Death and Odysseus
In the Olympian courts Love laughed at Death, because he was unsightly, and because She couldn’t help it, and because he never did anything worth doing, and because She would.
And Death hated being laughed at, and used to brood apart thinking only of his wrongs and of what he could do to end this intolerable treatment.
But one day Death appeared in the courts with an air and They all noticed it. “What are you up to now?” said Love. And Death with some solemnity said to Her: “I am going to frighten Odysseus”; and drawing about him his grey traveller’s cloak went out through the windy door with his jowl turned earthwards.
And he came soon to Ithaca and the hall that Athene knew, and opened the door and saw there famous Odysseus, with his white locks bending close over the fire, trying to warm his hands.
And the wind through the open door blew bitterly on Odysseus.
And death came up behind him, and suddenly shouted.
And Odysseus went on warming his pale hands.
Then Death came close and began to mouth at him. And after a while Odysseus turned and spoke. And “Well, old servant,” he said, “have your masters been kind to you since I made you work for me round Ilion?”
And Death for some while stood mute, for the thought of the laughter of Love.
Then “Come now,” said Odysseus, “lend me your shoulder,” and he leaning heavily on that bony joint, they went together through the open door.
Death and the Orange
Two dark young men in a foreign southern land sat at a restaurant table with one woman.
And on the woman’s plate was a small orange which had an evil laughter in its heart.
And both of the men would be looking at the woman all the time, and they ate little and they drank much.
And the woman was smiling equally at each.
Then the small orange that had the laughter in its heart rolled slowly off the plate on to the floor. And the dark young men both sought for it at once, and they met suddenly beneath the table, and soon they were speaking swift words to one another, and a horror and an impotence came over the Reason of each as she sat helpless at the back of the mind, and the heart of the orange laughed and the woman went on smiling; and Death, who was sitting at another table, tete-a-tete with an old man, rose and came over to listen to the quarrel.
The Prayer of the Flowers
It was the voice of the flowers on the West wind, the lovable, the old, the lazy West wind, blowing ceaselessly, blowing sleepily, going Greecewards.
“The woods have gone away, they have fallen and left us; men love us no longer, we are lonely by moonlight. Great engines rush over the beautiful fields, their ways lie hard and terrible up and down the land.
“The cancrous cities spread over the grass, they clatter in their lairs continually, they glitter about us blemishing the night.
“The woods are gone, O Pan, the woods, the woods. And thou art far, O Pan, and far away.”
I was standing by night between two railway embankments on the edge of a Midland city. On one of them I saw the trains go by, once in every two minutes, and on the other, the trains went by twice in every five.
Quite close were the glaring factories, and the sky above them wore the fearful look that it wears in dreams of fever.
The flowers were right in the stride of that advancing city, and thence I heard them sending up their cry. And then I heard, beating musically up wind, the voice of Pan reproving them from Arcady — “Be patient a little, these things are not for long.”
Time and the Tradesman
Once Time as he prowled the world, his hair grey not with weakness but with dust of the ruin of cities, came to a furniture shop and entered the Antique department. And there he saw a man darkening the wood of a chair with dye and beating it with chains and making imitation worm-holes in it.
And when Time saw another doing his work he stood by him awhile and looked on critically.
And at last he said: “That is not how I work,” and he turned the man’s hair white and bent his back and put some furrows in his little cunning face; then turned and strode away, for a mighty city that was weary and sick and too long had troubled the fields was sore in need of him.
The Little City
I was in the pre-destined 11.8 from Goraghwood to Drogheda, when I suddenly saw the city. It was a little city in a valley, and only seemed to have a little smoke, and the sun caught the smoke and turned it golden, so that it looked like an old Italian picture where angels walk in the foreground and the rest is a blaze of gold. And beyond, as one could tell by the lie of land although one could not see through the golden smoke, I knew that there lay the paths of the roving ships.
All round there lay a patchwork of small fields all over the slopes of the hills, and the snow had come upon them tentatively, but already the birds of the waste had moved to the sheltered places for every omen boded more to fall. Far away some little hills blazed like an aureate bulwark broken off by age and fallen from the earthward rampart of Paradise. And aloof and dark the mountains stared unconcernedly seawards.
And when I saw those grey and watchful mountains sitting where they sat while the cities of the civilization of Araby and Asia arose like crocuses, and like crocuses fell, I wondered for how long there would be smoke in the valley and little fields on the hills.
The Unpasturable Fields
Thus spake the mountains: “Behold us, even us; the old ones, the grey ones, that wear the feet of Time. Time on our rocks shall break his staff and stumble: and still we shall sit majestic, even as now, hearing the sound of the sea, our old coeval sister, who nurses the bones of her children and weeps for the things she has done.
“Far, far, we stand above all things; befriending the little cities until they grow old and leave us to go among the myths.
“We are the most imperishable mountains.”
And softly the clouds foregathered from far places, and crag on crag and mountain upon mountain in the likeness of Caucasus upon Himalaya came riding past the sunlight upon the backs of storms and looked down idly from their golden heights upon the crests of the mountains.
“Ye pass away,” said the mountains.
And the clouds answered, as I dreamed or fancied,
“We pass away, indeed we pass away, but upon our unpasturable fields Pegasus prances. Here Pegasus gallops and browses upon song which the larks bring to him every morning from far terrestrial fields. His hoof-beats ring upon our slopes at sunrise as though our fields were of silver. And breathing the dawn-wind in dilated nostrils, with head tossed upwards and with quivering wings, he stands and stares from our tremendous heights, and snorts and sees far-future wonderful wars rage in the creases and the folds of the togas that cover the knees of the gods.”
The Worm and the Angel
As he crawled from the tombs of the fallen a worm met with an angel.
And together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.
And the worm spake to the angel saying: “Behold my food.”
“Be d’akeon para thina polyphloisboio thalasses,”
murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, “and can you destroy that too?”
And the worm paled in his anger to a greyness ill to behold, for for three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line and still its melody was ringing in his head.
The Songless Country
The poet came unto a great country in which there were no songs. And he lamented gently for the nation that had not any little foolish songs to sing to itself at evening.
And at last he said: “I will make for them myself some little foolish songs so that they may be merry in the lanes and happy by the fireside.” And for some days he made for them aimless songs such as maidens sing on the hills in the older happier countries.
Then he went to some of that nation as they sat weary with the work of the day and said to them: “I have made you some aimless songs out of the small unreasonable legends, that are somewhat akin to the wind in the vales of my childhood; and you may care to sing them in your disconsolate evenings.”