Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG, by JOHN RUSKIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I think my soul was childish yet
Last Line: Are lost in forgiveness, and darkened in death.
Subject(s): Scythians


I.

I THINK my soul was childish yet,
When first it knew my manhood's foe;
But what I was, or where we met,
I know not—and I shall not know.
But I remember, now, the bed
On which I waked from such sick slumber
As after pangs of powerless dread,
Is left upon the limbs like lead,
Amidst a calm and quiet number
Of corpses, from whose cold decay
Mine infant fingers shrank away;
My brain was wild, my limbs were weak,
And silence swallowed up my shriek—
Eleleu.

II.

Alas! my kindred, dark and dead
Were those from whom I held aloof;
I lay beneath the ruins red
Of what had been my childhood's roof;
And those who quenched its wasted wood,
As morning broke on me, and mine,
Preserved a babe baptized in blood,
And human grief hath been its food,
And human life its wine.
What matter?—Those who left me there
Well nerved mine infant limbs to bear
What, heaped upon my haughty head,
I might endure—but did not dread.
Eleleu.

III.

A stranger's hand, a stranger's love,
Saved my life and soothed my woe,
And taught my youth its strength to prove,
To wield the lance, and bend the bow.
I slew the wolf by Tyres' shore,
I tracked the pard by chasm and cliff;
Rich were the warrior spoils I wore;
Ye know me well, though now no more
The lance obeys these fingers stiff;
My hand was strong, my hope was high,
All for the glance of one dark eye;
The hand is weak, the heart is chill—
The glance that kindled, colder still.
Eleleu.

IV.

By Tyres' bank, like Tyres' wave,
The hours of youth went softly by.
Alas! their silence could not save
My being from an evil eye:
It watched me—little though I knew
The wrath around me rising slow,
Nor deemed my love like Upas dew,
A plague, that where it settled, slew.
My time approached; I met my foe:
Down with a troop he came by night,
We fought them by their lances' light.
On lifeless hearth, and guardless gate,
The dawn of day came desolate.
Eleleu.

V.

Away, away—a Persian's slave,
I saw my bird of beauty borne,
In wild, despair, too weak to save,
Too maddening to mourn.
There dwells a sound within my brain
Of horses hoofs' beat swift and hollow,
Heard, when across the distant plain.
Elaira stretched her arms in vain,
To him whose limbs were faint to follow;
The spoiler knew not, when he fled,
The power impending o'er his head;
The strength so few have tameless tried,
That love can give for grief to guide.
Eleleu.

VI.

I flung my bow behind my back,
And took a javelin in my hand,
And followed on the fiery track
Their rapine left upon the land.
The desert sun in silence set,
The desert darkness climbed the sky;
I knew that one was waking yet,
Whose heart was wild, whose eye was wet,
For me and for my misery.
One who had left her glance of grief,
Of earthly guides my chosen and chief;
Through thirst and fear, by wave and hill,
That dark eye watched and wooed me still.
Eleleu.

VII.

Weary and weak their traces lost,
I roved the brazen cities through;
That Helle's undulating coast
Doth lift beside its billows blue.
Till in a palace-bordered street,
In the dusk starlight of the day,
A stalkless flower fell near my feet,
Withered and worn, yet passing sweet;
Its root was left,—how far away?
Its leaves were wet, though not with dew;
The breast that kept, the hand that threw,
Were those of one who sickened more,
For the sweet breeze of Tyres' shore.
Eleleu.

VIII.

My tale is long. Though bolts of brass
Held not their captive's faint upbraiding,
They melt like wax, they bend like grass,
At sorrow's touch, when love is aiding;
The night was dim, the stars were dead,
The drifting clouds were grey and wide
The captive joined me and we fled,
Quivering with joy, though cold with dread,
She shuddered at my side.
We passed the streets, we gained the gate,
Where round the wall its watchers wait;
Our steps beneath were hushed and slow,
For the third time—I met my foe.
Eleleu.

IX.

Swift answering as his anger cried,
Came down the sworded sentinels;
I dashed their closing spears aside;
They thicken, as a torrent swells,
When tempests feed its mountain source,
O'er-matched, borne down, with javelins rent,
I backed them still with fainting force,
Till the life curdled in its course,
And left my madness innocent.
The echo of a maiden's shriek,
Mixed with my dreaming long and weak,
And when I woke the daybreak fell
Into a dark and silent cell.
Eleleu.

X.

Know ye the price that must atone,
When power is mocked at by its slave?
Know ye the kind of mercy shown,
When pride condemns, though love would save?
A sullen plash was heard that night
To check the calm of Helle's flow;
And there was much of love and light,
Quenched, where the foam-globes moved most white,
With none to save and few to know,
Me they led forth, at dawn of day,
To mock, to torture, and to slay;
They found my courage calm and mild,
Until my foe came near and smiled.
Eleleu.

XI.

He told me how the midnight chasm
Of ocean had been sweetly fed:
He paled—recoiling, for a spasm
Came o'er the limbs they dreamed were dead:
The earth grew hot—the sky grew black—
The twisted cords gave way like tow;
I felt the branding fetters crack,
And saw the torturers starting back,
And more I do not know,
Until my stretched limbs dashed their way
Through the cold sea's resulting spray,
And left me where its surges bore
Their voices to a lifeless shore.
Eleleu.

XII.

Mine aged eyes are dim and dry;
They have not much to see or mourn,
Save when in sleep, pale thoughts pass by—
My heart is with their footsteps worn
Into a pathway. Swift and steep
Their troops pass down it—and I feel not—
Though they have words would make me weep
If I could tell their meaning deep—
But I forget—and they reveal not:
Oh, lost Elaira!—when I go
Where cold hands hold the soundless bow,
Shall the black earth, all pitiless,
Forget the early grave
Of her, whom beauty did not bless,
Affection could not save?
Eleleu.

XIII.

Oh, lost Elaira! long for thee
Sweet Tyres' banks have blushed in vain;
And blight to them and death to me
Shall break the link of memory's chain.
My spirit keeps its lonely lair
In mouldering life to burn and blacken;
The throbs that moved it once are there
Like winds that stir a dead man's hair,
Unable to awaken.
Thy soul on earth supremely smiled,
In beauty bright, in mercy mild,
It looked to love, it breathed to bless—
It died, and left me—merciless.
Eleleu.

XIV.

And men shrink from me, with no sense
That the fierce heart they fear and fly,
Is one, whose only evidence
Of beating is in agony.
They know, with me, to match or melt,
The sword or prayer alike are vain;
The spirit's presence, half unfelt,
Hath left,—slow withering where it dwelt,
One precedence of pain.
All that my victims feel or fear
Is well avenged by something here;
And every curse they breathe on me
Joins in the deep voice of the sea.
Eleleu.

XV.

It rolls—it coils—it foams—it flashes,
Pale and putrid—ghastly green;
Lit with light of dead men's ashes
Flickering through the black weed's screen.
Oh! there along the breathless land,
Elaira keeps the couch allotted;
The waters wave her weary hand,
And toss pale shells and ropy sand
About her dark hair, clasped and clotted.
The purple isles are bright above
The frail and moon-blanched bones of love;
Their citron breeze is full of bliss,
Her lips are cool without its kiss.
Eleleu.

XVI.

My thoughts are wandering and weak;
Forgive an old man's dotard dreaming;
I know not sometimes when I speak
Such visions as have quiet seeming.
I told you how my madness bore
My limbs from torture. When I woke,
I do remember something more
Of wandering on the wet sea-shore,
By waving weed and withered rock,
Calling Elaira, till the name
Crossed o'er the waters as they came—
Mildly—to hallow and to bless
Even what had made it meaningless—
Eleleu.

XVII.

The waves in answering murmurs mixed,
Tossed a frail fetter on the sand;
Too well I knew whose fingers fixed,
Whose arm had lost the golden band;
For such it was, as still confines
Faint Beauty's arm who will not listen,
The words of love that mockery twines
To soothe the soul that pants and pines
Within its rose-encumbered prison.
The waters freed her; she who wore
Fetter or armlet needs no more;
Could the waves tell, who saw me lift,
For whom I kept, their glittering gift,
Eleleu.

XVIII.

Slow drifts the hour when Patience waits
Revenge's answering orison;
But—one by one the darkening Fates
Will draw the balanced axle on,
Till torture pays the price of pride,
And watches wave with sullen shine,
The sword of sorrow justified.
The long years kept their quiet glide,
His hour was past: they brought me mine.
When steed to steed, and rank to rank,
With matched numbers fierce and frank,
(The war-wolves waiting near to see
Our battle bright) my Foe met Me.
Ha—Hurra!

XIX.

As the tiger tears through the jungle reeds,
As the west wind breaks through the sharp corn ears,
As the quick death follows where the lightning leads,
Did my dark horse bear through the bended spears;
And the blood came up to my brain like a mist,
With a dark delight and a fiery feel;
For the black darts hailed, and the javelins hissed,
To the corpses clasped in their tortured twist,
From mine arms like rain from the red-hot steel.
Well went the wild horses—well rode their lords—
Wide waved the sea of their circling swords;
But down went the wild steeds—down went the sea—
Down went the dark banners—down went He.
Ha—Hurra!

XX.

For, forward fixed, my frenzy rushed,
To one pale plume of fitful wave;
With failing strength, o'er corpses crushed,
My horse obeyed the spurs I gave.
Slow rolled the tide of battle by,
And left me on the field alone
Save that a goodly company
Lay gazing on the bright blue sky,
All as stiff as stone.
And the howling wolves came, merry and thick,
The flesh to tear and the bones to pick.
I left his carcass, a headless prize,
To these priests of mine anger's sacrifice.
Ha—Hurra!

XXI.

Hungry they came, though at first they fled
From the grizzly look of a stranger guest—
From a horse with its hoof on a dead man's head,
And a soldier who leaned on a lance in his breast.
The night wind's voice was hoarse and deep,
But there were thoughts within me rougher,
When my foiled passion could not keep
His eyes from settling into sleep
That could not see, nor suffer.
He knew his spirit was delivered
By the last nerve my sword had severed,
And lay—his death pang scarcely done,
Stretched at my mercy—asking none.
Eleleu.

XXII.

His lips were pale. They once had worn
A fiercer paleness. For awhile
Their gashes kept the curl of scorn,
But now—they always smile.
A life like that of smouldering ashes,
Had kept his shadowy eyeballs burning.
Full through the neck my sabre crashes—
The black blood burst beneath their lashes
In the strained sickness of their turning,
By my bridle-rein did I hang the head,
And I spurred my horse through the quick and dead,
Till his hoofs and his hair dropped thick and fresh,
From the black morass of gore and flesh.
Ha—Hurra!

XXIII.

My foe had left me little gold
To mock the stolen food of the grave,
Except one circlet: I have told
The arm that lost, the surge that gave,
Flexile it was, of fairest twist:
Pressing its sunlike, woven line,
A careless counter had not missed
One pulse along a maiden's wrist,
So softly did the clasp confine.
This—molten till it flowed as free
As daybreak on the Egean sea,
He who once clasped—for Love to sever
And death to lose, received—for ever.

XXIV.

I poured it round the wrinkled brow,
Till hissed its cold, corrupted skin;
Through sinuous nerves the fiery flow
Sucked and seared the brain within.
The brittle bones were well annealed,
A bull's hide bound the goblet grim,
Which backwards bended, and revealed
The dark eye sealed, the set lips peeled:
Look here! how I have pardoned him.
They call it glorious to forgive;
'Tis dangerous, among those that live,
But the dead are daggerless and mild,
And my foe smiles on me—like a child.

XXV.

Fill me the wine! for daylight fades,
The evening mists fall cold and blue;
My soul is crossed with lonelier shades,
My brow is damp with darker dew;
The earth hath nothing but its bed
Left more for me to seek, or shun;
My rage is passed—my vengeance fed—
The grass is wet with what I've shed,
The air is dark with what I've done;
And the gray mound, that I have built
Of intermingled grief and guilt,
Sits on my breast with sterner seat
Than my old heart can bear, and beat.
Eleleu.

XXVI.

Fill wine! These fleshless jaws are dry,
And gurgle with the crimson breath;
Fill me the wine! for such as I
Are meet, methinks, to drink with death.
Give me the roses! They shall weave
One crown for me, and one for him,
Fresher than his compeers receive,
Who slumber where the white worms leave
Their tracks of slime on cheek and limb.
Kiss me, mine enemy! Lo! how it slips,
The rich red wine through his skeleton lips;
His eye-holes glitter, his loose teeth shake,
But their words are all drowsy and will not wake.

XXVII.

That lifeless gaze is fixed on me;
Those lips would hail a bounden brother;
We sit in love, and smile to see
The things that we have made each other.
The wreaking of our wrath has reft
Our souls of all that loved or lightened:
He knows the heart his hand has left,
He sees its calm and closeless cleft,
And I—the bones my vengeance whitened.
Kiss me, mine enemy! Fill thee with wine!
Be the flush of thy revelling mingled with mine;
Since the hate and the horror we drew with our breath
Are lost in forgiveness, and darkened in death.





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