Orpheus And Eurydice

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Title:     Orpheus And Eurydice
Author: Alfred Noyes [More Titles by Noyes]

I

Height over height, the purple pine-woods clung to the rich Arcadian mountains,

Holy-sweet as a sea of incense, under the low dark crimson skies:

Glad were the glens where Eurydice bathed, in the beauty of dawn, at the haunted fountains

Deep in the blue hyacinthine hollows, whence all the rivers of Arcady rise.

Long ago, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that crowned her,

Fair and fleet as the fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break of day,

Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright glory around her,

Down to the valley her light feet stole, ah, soft as the budding of flowers in May.

Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming meadows

Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;

So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms that danced with their shadows,

Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her lover she came.

* * * *

Red were the lips that hovered above her lips in the flowery haze of the June-day:

Red as a rose through the perfumed mist of passion that reeled before her eyes;

Strong the smooth young sunburnt arms that folded her heart to his heart in the noon-day,

Strong and supple with throbbing sunshine under the blinding southern skies.

Ah, the kisses, the little murmurs, mad with pain for their phantom fleetness,

Mad with pain for the passing of love that lives, they dreamed--as we dream--for an hour!

Ah, the sudden tempest of passion, mad with pain, for its over-sweetness,

As petal by petal and pang by pang their love broke out into perfect flower.

Ah, the wonder as once he wakened, out of a dream of remembered blisses,

Couched in the meadows of dreaming blossom to feel, like the touch of a flower on his eyes,

Cool and fresh with the fragment dews of dawn the touch of her light swift kisses,

Shed from the shadowy rose of her face between his face and the warm blue skies.

II

Lost in his new desire
He dreamed away the hours;
His lyre
Lay buried in the flowers:

To whom the King of Heaven,
Apollo, lord of light,
Had given
Beauty and love and might:

Might, if he would, to slay
All evil dreams and pierce
The grey
Veil of the Universe;

With Love that holds in one
Sacred and ancient bond
The sun
And all the vast beyond,

And Beauty to enthrall
The soul of man to heaven:
Yea, all
These gifts to him were given.

_Yet in his dream's desire
He drowsed away the hours:
His lyre
Lay buried in the flowers._

Then in his wrath arose
Apollo, lord of light,
That shows
The wrong deed from the right;

And by what radiant laws
O'erruling human needs,
The cause
To consequence proceeds;

How balanced is the sway
He gives each mortal doom:
How day
Demands the atoning gloom:

How all good things await
The soul that pays the price
To Fate
By equal sacrifice;

And how on him that sleeps
For less than labour's sake
There creeps
Uncharmed, the Pythian snake.

III

Lulled by the wash of the feathery grasses, a sea with many a sun-swept billow,

Heart to heart in the heart of the summer, lover by lover asleep they lay,

Hearing only the whirring cicala that chirruped awhile at their poppied pillow

Faint and sweet as the murmur of men that laboured in villages far away.

Was not the menace indeed more silent? Ah, what care for labour and sorrow?

Gods in the meadows of moly and amaranth surely might envy their deep sweet bed

Here where the butterflies troubled the lilies of peace, and took no thought for the morrow,

And golden-girdled bees made feast as over the lotus the soft sun spread.

Nearer, nearer the menace glided, out of the gorgeous gloom around them,

Out of the poppy-haunted shadows deep in the heart of the purple brake;

Till through the hush and the heat as they lay, and their own sweet listless dreams enwound them,--

Mailed and mottled with hues of the grape-bloom suddenly, quietly, glided the snake.

Subtle as jealousy, supple as falsehood, diamond-headed and cruel as pleasure,

Coil by coil he lengthened and glided, straight to the fragrant curve of her throat:

There in the print of the last of the kisses that still glowed red from the sweet long pressure,

Fierce as famine and swift as lightning over the glittering lyre he smote.

IV

And over the cold white body of love and delight
Orpheus arose in the terrible storm of his grief,
With quivering up-clutched hands, deadly and white,
And his whole soul wavered and shook like a wind-swept leaf:

As a leaf that beats on a mountain, his spirit in vain
Assaulted his doom and beat on the Gates of Death:
Then prone with his arms o'er the lyre he sobbed out his pain,
And the tense chords faintly gave voice to the pulse of his breath.

And he heard it and rose, once again, with the lyre in his hand,
And smote out the cry that his white-lipped sorrow denied:
And the grief's mad ecstasy swept o'er the summer-sweet land,
And gathered the tears of all Time in the rush of its tide.

There was never a love forsaken or faith forsworn,
There was never a cry for the living or moan for the slain,
But was voiced in that great consummation of song; ay, and borne
To storm on the Gates of the land whence none cometh again.

Transcending the barriers of earth, comprehending them all
He followed the soul of his loss with the night in his eyes;
And the portals lay bare to him there; and he heard the faint call
Of his love o'er the rabble that wails by the river of sighs.

Yea, there in the mountains before him, he knew it of old,
That portal enormous of gloom, he had seen it in dreams,
When the secrets of Time and of Fate through his harmonies rolled;
And behind it he heard the dead moan by their desolate streams.

And he passed through the Gates with the light and the cloud of his song,
Dry-shod over Lethe he passed to the chasms of hell;
And the hosts of the dead made mock at him, crying, _How long
Have we dwelt in the darkness, oh fool, and shall evermore dwell?_

_Did our lovers not love us?_ the grey skulls hissed in his face;
_Were our lips not red? Were these cavernous eyes not bright?
Yet us, whom the soft flesh clothed with such roseate grace,
Our lovers would loathe if we ever returned to their sight!_

Oh then, through the soul of the Singer, a pity so vast
Mixed with his anguish that, smiting anew on his lyre,
He caught up the sorrows of hell in his utterance at last,
Comprehending the need of them all in his own great desire.

V

And they that were dead, in his radiant music, remembered the dawn with its low deep crimson,

Heard the murmur of doves in the pine-wood, heard the moan of the roaming sea,

Heard and remembered the little kisses, in woods where the last of the moon yet swims on

Fragrant, flower-strewn April nights of young-eyed lovers in Arcady;

Saw the soft blue veils of shadow floating over the billowy grasses

Under the crisp white curling clouds that sailed and trailed through the melting blue;

Heard once more the quarrel of lovers above them pass, as a lark-song passes,

Light and bright, till it vanished away in an eye-bright heaven of silvery dew.

Out of the dark, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that crowned her,

Fair and fleet as a fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break of day;

Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright glory around her,

On through the deserts of hell she came, and the brown air bloomed with the light of May.

On through the deserts of hell she came; for over the fierce and frozen meadows

Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;

So she arose from her grave in the darkness, and up through the wailing fires and shadows,

On by chasm and cliff and cavern, out of the horrors of death she came.

Then had she followed him, then had he won her, striking a chord that should echo for ever,

Had he been steadfast only a little, nor paused in the great transcendent song;

But ere they had won to the glory of day, he came to the brink of the flaming river

And ceased, to look on his love a moment, a little moment, and overlong.

VI

O'er Phlegethon he stood:
Below him roared and flamed
The flood
For utmost anguish named.

And lo, across the night,
The shining form he knew
With light
Swift footsteps upward drew.

Up through the desolate lands
She stole, a ghostly star,
With hands
Outstretched to him afar.

With arms outstretched, she came
In yearning majesty,
The same
Royal Eurydice.

Up through the ghastly dead
She came, with shining eyes
And red
Sweet lips of child-surprise.

Up through the wizened crowds
She stole, as steals the moon
Through clouds
Of flowery mist in June.

He gazed: he ceased to smite
The golden-chorded lyre:
Delight
Consumed his heart with fire.

Though in that deadly land
His task was but half-done,
His hand
Drooped, and the fight half-won.

He saw the breasts that glowed,
The fragrant clouds of hair:
They flowed
Around him like a snare.

_O'er Phlegethon he stood,
For utmost anguish named:
The flood
Below him roared and flamed._

Out of his hand the lyre
Suddenly slipped and fell,
The fire
Acclaimed it into hell.

The night grew dark again:
There came a bitter cry
Of pain,
_Oh Love, once more I die!_

And lo, the earth-dawn broke,
And like a wraith she fled:
He woke
Alone: his love was dead.

He woke on earth: the day
Shone coldly: at his side
There lay
The body of his bride.

VII

Only now when the purple vintage bubbles and winks in the autumn glory,

Only now when the great white oxen drag the weight of the harvest home,

Sunburnt labourers, under the star of the sunset, sing as an old-world story

How two pale and thwarted lovers ever through Arcady still must roam.

Faint as the silvery mists of morning over the peaks that the noonday parches,

On through the haunts of the gloaming musk-rose, down to the rivers that glisten below,

Ever they wander from meadow to pinewood, under the whispering woodbine arches,

Faint as the mists of the dews of the dusk when violets dream and the moon-winds blow.

Though the golden lute of Orpheus gathered the splendours of earth and heaven,

All the golden greenwood notes and all the chimes of the changing sea,

Old men over the fires of winter murmur again that he was not given

The steadfast heart divine to rule that infinite freedom of harmony.

Therefore he failed, say they; but we, that have no wisdom, can only remember

How through the purple perfumed pinewoods white Eurydice roamed and sung:

How through the whispering gold of the wheat, where the poppy burned like a crimson ember,

Down to the valley in beauty she came, and under her feet the flowers upsprung.

Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming meadows

Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;

So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms that danced with their shadows,

Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her lover she came.

[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: Orpheus And Eurydice

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