Wherefrom the peoples of the world began.
XXIV.
Now Helen met the stranger graciously
With gentle speech, and bade set forth a chair
Well wrought of cedar wood and ivory
That wise Icmalius had fashion’d fair.
But when young Corythus had drunk the rare
Wine of the princes, and had broken bread,
Then Helen took the word, and bade declare
His instant tidings; and he spake and said,
XXV.
“Lady and Queen, I have a secret word,
And bear a token sent to none but thee,
Also I bring message to my Lord
That spoken to another may not be.”
Then Helen gave a sign unto her three
Bower-maidens, and they went forth from that place,
Silent they went; and all forebodingly,
They left the man and woman face to face.
XXVI.
Then from his breast the birchen scroll he took
And gave to Helen; and she read therein:
“Oh thou that on those hidden runes dost look,
Hast thou forgotten quite thine ancient sin,
Thy Lord, thy lofty palace, and thy kin,
Even as thy Love forgets the words he spoke
The strong oath broken one weak heart to win,
The lips that kiss’d him, and the heart that broke?
XXVII.
“Nay, but methinks thou shalt not quite forget
The curse wherewith I curse thee till I die;
The tears that on the wood-nymph’s cheeks are wet,
Shall burn thy hateful beauty deathlessly,
Nor shall God raise up seed to thee; but I
Have borne thy love this messenger: my son,
Who yet shall make him glad, for Time goes by
And soon shall thine enchantments all be done:
XXVIII.
“Ay, soon ‘twixt me and Death must be his choice,
And little in that hour will Paris care
For thy sweet lips, and for thy singing voice,
Thine arms of ivory, thy golden hair.
Nay, me will he embrace, and will not spare,
But bid the folk that hate thee have their joy,
And give thee to the mountain beasts to tear,
Or burn thy body on a tower of Troy.”
XXIX.
Even as she read, by Aphrodite’s will
The cloud roll’d back from Helen’s memory:
She saw the city of the rifted hill,
Fair Lacedaemon, ‘neath her mountain high;
She knew the swift Eurotas running by
To mix his sacred waters with the sea,
And from the garden close she heard the cry
Of her beloved child, Hermione.
XXX.
Then instantly the horror of her shame
Fell on her, and she saw the coming years;
Famine, and fire, and plague, and all men’s blame,
The wounds of warriors and the women’s fears;
And through her heart her sorrow smote like spears,
And in her soul she knew the utmost smart
Of wives left lonely, sires bereaved, the tears
Of maidens desolate, of loves that part.
XXXI.
She drain’d the dregs out of the cup of hate;
The bitterness of sorrow, shame, and scorn;
Where’er the tongues of mortals curse their fate,
She saw herself an outcast and forlorn;
And hating sore the day that she was born,
Down in the dust she cast her golden head,
There with rent raiment and fair tresses torn,
At feet of Corythus she lay for dead.
XXXII.
But Corythus, beholding her sweet face,
And her most lovely body lying low,
Had pity on her grief and on her grace,
Nor heeded now she was his mother’s foe,
But did what might be done to ease her woe,
While, as he thought, with death for life she strove,
And loosed the necklet round her neck of snow,
As who that saw had deem’d, with hands of love.
XXXIII.
And there was one that saw: for Paris woke
Half-deeming and half-dreaming that the van
Of the great Argive host had scared the folk,
And down the echoing corridor he ran
To Helen’s bower, and there beheld the man
That kneel’d beside his lady lying there:
No word he spake, but drove his sword a span
Through Corythus’ fair neck and cluster’d hair.
XXXIV.
Then fell fair Corythus, as falls the tower
An earthquake shaketh from a city’s crown,
Or as a tall white fragrant lily-flower
A child hath in the garden trampled down,
Or as a pine-tree in the forest brown,
Fell’d by the sea-rovers on mountain lands,
When they to harry foreign folk are boune,
Taking their own lives in their reckless hands.
XXXV.
But still in Paris did his anger burn,
And still his sword was lifted up to slay,
When, like a lot leap’d forth of Fate’s own urn,
He mark’d the graven tokens where they lay,
‘Mid Helen’s hair in golden disarray,
And looking on them, knew what he had done,
Knew what dire thing had fallen on that day,
Knew how a father’s hand had slain a son.
XXXVI.
Then Paris on his face fell grovelling,
And the night gather’d, and the silence grew
Within the darkened chamber of the king.
But Helen rose, and a sad breath she drew,
And her new woes came back to her anew:
Ah, where is he but knows the bitter pain
To wake from dreams, and find his sorrow true,
And his ill life returned to him again!
XXXVII.
She needed none to tell her whence it fell,
The thick red rain upon the marble floor:
She knew that in her bower she might not dwell,
Alone with her own heart for ever more;
No sacrifice, no spell, no priestly lore
Could banish quite the melancholy ghost
Of Corythus; a herald sent before
Them that should die for her, a dreadful host.
XXXVIII.
But slowly Paris raised him from the earth,
And read her face, and knew that she knew all,
No more her eyes, in tenderness or mirth,
Should answer his, in bower or in hall.
Nay, Love had fallen when his child did fall,
The stream Love cannot cross ran ‘twixt them red;
No more was Helen his, whate’er befall,
Not though the Goddess drove her to his bed.
XXXIX.
This word he spake, “the Fates are hard on us” –
Then bade the women do what must be done
To the fair body of dead Corythus.
And then he hurl’d into the night alone,
Wailing unto the spirit of his son,
That somewhere in dark mist and sighing wind
Must dwell, nor yet to Hades had it won,
Nor quite had left the world of men behind.
XL.
But wild none by the mountain-path
Saw not her son returning to the wold,
And now was she in fear, and now in wrath
She cried, “He hath forgot the mountain fold,
And goes in Ilios with a crown of gold:”
But even then she heard men’s axes smite
Against the beeches slim and ash-trees old,
These ancient trees wherein she did delight.
XLI.
Then she arose and silently as Sleep,
Unseen she follow’d the slow-rolling wain,
Beneath an ashen sky that ‘gan to weep,
Too heavy laden with the latter rain;
And all the folk of Troy upon the plain
She found, all gather’d round a funeral pyre,
And thereon lay her son, her darling slain,
The goodly Corythus, her heart’s desire!
XLII.
Among the spices and fair robes he lay,
His arm beneath his head, as though he slept.
For so the Goddess wrought that no decay,
No loathly thing about his body crept;
And all the people look’d on him and wept,
And, weeping, Paris lit the pine-wood dry,
And lo, a rainy wind arose and swept
The flame and fragrance far into the sky.
XLIII.
But when the force of flame was burning low,
Then did they drench the pyre with ruddy wine,
And the white bones of Corythus bestow
Within a gold cruse, wrought with many a sign,
And wrapp’d the cruse about with linen fine
And bare it to the tomb: when, lo, the wild
none sprang, with burning eyes divine,
And shriek’d unto the slayer of her child:
XLIV.
“Oh Thou, that like a God art sire and slayer,
That like a God, dost give and take away!
Methinks that even now I hear the prayer
Thou shalt beseech me with, some later day;
When all the world to thy dim eyes grow grey,
And thou shalt crave thy healing at my hand,
Then gladly will I mock, and say thee nay,
And watch thine hours run down like running sand!
XLV.
“Yea, thou shalt die, and leave thy love behind,
And little shall she love thy memory!
But, oh ye foolish people, deaf and blind,
What Death is coming on you from the sea?”
Then all men turned, and lo, upon the lee
Of Tenedos, beneath the driving rain,
The countless Argive ships were racing free,
The wind and oarsmen speeding them amain.
XLVI.
Then from the barrow and the burial,
Back like a bursting torrent all men fled
Back to the city and the sacred wall.
But Paris stood, and lifted not his head.
Alone he stood, and brooded o’er the dead,
As broods a lion, when a shaft hath flown,