Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ALCESTIS, by ANNE GOODWIN WINSLOW


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ALCESTIS, by                    
First Line: On the third day, the loud deliverer said
Last Line: And bind again.


On the third day, the loud deliverer said,
She will awake; she stands so silent now,
With that white veil across her whiter brow,
Because thus silent were the dead;
So still she stands
With those yet folded hands
Because she found
Such stillness underneath the ground;
But take her; she is all your own --
Beloved and known. . . .

So she had come again to tread
Her ordered household ways
With ordered mind,
And still, as long ago,
To find
Her joy at morning and her peace at night,
And light
As flowers round her head
To wear the garland of her blameless days;
For he had vanquished death and made it so.

But did he know? . . .

Among her maidens in the spacious room,
What dimness steals across the loom,
Changing the pattern that she weaves? --
These are the leaves
That grow not on the trees of earth;
These flowers
Drew their mysterious birth
From no dark seed of ours; --
Such are the tints that pale and gleam
Beyond that Other Stream.
Mixed with the music and the mirth
That ring
Through the wide hall,
What murmurs drift and fall
Upon her ear?
How should these alien echoes cling
To notes she is so used to hear?
Faint are the winds and far they blow
That bring
Such breathings low
To our clear pipes, and wring
Such unknown sweetness from the harps we know. . . .

So was it all in vain.
The twilight mists that steal
From those wan meadows may not lift and rise
Again for eyes
That drank their shade too deep;
Nor music mend the broken chain
Of mortal memories;
Nor may forgetting seal
Those wells of silence soft as sleep
Where music sinks and dies.
Light is the joy of earth, too light its pain,
To keep
And bind again.





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