Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VOYAGE OF JASON, by PAUL FORT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VOYAGE OF JASON, by                    
First Line: Argo, great winged ship, shaped for adventurous quest, when fifty
Last Line: Gold, assaulting heaven's vault rose, and soared toward the unknown.
Subject(s): Argo (ship); Goddesses & Gods; Jason; Mythology; Mythology - Classical


Argo, great winged ship, shaped for adventurous quest, when fifty mighty sweeps
from out your flanks respired, cleaving air and reaping seas, toward your far
goal you pressed, and fifty heroes bold upon your benches choired.

Was Jason drawn by you or was it he who led, poised on the prow, his arms
crossed on the Gorgon's head, parting the wine-dark waves with bent glance
unafraid that sped heroic hearts toward glory's accolade?

Uplifted on your keel was that divining tree, Dodona's oak, O Argo, that made
your mast. Reared high, it stabbed with bare, lopped trunk the azure of the sky.
Slitting its fragile silk, from west to east it passed.

Black, to its topmost spar athrill with strange unrest, it offered unto space an
oracle supreme, demanding access there for man's eternal dream, and all the sea
and sky unclosed at Jason's hest.

Climbing the mountainous wave it seemed as if you flew, soaring above the spray,
and your weight cradling you. High o'er the swollen sea you faced the tempest's
hiss. Then headlong plunged again, whelmed in a green abyss.

From wave to wave you went, breasting the wind's black spate, traversing azure,
reaping seas, o'er foamy summits blown, Argo, great winged ship, designed to
subjugate the uncharted universe, seas, lands, and skies unknown.

You let along your track the human odour float from bare loins, shoulders, arms,
bronze-lustred, lithe as steel, of fifty heroes bent above your gliding keel,
then dazzling with raised eyes the clouded skies remote.

You furrowed virile winds that glory's breath outblew. O'er his great club
Hercules dreamed, at the base of the druid mast. Orpheus touched his lyre,
'neath heavens obscure and vast, and sang that to wanderers the waves of stars
are due.

Jason forsook the prow, 'mid driving vapors dank, and saw his rowers' brows
rocked to that rhythm rare. Castor and Pollux there swayed in the foremost rank,
uniting, like two flames, the beacons of their hair.

Deucalion, Phalerus, Theseus, Amphidamus, Iphis and Telamon, Pirithous, Actor,
Mopsus, Laocoon, Iolas and Lynceus, Polyphemus, Glaucus, Meleager, Alector,

the race of giants merged with the offspring of the gods, young men superb, old
men in radiant majesty, sounders of each abyss of the soul or of the clouds, the
shepherd-boys, the poets, the warriors, knee to knee,

those who had plumbed the world down to its burning mud, the conquerors of the
Titans, the sons of Prometheus, ravishers of red flame, purgers of iron's dross,
all those your call, stark ship, launched on the heaving flood,

Amphion, Philoctetus, Anceus, from Neptune sprung, Anceus, Lycurgus' son, and
Aesculapius, Oileus, Argus, Nauplius, Augias, bred by the sun, Phlias the son of
Bacchus, Laertes, Peleus,

near Cepheus, that stern priest, Almenus, son of Mars, young Nestor, bent to
greet Atalanta beauteous. With one accord they sang above their flying oars, the
heroic burden led by the voice of Orpheus!

Orpheus had arisen, you voyaged toward azure heaven. Blue banners of the winds
clacked at your masthead's tip; then a great wave of stars by the lyre's sweet
accents driven, upbore you to the sky where still you bounded, ship!

Force, wisdom, pride, and will, by obstacles unbent, in dazzling splendour
glowed heroic brows above, and, with a bound, each brow upraised, magnificent,
the insatiate thirst to know and the deep desire to love.

Across the starry gulf they steered. Dodona's oak, moistened with cosmic dew, in
human accents spoke. Amid their cloudy hair, the heroes, as they flew, felt the
inchoate birth of constellations new.

Eternal gravitations the Argonauts embrace. Cadencing hosts of stars, the lyre
was lifted high. No more could Orpheus doubt the singing lyre of Thrace was the
sonorous soul and centre of the sky.

Staunch Tiphys at the helm sent worlds to fly like foam, eddying down through
space, still other worlds to lave. Argus and Nauplius bent, deciphering each
wave. Polyphemus kneeled to night's illimitable dome.

Hercules laughed with rage. Swift doom he fain would loose on the Olympian gods
in their ingratitude, since Hera, scornful-eyed, hailed him as demigod, while
lightly her white hand caressed his cudgel, Zeus.

Iphis and Telamon, toward heaven's dark incubus raising their eyes, in the
zenith their valour's goal could trace; and, amazed at the great number of the
eyes of Uranus, the exhilarated giants toured genially through space.

Aesculapius and Oileus reframed philosophies, in friendly chat. What words
sublime and strange were these? Within each silver beard there rolled a starry
dew. Atalanta in their fires annealed her darts anew.

With deft, creative hands, Deucalion the wise, moulding the luminous sleet that
down his oar-blade rolls, fashioned in myriad swarms those silver butterflies
that, low in Theseus' ear, he called immortal souls.

Pirithous, laughing loud, stretched forth his mighty fists, helfting the stars
like eggs, orbed Venus rosy-hued, irised Juno, Saturn gold, Mars ringed with
whirling mists the colour of the moon, Jupiter red as blood.

Regarding Orpheus, hearing his song's exultant swell, Amphidamus wept, the
worthy, susceptible old man. The agile Meleager up to the mast-head ran, there
to refresh his hands with the world invisible.

The young, mild Nestor whistled a tune beneath the moon's pale beam. Those stars
that were their brows the Brethren merged in one. The pensive Philoctetus of
solitude did dream. Augias watched the dawn, being blond Apollo's son.

Towards the rounded globe of Earth the eyes of Jason strain, spun in a god's
great fist, creation's humble cog. He gives a cry. His hands stretch towards the
furrowed main, where famed Atlantis lifts two triangles of fog.

Its sombre forests deep indented Europe shows, and on the foamy wave that bathes
its rugged rim, 'tis like some Stygian night 'gainst morning's molten glows.
Green lakes and glacier-floes illume its shadows dim.

There burning Asia rears a buckler of bright gold. The mirrored isles of Greece,
a flight of azure bees, plunge thither. And above the Afric deserts old, he sees
the sand storms swirl their pillared vortices.

The Sea above its bounds uplifts an azure breast where the fair coral isles like
scarlet blood-drops roll. He sees the Earth, all white, as if in armour dressed,
and the flaring boreal light that fans the frozen pole.

In dizzying bounds, O ship, you scaled the heavens' blue height. The spheres
engulfed themselves in your wake's unwavering line. The Milky Way gushed forth
from your poop; and gods divine with bludgeoning thunderbolts delayed your
deathless flight.

As streaming vapours blend, when Boreas pursues, their daunted forms recoil in
unaccustomed fear. Hera expands her veils, flushed Ares shakes his spear, and
fierce the lightnings flare in the bare fist of Zeus.

Hurled from his brandished fist, a sudden bolt of fire traversed the seven cords
that laced the throbbing lyre. Orpheus dropped his hands. 'Midst hootings,
Hercules, seizing her pliant bow from Atalanta's knees,

fired! Reeking comets filled the ether. Wild with pain Hera reeled back through
space, her breast all blood-besprent. Heaving his giant sledge through half the
firmament, Vulcan smote your mounting prow and dashed you down again.

At every jutting peak a planet crystallised, and you appeared, brave ship, with
shimmering ice endued. You stopped, you bounded back and left emparadised, a
new-born constellation, your white similitude.

When downward you returned from night's profound demesne, proud hearts ecstatic
beat with Olympus dimly seen. When 'neath your plunging prow the white foam
spattered high, the phosphorescent sea was like a star-filled sky.

High up above the mast each pensive hero sees, deep in celestial floods, their
mirrored vessel bright. In the fixed eyes of Orpheus gazed haggard Hercules.
Great-hearted Jason turned to interrogate the night.

Towards what goal of his dream, for what vow of his soul, had you crossed the
void of space, O buoyant vessel brave? He scanned the seas. The sirens that sang
above the shoal quenched their regards and songs beneath the sheltering wave.

Was Jason drawn by you, or was it he who led, poised on the prow, his arms
crossed on the gorgon's head, parting the wine-dark waves with bent glance
unafraid, that sped heroic hearts toward glory's accolade?

Fair on the prow was Jason in that effulgent day, with lifted, luminous arms to
dawn's first light upborne. O'er all the heroes' brows one saw the lightning
play. And Tiphys steered his course straight toward the roseate morn.

"Land! Land!" and in the skies, kindling their quiet peace, stretching
dishevelled folds towards Jason's hands, there lay, billowing o'er all Asia the
burnished Golden Fleece . . . Assembled on the prow which still pursued its way,

Hercules with his club, with his wrecked lyre Orpheus bold, all that heroic crew
with flashing oars outthrown, and Jason, with both hands grasping the Fleece of
Gold, assaulting heaven's vault rose, and soared toward the Unknown.





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