Rhymes a la Mode

On faded brows ere another May time
Bring the spring, but no more delight.”

HOMERIC UNITY

The sacred keep of Ilion is rent
By shaft and pit; foiled waters wander slow
Through plains where Simois and Scamander went
To war with Gods and heroes long ago.
Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low
In rich Mycenæ, do the Fates relent:
The bones of Agamemnon are a show,
And ruined is his royal monument.

The dust and awful treasures of the Dead,
Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee,
Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead,
And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to see
The crown that burns on thine immortal head
Of indivisible supremacy!

IN TINTAGEL

LUI

Ah lady, lady, leave the creeping mist,
And leave the iron castle by the sea!

ELLE

Nay, from the sea there came a ghost that kissed
My lips, and so I cannot come to thee!

LUI

Ah lady, leave the cruel landward wind
That crusts the blighted flowers with bitter foam!

ELLE

Nay, for his arms are cold and strong to bind,
And I must dwell with him and make my home!

LUI

Come, for the Spring is fair in Joyous Guard
And down deep alleys sweet birds sing again.

ELLE

But I must tarry with the winter hard,
And with the bitter memory of pain,
Although the Spring be fair in Joyous Guard,
And in the gardens glad birds sing again!

PISIDICÊ

The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius, who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island allied with Troy.

The daughter of the Lesbian king
Within her bower she watched the war,
Far off she heard the arrows ring,
The smitten harness ring afar;
And, fighting from the foremost car,
Saw one that smote where all must flee;
More fair than the Immortals are
He seemed to fair Pisidicê!

She saw, she loved him, and her heart
Before Achilles, Peleus’ son,
Threw all its guarded gates apart,
A maiden fortress lightly won!
And, ere that day of fight was done,
No more of land or faith recked she,
But joyed in her new life begun, —
Her life of love, Pisidicê!

She took a gift into her hand,
As one that had a boon to crave;
She stole across the ruined land
Where lay the dead without a grave,
And to Achilles’ hand she gave
Her gift, the secret postern’s key.
“To-morrow let me be thy slave!”
Moaned to her love Pisidicê.

Ere dawn the Argives’ clarion call
Rang down Methymna’s burning street;
They slew the sleeping warriors all,
They drove the women to the fleet,
Save one, that to Achilles’ feet
Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he:
“For her no doom but death is meet,”
And there men stoned Pisidicê.

In havens of that haunted coast,
Amid the myrtles of the shore,
The moon sees many a maiden ghost
Love’s outcast now and evermore.
The silence hears the shades deplore