. And now for God's sake kiss me once and twice And let me go; for the night gathers me, And in the night shall no man gather fruit.

ATALANTA.

Hail thou: but I with heavy face and feet Turn homeward and am gone out of thine eyes.

CHORUS.

Who shall contend with his lords Or cross them or do them wrong? Who shall bind them as with cords? Who shall tame them as with song? Who shall smite them as with swords? For the hands of their kingdom are strong.

THE END