Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ROUT OF THE AMAZONS; AT LAOMEDON'S UPPER FOLD, by THOMAS STURGE MOORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ROUT OF THE AMAZONS; AT LAOMEDON'S UPPER FOLD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ahi, ahi, ahi, laomedon!
Last Line: So let us get to bed and pray for him.
Alternate Author Name(s): Moore, T. Sturge
Subject(s): Amazons


FAUN [afar off]: Ahi, ahi, ahi, Laomedon!
LAOMEDON: It is the faun: he is in sore dismay:
That shrewd "Ah ee" denoteth grief or pain.
FAUN [nearing]: Ahi, ahi, ahi!
LAOMEDON: Ah! there he comes!
What bounds! -- O Hermes, how he bounds along!
Like to a frog which boys do pelt with stones,
But straighter, without pause: and every leap
Cleareth a rood or more!.. He's o'er the stream,
And takes the hurdles of the fold with ease,
And comes, and comes...
FAUN: Ahi, ahi, ahi!
LAOMEDON:
Heyday, heyday! what fills thee with alarm?
FAUN: Ahi!
LAOMEDON: Take breath, O aegipan, take breath.
FAUN: Ahi! Laomedon, art thou alone?
LAOMEDON:
Yea, yea; see, here's a bowl; I'll pour thee out
A draught of milk.
FAUN: Nay, stay: thou art alone?
LAOMEDON:
Alone I am, and shall be yet awhile:
My wife and daughters have gone off to bathe;
The heat had wearied them, and, ere sun-down,
They wended slowly by yon zig-zag path,
So through the valley wood, on by the stream,
To gain the shore, where, floored with sand, a trough
Between flat shelves of rock doth form a bath
Convenient for their youth and timid hearts;
Yon sail, that twinkles on the far sea marge,
My boys have hoisted; having rowed out thither,
They now await the freshening breeze of night...
Behold, its first flaw travels the calm bay.
FAUN: You love a sober speech and call it best;
Grave rounded syllables; but oh, give ear!
Ahi, ahi! my tale will not support
A measured speech;
It must come like the wind,
Gust upon gust,
With rapid sweeping,
Curve following curve,
Until the waves are tossing and can roar.

Oh, has the zephyr won thy heart to love,
With beauty daring all the other winds
To give him chase? or has
A child armed with a branch
Of silver-willow catkins,
Who dances round the men at work and laughs
His merry gibes?
Oh! it is worse
Than when it falls and hurts itself and weeps..
More suddenly ended and more utterly..
When the fair youthful woman,
Brandishing her spear,
Flaunting her cape of spotted leopard skin,
Prancing a white unsaddled horse
As full of bounding mettle as her glance is,
Gashed shrieks and wounded topples to the ground!
Ah! it is worse than when a lovely day is
In rushing storm englutted,
To see her dragged by one foot from the fight,
Amid the hooves whirled by a frantic steed,
Her head trailed through the dust, her poor bruised face
Like a down-beaten muddied flower, fainted..
Her white hands trodden upon,
Her white hands trodden upon.
What pain! alas, what pain!
LAOMEDON:
What hast thou seen, ah me! that makes thee weep
That art not wont to weep? Thou cam'st so straight,
That com'st at other times so waywardly..
Seeking the ferret's hole beneath the hedge,
Chasing the rabbit with a merry whoop,
Mocking the blue-tit swinging upside-down
With his "chin chin," thy fingers in thy teeth,
From lichened bole picking the mealy moth,
And prying into all creation's hopes.
What ails thee? hast thou seen a goddess fight?
For goddesses do fight among the gods,
Though men with women fight not on the earth.
FAUN: Ahi, ahi, ahi! if they did not
I should be as I always am to-day,
But they put on short tunics
Scarce covering half their thighs,
The baldrick o'er their shoulders
And quivers they put on;
To the bow set foot and knee,
String it with twanging cord
And fit the notched shaft;
Javelin and spear take up;
And mount the steed and spur him, wearing straps
Wound round the heel and ankle, tightly wound;
They wheel and prance and canter,
And make him arch his neck,
Rear, and with delicate knees
Cling to his moistening flanks.
A thousand rode together, poising darts,
Behind them those with other arms came on;
All flaunting down a green-sward valley came
Between Arcadia's gentle holted hills.
It was for beauty like a fleet at sea,
Or like an hundred swans
Sailing before the breeze across a lake!
Their vests of daffodil, or pallid pink
Or milky violet! their saffron caps
And hoods like birds for sudden wing-like flaps!
Their white and piebald mounts! the rich green sward,
The morning light, the blossoming hawthorn trees!
The zephyr's music in the holts that crown
With delicate fern-like trees, each soft knoll's top!
I thought the night had borne me heavenward
And in Olympus I had waked from sleep;
And when their war-song rose
Long tears of rapture ran across my face:
Apollo made it, or, if 'twas not he,
Why, Marsyas died for nought.

Then heard I shouts, male voices,
And turning round I saw them come,
The men of Attica;
With archers on the hills
In bands of twenty strong,
And horsemen in the plain,
And infantry drawn up in branching glens
Which sloped from either side down to the meads;
I knew their stations had been ta'en with care;
And soon the women would have turned the range,
And both those armies in each other's view
Must stand opposed.

In the boughs of an oak I have quaked, where four roads met,
To watch upon either hand draw near to the cross
A boy and a girl both lovely and light of foot,
With life escaping out of unhindering eyes;
My heart has ached for fear that they should not laugh,
Not utter the kindly word when they met, but withstand
The power of either's beauty, and shamefac'd pass,
Fighting desire in their breasts for lack of a heart
Gallant with daring and sense; my pulse has stood still.
But, for fearing the thing that those nearing armies might do,
When they met in the widening meads at the foot of the hills,
My blood it grew cold, so long a time it stood still.
For now a silence settled on both their hosts,
As a wistness fell on those children, when they heard,
Each unseen, the other's approaching step on the road;
For scouts had sighted and made to both sides report.
Ah, that hush was like a December night in my soul,
And dull the sound of the hooves as the dismal sound
In the winter forest that wakes one upon a thaw.

Ahi, ahi, ahi, it was shrewd pain!
And not with a radiant welcome and hearty laugh
Each fronted each; but with a shout like a curse,
With a yell that had stricken the lion's heart with fear,
They on to each other rushed.
Ah! the eyes, that saw it, bleed;
And my ear is a wounded sense!
These were men, that their terrible spears
Hurled at the female breast:
These were men, who the well-aimed arrow
Let fly in the eyes of a girl.
LAOMEDON:
Faun, thou hast dreamed, this cannot be, is not;
I think I know enough this to deny.
Some bitter herb hast eaten and slept ill;
This has been born from fumes; some weed's rank sap
Deludes thee, Faun, there's wolf's-bane in thy blood!
Thou hast seen perchance in wild October night,
After the vintage, some the coarser hinds
Fight with their callets, and hast seen may be
Both wounds and blood dealt upon womankind;
Their clothes rent then, they by the hair were dragged:
They shrieked, they yelled, they tore with nails and teeth.
This in the fair spring night returned to thee..
The drunken riot, the hideous lustful rage
Transformed and tuned by trees above thy sleep.
There, with life-giving scent of May-time turf
And blossom's bounty floating the air of night,
Thy nostrils dilating, coloured thy dream has been
With delicate clarity; while agile forms,
Such as the Spring befit, rehearsed those crimes
With which the Autumn rude thy soul had laden:
For know, the gently reared have gentle hearts.
FAUN: Nay, this was no dream, not at all!
Oh, believe me! for I have plucked no berries,
Have eaten no spotted leaf nor any tongue-shaped
(Like the adder's tongue, so shaped, so venomed)
Nor none with prickles touched; the wholesome alone
Have made my salads, and I am not deceived;
It was there, I can show thee the place, and lead thee thither:
Nor these were not country wenches,
Nor did them resemble as dreams resemble
The world and men and gods;
These were the make of princesses, as thou hast told me:
And tended flowers that stand thy house before
Over the weed in the ditch bear not the palm
So far as these o'er some rich herdsman's child,
When, beauty ripe, she wears her very best;
For splendid purposes had these been trained,
And had the aspect of untiared queens;
Were like the tears of the morning for freshness;
Like the arms of the evening thrown up for weariness,
Such was the radiance of their arms..but thrown up,
Oh! thrown up in fright, in terror thrown up,
Those lovely and blood-splashed arms!

I was not on fire for them; think it not of me!
I viewed them not as our wild faunesses; no,
Though I have chased a nymph,
It was not so to-day;
I was sadder than a man to-day.
I will pray Pan fervently
That he may inspire me
With a ditty expressive of that mood
Whose sorrow was richer than joy.
He will do it,
For he is a sad god at his hours;
In the evening he is sad..
Very often.
LAOMEDON:
The men fought them, thou sayest? lanced them with spears?
Had they no pity then, seeing them bleed?
Surely their hearts were touched then, they stayed then?
The dreadful and upraised sword
Was stayed then, was dropped then? and they
Ran to those they had wounded, lifted them, helped them,
And were at once most gentle with their hands?
FAUN: No! nothing of that; for these,
Though they were hurt, were terrible;
Though they bled, they hated;
Though they died, they did not shed tears:
Their knees and arms were unstrung,
But their hearts were not.
Overthrown and puddled round with blood,
They struck at those who approached;
It was not safe to be merciful:
Though of those men some felt pity,
None showed it and lived.
It were better to have been a horse in that battle;
The strong steed knew not
Where he planted his hoof;
He ruined bosoms
That should have suckled heroes,
The children of a god;
But he knew it not.
If he broke the thigh of beauty,
Or crushed the loins
That had sate him so firmly,
With such elegance as the moon has,
The moon that rides white clouds,
Or the sea nymph whom a dolphin
Bears with pride as with pride he bare her.
This the dumb steed knew not;
But they, the men,
Knew what they did.

Look you,
To destroy beauty
Is what the year doth; the flower
Springs up in tenderness,
Is reared in elegance,
Sometimes to majesty,
But withered it giveth no more delight to the eye
Than an old creased ragged dusty kerchief!
Behold,
The storm it ravageth the sweet season;
Is it not then the fairest trees that suffer most?
What is the sea when tempest belloweth?
Not that wooer which erewhile
The youth, nay even
The maiden could not withstand;
But must be naked
And, bathing, intimately know
The caress of living waters?
A horse is very much as a wind..
It raceth, it is spurred, it becometh wild,
And in madness it rageth;
It hath the form of speed as wind hath the sound;
It forgetteth itself in everything it doth.

Needs must be that beauty perish,
A brief thing everywhere beneath the stars;
If it be otherwise among them,
None will wonder when it is known:
But here we see it short-lived;
Yet is Spring as constant as the fall,
The bud as sear'd petal sure
Despite both storm and frost;
And in despite
Of the terrible hooves of the horse
The female child
Shall be born and reared in beauty,
And ride and curb the steed
With the grace of those;
But the men who saw them
Shall not see these,
Or if they see them
Be old and chill,
Dull, and of no mettle to enjoy:
And this those men,
Destroying that beauty, knew.
Ah, and they know
More clearly yet by now!
LAOMEDON:
Indeed, indeed, O Faun, thy words are wise;
Such truth as ne'er before sits on thy lips:
This is the pain of thought, and our soul's goad,
This is the spur of man, and sad he is;
To the child alone Spring comes with capturing glee;
Only to youth with sweet co-ordinate soul,
And powers akin to theirs, will like their own;
The man mature is braced to undertake
What, the last Autumn, had been judged too hard;
For him the Spring has come like self restored.
To age but as reprieve from pain it comes:
The laughing face throws on them some faint smile,
As from a shield the pale round lights a wall
Shed by its brilliant blaze; but oftenest, ah!
The envy of sour impotence is theirs;
Or dull regret, for they cannot be cheered,
Nor can they bless the kindness that would cheer;
Then o'er the grave Spring treads unheeded quite.
FAUN: Give me the milk, Laomedon; I thirst.
Thanks. Ah! the milk is good,
As sweet it seems to me
As in those lovely bosoms there was stored
For infants that shall never wail for it.
They broke, they broke, and scattered far and wide,
Even so suddenly as I have seen
The cherry tree almost to one sole gust
Give up its bloom.
Like petals in the breeze, like butterflies,
They headed for the hills,
For shelter with loose rein
On all sides fleeing!
As when among the sheep
A young dog wantonly, that has not learned
To gather in the flock on Helicon,
And make a white drift like late-lingering snows
Among the rocks and cactus of a glen...
As when such young cur wantonly will bark
And run and worry; as then fly the sheep
In headlong terror, so those fair queens fled.
But no Apollo from the clear sweet sky
Hastened, as then sore-vexed the shepherd hastes
To stay the cur with swift correcting stone,
And gather-to the sheep with sager dogs...
Ah no, ah no, Apollo!
Apollo, where wast thou?
Afar on white Olympus' brow?
Or didst thou some fair Daphne follow?
Or wast thou minding sheep
For some boy shepherd's love
Upon Thessalian steep?..
While in thy car above
A Phaeton, a mortal's child,
The reins had from thy hand beguiled,
With silly pride to drive his father's team,
Heedless of evils, flush-faced, in a dream..
Cheeks flushed, curls streaming,
Rapt standing in thy car,
In daylight dreaming;
Blissful as sleepers are,
Heedless of evils be they near or far,
Of evils heedless be they near or far...
But close, close, close to me
A feminine splendour on a whirlwind steed
Rushed up, flashed forth, passed by,
Plunging through the crashing brakes
Deep between trees, on, on:
And others..I could hear them broach the wood
At diverse distances;
Some with shrewd wails of pain
For jolted wound, or blow from low-hung bough:
So turned and hastened towards the wooded hills,
Leaving the open valley and the meads
And the harsh voices of victorious men;
And, following tracks some hour, came upon
A stream, and by the stream
One crouched, half stripped, wiping a wounded foot.
Her bare arms, shaped as dreams of courage are
In some young lover's mind,
Glowed bright with strength, efficiency, and grace:
The woundless foot bespoke a power to dance,
To race, to wheel, and leap,
As tunny's tail expresseth subtler force
And water-quelling feats of deftness rare.
Behind, into an oak bush leaned her shield
And her long spear: her face
Was strange and sweet as when the spell of thought
Lays hold upon a child,
Who feels no captive yet,
And, when he shall, that instant will escape:
Her hair, a nut-red, hung
Unnetted down her back;
Some vests on which she sate dipped in the stream,
And in the water dipped
One of her silvery greaves
Shapely and curved:
Not far away her horse,
Where the bank widened and the sunshine fell,
Lay panting with green branches strewn o'er him,
Green branches she had first drenched in the stream.
Then, as she staunched her wound,
Her shift fell open and I saw her breast
Quick heaving still:
The flowers that grow upon that lush stream-bank,
Fed with green half-veiled light
Or short half-hours of sun,
Deep in the wood,
No wind could reach to stir; but like some belled
Faint-flushed anemone
Wherein a bee is hid
Her bosom shook...
I shall not speak about her loveliness
Beyond what now is said:
She never saw me and I left her there.
Soon I on traces came of wildest flight:
The white and spunky end of some dead branch
Snapt on the ground..the wounded toadstool clump
Scattered in chips of sulphur or shrewd red..
Rent and dragged tangle, briar, clematis,
Or woodbine..clotted leaves scooped up, turned over;
Black, moist, and glistening on the dusty mats,
They form where'er the gloom forbiddeth weeds;
Last, ploughed-up dints in ruddier needles led me
On to a hill-side plateau: mid the pines
Through which a glade was opened o'er the land,
A shred of silk there fluttered 'gainst the sky.

At foot of tall and grandly-towering pines
Was where she fell; for there she dead lay fallen,
Between two groves of grandly-towering pines.
Yea, here she fell; for here she dead lay fallen
With both arms stretched beyond her upturned face,
Pointing the way her steed had madly fled;
Her feet, where their wake ended in dank grass
Through which they had been trailed some thirty yards,
Lying wound in their straps and scored with scratches;
A spotted skin belting the tattered vests
That chilly shook upon her loins, or framing
A globed discovered breast and firm full throat:
Perfectly still: and in her raven hair
Nested her face like snow on cypress cradled,
While near one hand a yellow daffodil
With unbruised stalk flaunted its winsome head.
There, while I gazed upon her, I could see
The quiet country melt in haze away
Miles beyond miles. There beautiful she lay,
The tall pines barely murmuring far aloft,
Not stooping and not conscious she was there:
Yet once I saw the ripe and rustling corn
Arch down above a baby sleeping naked;
Tender and careful as Demeter was
Of her Persephone at eighteen months,
So fond the wheat bowed o'er that baby lying
Not far from where men reaped between two fields
Upon a patch of close-grown clover leaves.
A pitcher in a wattled jacket cased,
And food tied with a napkin, stood beside
Its curly flaxen poll; the patterned shawl,
Which once had wrapped it, 'neath its legs lay crumpled,
For great the warmth and sturdy those fine limbs.
There, under curving heavy-fruited stalks,
And nodding ears of dry and rustling corn,
Between those fields outspread like oceans rolling,
The two-years-old slept sound; and I, who heard
The reapers sing the contest and defeat
Of Linus, to give time to their hard toil,
Might watch her grace in slumber half an hour,
And wonder whether she had dreams or no.
It was a child, whose prettiness in play
Might well have charmed the bird down from the tree:
I, gazing on that dead form, thought of her,
And felt as then I felt, and stole away,
As though a-feared lest she might wake, and scream
To see my horns, brown visage, and white teeth.
LAOMEDON:
Meseems that these must have been amazons,
Beyond the isles that live, beyond the isles;
I have heard tell (but ne'er did credit much)
Of their strange way of life and warlike strength:
And yet, since that thy tongue seems new-endowed,
Perchance thou art inspired of a god
And speakest things that are not, to win love..
To win love hinting grandeurs not contained
In what contains us, air and sight and sound;
For that they should invade our Hellas seems
In very sooth a dream.
FAUN: No, no! no dream!
Not far from where that lovely warrior lay
I sate me down in deep and solemn mood,
Then came a bird and sang..
Sang and flew off once more;
A squirrel came and wondered what it meant;
The nimble rogue had hoped I'd give him chase.
He knew not she lay there in middle glade
Dead, yet as beautiful as hope of health
After one has been sick. And it grew cold,
And the damp spring-tide evening settled in;
Between the tall sad trunks the light grew grey,
And green gave place to blackness in the grass:
With strident cries at times, but ne'er a song,
The birds had gone to roost; and silence reigned
Like the great future, absolute control
Exerting without any sensible sign..
Lord of an hour, as that great realm of hope
Imposeth all life long. Mutely I prayed
That she to joy might even yet return,
Then looked and saw the stars shine through the boughs,
And far away I heard a silver sound.
At first methought it was the rising moon
Did make a music pure and clear as dew;
But, lo! 'twas answered from the west, and soon
Out of the south was gently born again.
I did not move, but mine eyes filled with tears;
And now from many quarters all at once,
And then again in silver dialogue,
Across the inlets of the sea,
Across the plains,
Across successive ranges of the hills,
Fainter than music, more magical than harps,
It rose and was approaching from all sides;
I rocked myself for bliss..a hallali,
A hallali on horns of crystal sounded.
The nymphs of Artemis they blew those horns
On all the hills, in every forest's heart,
And down the valleys, and across the plains,
And near the distant inlets of the sea,
Where'er a woman's body they had found.
Now close behind me, twenty paces back,
It sounded: and I, turning, saw one stand
With all the dignity and charm of night,
In a white tunic with a grey-green cloak,
Beside that prostrate sister of like grace.
Then knelt she and laid both the arms to rest,
Next straightened both the knees, and closed the shift
Above the breast, ordered the dew-damp hair,
And kissed the eyelids, having lowered them;
Went then and gathered young ferns not far off;
With these she covered up that lovely corse,
Then drew a circle round it with an arrow,
Saying some words of heaven..some rare spell,
Doubtless of might to stay
The onward rushing wolf, and yet so fine
That it could hold the spider and the ant,
Forbid their entrance like a crystal wall,
And owl or chough or vulture on the wing
Suddenly turn to folly, and their instinct,
Never at fault before, lead far astray,
As though their hearts felt love, and they were gone
To vainly haunt round some fair rock-nymph's lodge,
Or to persuade the moon with lover's sighs.
Sounding again that glory on her horn,
She turned and passed away among the trees.
Soon I arose and sought the freer air
And gazed out o'er the night; and here and there,
Lo! a white tunic and a green-grey cloak
Of fainter than a phosphor radiance, gleamed
Upon the plain, or on the sides of hills.
Ere long I knew they gathered toward that place
(Winding their horns at times, the while they went)
Where the main battle raged; and I made thither.
But, when I saw
How many queens were busy on that field,
And with what rapid gliding steps they moved,
Fear fell upon me lest I were surprised,
Actaeon-like, and changed to more a beast,
Losing both speech and laughter...so I fled
Just as the morning was about to break.
An hundred miles have I come straight to thee,
Mine only friend, Laomedon; and now
Haste thee, O shepherd, to return with me;
For though they doubtless buried some last night,
And will to-night inter yet more, I deem
It shall be full a week ere that they quit
Their travail o'er Arcadian hills and dales:
So come, for we may see them at their work
And in our hearts put by so pure a vision,
That though old age and blindness fall on us,
We shall know hours of rapture to the end.
LAOMEDON:
O Faun, I do believe thee, and will come;
For what thou tell'st is worthy of the gods,
And holy Artemis would act e'en so.
First let me say farewell unto my wife
And daughters, for I hear them at the house.
They have returned and shall provide a scrip
With cates and meat, figs and good flask of wine;
For thou has fasted long, and several days
Must pass before I can be here once more.
FAUN: Laomedon, I will await thee! haste!
-- So good a man both gods and nymphs respect;
I shall be safe with him. The poor wild faun,
With that kind shepherd who once saved his life,
Shall look upon the holy Artemis
And all her stately and white-tunic'd nymphs.
A man walks slow, our journey will take time.
But, see, he doth return; his wife and girls,
Who take their leave, come with him; I will hide.
DAUGHTER:
O father, wilt thou go an hundred miles?
LAOMEDON: Eudora, yea; an hundred miles, my girl.
HIS WIFE: Laomedon, be heedful and not rash;
Anger no nymph, intrude not on their rites!
LAOMEDON: Dear, fear me not; farewell.
LITTLE DAUGHTER:
An hundred miles is further than the caves?
ELDEST DAUGHTER:
Yes, Doto, for the caves are scarce ten miles.
LAOMEDON:
Farewell, my sweetest little one, farewell;
Oh, I could kiss you all away to-night!
ANOTHER DAUGHTER:
There is the faun; I saw him; mother, mother!
THE WIFE:
He will not hurt you, dear; 'tis a kind faun.
EUDORA: Father, I cannot think an hundred miles:
It is beyond beyond, too far, and like
The moon and stars; or are they nearer us?
LAOMEDON:
Further, I think, but ask the reremice that;
Farewell, be good. -- Dear wife, one last farewell!
ALL:
Farewell, farewell, farewell; good-bye, good-bye!
FAUN: Hist!
I to the hay rick on yon ridge will pass
And there await thee; I can not walk slow.
LAOMEDON:
Good, good; agreed! -- Ha, ha! see, he is off;
My best strides are no match for bounds like that; --
Didst thou see, Doto, how he leaped i' the dark?
DOTO: Ha, ha, the funny faun!
LAOMEDON: Good-bye, sweet one.
ALL: Father, good-bye!
EUDORA: The darkness down the hill
Hides him so fast, he seems a shadow now
That waves its hand upon a dark grey wall.
THE MOTHER:
There, let us all go home and get to bed;
The boys will not be back till near on dawn;
I hope they will bring fish, for all the meat
Did I thrust in his wallet, wrapped in leaves.
If it be wise to try and see the gods
I know not; but your Father is a man,
And men will not be cautious in such things;
So let us get to bed and pray for him.





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