Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works Page 24

  Some listless fishers, straying down the beach,

  Spy out this wonder. Thence the curious men,

  Low crouching, creep into a thicket brake,

  And watch her doings till their rude hearts ache.

  CII.

  First she begins to chafe him till she faints,

  Then falls upon his mouth with kisses many,

  And sometimes pauses in her own complaints

  To list his breathing, but there is not any, —

  Then looks into his eyes where no light dwells;

  Light makes no pictures in such muddy wells.

  CIII.

  The hot sun parches his discover’d eyes,

  The hot sun beats on his discolor’d limbs,

  The sand is oozy whereupon he lies,

  Soiling his fairness; — then away she swims,

  Meaning to gather him a daintier bed,

  Plucking the cool fresh weeds, brown, green, and red.

  CIV.

  But, simple-witted thief, while she dives under,

  Another robs her of her amorous theft;

  The ambush’d fishermen creep forth to plunder,

  And steal the unwatch’d treasure she has left;

  Only his void impression dints the sands;

  Leander is purloin’d by stealthy hands!

  CV.

  Lo! how she shudders off the beaded wave,

  Like Grief all over tears, and senseless falls, —

  His void imprint seems hollow’d for her grave;

  Then, rising on her knees, looks round and calls

  On “Hero! Hero!” having learn’d this name

  Of his last breath, she calls him by the same.

  CVI.

  Then with her frantic hands she rends her hairs,

  And casts them forth, sad keepsakes to the wind,

  As if in plucking those she plucked her cares;

  But grief lies deeper, and remains behind

  Like a barb’d arrow, rankling in her brain,

  Turning her very thoughts to throbs of pain.

  CVII.

  Anon her tangled locks are left alone,

  And down upon the sand she meekly sits,

  Hard by the foam, as humble as a stone,

  Like an enchanted maid beside her wits,

  That ponders with a look serene and tragic,

  Stunn’d by the mighty mystery of magic.

  CVIII.

  Or think of Ariadne’s utter trance,

  Crazed by the flight of that disloyal traitor,

  Who left her gazing on the green expanse

  That swallowed up his track, — yet this would mate her,

  Ev’n in the cloudy summit of her woe,

  When o’er the far sea-brim she saw him go.

  CIX.

  For even so she bows, and bends her gaze

  O’er the eternal waste, as if to sum

  Its waves by weary thousands all her days,

  Dismally doom’d! meanwhile the billows come,

  And coldly dabble with her quiet feet,

  Like any bleaching stones they wont to greet.

  CX.

  And thence into her lap have boldly sprung,

  Washing her weedy tresses to and fro,

  That round her crouching knees have darkly hung;

  But she sits careless of waves’ ebb and flow,

  Like a lone beacon on a desert coast,

  Showing where all her hope was wreck’d and lost.

  CXI.

  Yet whether in the sea or vaulted sky,

  She knoweth not her lover’s abrupt resort,

  So like a shape of dreams he left her eye,

  Winking with doubt. Meanwhile, the churls’ report

  Has throng’d the beach with many a curious face,

  That peeps upon her from its hiding place.

  CXII.

  And here a head, and there a brow half seen,

  Dodges behind a rock. Here on his hands

  A mariner his crumpled cheeks doth lean

  Over a rugged crest. Another stands,

  Holding his harmful arrow at the head,

  Still check’d by human caution and strange dread.

  CXIII.

  One stops his ears, — another close beholder

  Whispers unto the next his grave surmise;

  This crouches down, — and just above his shoulder,

  A woman’s pity saddens in her eyes,

  And prompts her to befriend that lonely grief,

  With all sweet helps of sisterly relief.

  CXIV.

  And down the sunny beach she paces slowly,

  With many doubtful pauses by the way;

  Grief hath an influence so hush’d and holy, —

  Making her twice attempt, ere she can lay

  Her hand upon that sea-maid’s shoulder white,

  Which makes her startle up in wild affright.

  CXV.

  And, like a seal, she leaps into the wave

  That drowns the shrill remainder of her scream;

  Anon the sea fills up the watery cave,

  And seals her exit with a foamy seam, —

  Leaving those baffled gazers on the beach,

  Turning in uncouth wonder each to each.

  CXVI.

  Some watch, some call, some see her head emerge,

  Wherever a brown weed falls through the foam;

  Some point to white eruptions of the surge: —

  But she is vanish’d to her shady home,

  Under the deep, inscrutable, — and there

  Weeps in a midnight made of her own hair.

  CXVII.

  Now here, the sighing winds, before unheard,

  Forth from their cloudy caves begin to blow,

  Till all the surface of the deep is stirr’d,

  Like to the panting grief it hides below;

  And heaven is cover’d with a stormy rack,

  Soiling the waters with its inky black.

  CXVIII.

  The screaming fowl resigns her finny prey,

  And labors shoreward with a bending wing,

  Rowing against the wind her toilsome way;

  Meanwhile, the curling billows chafe, and fling

  Their dewy frost still further on the stones,

  That answer to the wind with hollow groans.

  CXIX.

  And here and there a fisher’s far-off bark

  Flies with the sun’s last glimpse upon its sail,

  Like a bright flame amid the waters dark,

  Watch’d with the hope and fear of maidens pale;

  And anxious mothers that upturn their brows,

  Freighting the gusty wind with frequent vows,

  CXX.

  For that the horrid deep has no sure path

  To guide Love safe into his homely haven.

  And lo! the storm grows blacker in its wrath,

  O’er the dark billow brooding like a raven,

  That bodes of death and widow’s sorrowing,

  Under the dusky covert of his wing.

  CXXI.

  And so day ended. But no vesper spark

  Hung forth its heavenly sign; but sheets of flame

  Play’d round the savage features of the dark,

  Making night horrible. That night, there came

  A weeping maiden to high Sestos’ steep,

  And tore her hair and gazed upon the deep.

  CXXII.

  And waved aloft her bright and ruddy torch,

  Whose flame the boastful wind so rudely fann’d,

  That oft it would recoil, and basely scorch

  The tender covert of her sheltering hand;

  Which yet, for Love’s dear sake, disdain’d retire,

  And, like a glorying martyr, braved the fire.

  CXXIII.

  For that was love’s own sign and beacon guide

  Across the Hellespont’s wide weary space,

  Wherein he nightly struggled with the tid
e: —

  Look what a red it forges on her face,

  As if she blush’d at holding sucha light,

  Ev’n in the unseen presence of the night!

  CXXIV.

  Whereas her tragic cheek is truly pale,

  And colder than the rude and ruffian air

  That howls into her ear a horrid tale

  Of storm and wreck, and uttermost despair,

  Saying, “Leander floats amid the surge,

  And those are dismal waves that sing his dirge.”

  CXXV.

  And hark! — a grieving voice, trembling and faint,

  Blends with the hollow sobbings of the sea;

  Like the sad music of a siren’s plaint,

  But shriller than Leander’s voice should be,

  Unless the wintry death had changed its tone, —

  Wherefore she thinks she hears his spirit moan.

  CXXVI.

  For now, upon each brief and breathless pause,

  Made by the raging winds, it plainly calls

  On “Hero! Hero!” — whereupon she draws

  Close to the dizzy brink, that ne’er appals

  Her brave and constant spirit to recoil,

  However the wild billows toss and toil.

  CXXVII.

  “Oh! dost thou live under the deep deep sea?

  I thought such love as thine could never die;

  If thou hast gain’d an immortality

  From the kind pitying sea-god, so will I;

  And this false cruel tide that used to sever

  Our hearts, shall be our common home forever!”

  CXXVIII.

  “There we will sit and sport upon one billow,

  And sing our ocean ditties all the day,

  And lie together on the same green pillow,

  That curls above us with its dewy spray;

  And ever in one presence live and dwell,

  Like two twin pearls within the selfsame shell!”

  CXXIX.

  One moment then, upon the dizzy verge

  She stands; — with face upturn’d against the sky;

  A moment more, upon the foamy surge

  She gazes, with a calm despairing eye;

  Feeling that awful pause of blood and breath,

  Which life endures when it confronts with death; —

  CXXX.

  Then from the giddy steep she madly springs,

  Grasping her maiden robes, that vainly kept

  Panting abroad, like unavailing wings,

  To save her from her death. — The sea-maid wept

  And in a crystal cave her corse enshrined;

  No meaner sepulchre should Hero find!

  LYCUS THE CENTAUR.

  FROM AN UNROLLED MANUSCRIPT OF APOLLONIUS CURIUS.

  THE ARGUMENT.

  Lycus, detained by Circe in her magical dominion, is beloved by a

  Water Nymph, who, desiring to render him immortal, has recourse to

  the Sorceress. Circe gives her an incantation to pronounce, which

  should turn Lycus into a horse; but the horrible effect of the

  charm causing her to break off in the midst, he becomes a Centaur.

  Who hath ever been lured and bound by a spell

  To wander, fore-doomed, in that circle of hell

  Where Witchery works with her will like a god,

  Works more than the wonders of time at a nod, —

  At a word, — at a touch, — at a flash of the eye,

  But each form is a cheat, and each sound is a lie,

  Things born of a wish — to endure for a thought,

  Or last for long ages — to vanish to nought,

  Or put on new semblance? O Jove, I had given

  The throne of a kingdom to know if that heaven,

  And the earth and its streams were of Circe, or whether

  They kept the world’s birthday and brighten’d together!

  For I loved them in terror, and constantly dreaded

  That the earth where I trod, and the cave where I bedded,

  The face I might dote on, should live out the lease

  Of the charm that created, and suddenly cease:

  And I gave me to slumber, as if from one dream

  To another — each horrid, — and drank of the stream

  Like a first taste of blood, lest as water I quaff’d

  Swift poison, and never should breathe from the draught, —

  Such drink as her own monarch husband drain’d up

  When he pledged her, and Fate closed his eyes in the cup.

  And I pluck’d of the fruit with held breath, and a fear

  That the branch would start back and scream out in my ear;

  For once, at my suppering, I plucked in the dusk

  An apple, juice-gushing and fragrant of musk;

  But by daylight my fingers were crimson’d with gore,

  And the half-eaten fragment was flesh at the core;

  And once — only once — for the love of its blush,

  I broke a bloom bough, but there came such a gush

  On my hand, that it fainted away in weak fright,

  While the leaf-hidden woodpecker shriek’d at the sight;

  And oh! such an agony thrill’d in that note,

  That my soul, startling up, beat its wings in my throat,

  As it long’d to be free of a body whose hand

  Was doom’d to work torments a Fury had plann’d!

  There I stood without stir, yet how willing to flee,

  As if rooted and horror-turn’d into a tree, —

  Oh! for innocent death, — and to suddenly win it,

  I drank of the stream, but no poison was in it;

  I plunged in its waters, but ere I could sink,

  Some invisible fate pull’d me back to the brink;

  I sprang from the rock, from its pinnacle height,

  But fell on the grass with a grasshopper’s flight;

  I ran at my fears — they were fears and no more,

  For the bear would not mangle my limbs, nor the boar,

  But moan’d — all their brutalized flesh could not smother

  The horrible truth, — we were kin to each other!

  They were mournfully gentle, and group’d for relief,

  All foes in their skin, but all friends in their grief:

  The leopard was there, — baby-mild in its feature;

  And the tiger, black-barr’d, with the gaze of a creature

  That knew gentle pity; the bristle-back’d boar,

  His innocent tusks stain’d with mulberry gore;

  And the laughing hyena — but laughing no more;

  And the snake, not with magical orbs to devise

  Strange death, but with woman’s attraction of eyes;

  The tall ugly ape, that still bore a dim shine

  Through his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine;

  And the elephant stately, with more than its reason,

  How thoughtful in sadness! but this is no season

  To reckon them up from the lag-bellied toad

  To the mammoth, whose sobs shook his ponderous load.

  There were woes of all shapes, wretched forms, when I came,

  That hung down their heads with a human-like shame;

  The elephant hid in the boughs, and the bear

  Shed over his eyes the dark veil of his hair;

  And the womanly soul turning sick with disgust,

  Tried to vomit herself from her serpentine crust;

  While all groan’d their groans into one at their lot,

  As I brought them the image of what they were not.

  Then rose a wild sound of the human voice choking

  Through vile brutal organs — low tremulous croaking:

  Cries swallow’d abruptly — deep animal tones

  Attuned to strange passion, and full-utter’d groans;

  All shuddering weaken, till hush’d in a pause

  Of tongues in mute moti
on and wide-yawning jaws;

  And I guessed that those horrors were meant to tell o’er

  The tale of their woes; but the silence told more,

  That writhed on their tongues; and I knelt on the sod,

  And pray’d with my voice to the cloud-stirring god,

  For the sad congregation of supplicants there,

  That upturn’d to his heaven brute faces of prayer;

  And I ceased, and they utter’d a moaning so deep,

  That I wept for my heart-ease, — but they could not weep,

  And gazed with red eyeballs, all wistfully dry,

  At the comfort of tears in a stag’s human eye.

  Then I motion’d them round, and, to soothe their distress,

  I caress’d, and they bent them to meet my caress,

  Their necks to my arm, and their heads to my palm,

  And with poor grateful eyes suffer’d meekly and calm

  Those tokens of kindness, withheld by hard fate

  From returns that might chill the warm pity to hate;

  So they passively bow’d — save the serpent, that leapt

  To my breast like a sister, and pressingly crept

  In embrace of my neck, and with close kisses blister’d

  My lips in rash love, — then drew backward, and glister’d

  Her eyes in my face, and loud hissing affright,

  Dropt down, but swift started away from my sight!

  This sorrow was theirs, but thrice wretched my lot,

  Turn’d brute in my soul, though my body was not,

  When I fled from the sorrow of womanly faces,

  That shrouded their woe in the shade of lone places,

  And dash’d off bright tears, till their fingers were wet,

  And then wiped their lids with long tresses of jet:

  But I fled — though they stretch’d out their hands, all entangled

  With hair, and blood-stain’d of the breasts they had mangled, —