BROWN and bright as an agate, mountain-cool,

Eurotas singing slips from pool to pool;

Down rocky gullies; through the cavernous pines

And chestnut groves; down where the terraced vines

And gardens overhang; through valleys grey

With olive trees, into a soundless bay

Of the Ægean. Silent and asleep

Lie those pools now: but where they dream most deep,

Men sometimes see ripples of shining hair

And the young grace of bodies pale and bare,

Shimmering far down—the ghosts these mirrors hold

Of all the beauty they beheld of old,

White limbs and heavenly eyes and the hair’s river of gold,

For once these banks were peopled: Spartan girls

Loosed here their maiden girdles and their curls,

And stooping o’er the level water stole

His darling mirror from the sun through whole

Rapturous hours of gazing.

The first star

Of all this milky constellation, far

Lovelier than any nymph of wood or green,

Was she whom Tyndarus had made his queen

For her sheer beauty and subtly moving grace—

Leda, the fairest of our mortal race.

Hymen had lit his torches but one week

About her bed (and still o’er her young cheek

Passed rosy shadows of those thoughts that sped

Across her mind, still virgin, still unwed,

For all her body was her own no more),

When Leda with her maidens to the shore

Of bright Eurotas came, to escape the heat

Of summer noon in waters coolly sweet.

By a brown pool which opened smooth and clear

Below the wrinkled water of a weir

They sat them down under an old fir-tree

To rest: and to the laughing melody

Of their sweet speech the river’s rippling bore

A liquid burden, while the sun did pour

Pure colour out of heaven upon the earth.

The meadows seethed with the incessant mirth

Of grasshoppers, seen only when they flew

Their curves of scarlet or sudden dazzling blue.

Within the fir-tree’s round of unpierced shade

The maidens sat with laughter and talk, or played,

Gravely intent, their game of knuckle-bones;

Or tossed from hand to hand the old dry cones

Littered about the tree. And one did sing

A ballad of some far-off Spartan king,

Who took a wife, but left her, well-away!

Slain by his foes upon their wedding-day.

“That was a piteous story,” Leda sighed,

“To be a widow ere she was a bride.”

“Better,” said one, “to live a virgin life

Alone, and never know the name of wife

And bear the ugly burden of a child

And have great pain by it. Let me live wild,

A bird untamed by man!” “Nay,” cried another,

“I would be wife, if I should not be mother.

Cypris I honour; let the vulgar pay

Their gross vows to Lucina when they pray.

Our finer spirits would be blunted quite

By bestial teeming; but Love’s rare delight

Wings the rapt soul towards Olympus’ height.”

“Delight?” cried Leda. “Love to me has brought

Nothing but pain and a world of shameful thought.

When they say love is sweet, the poets lie;

’Tis but a trick to catch poor maidens by.

What are their boasted pleasures? I am queen

To the most royal king the world has seen;

Therefore I should, if any woman might,

Know at its full that exquisite delight.

Yet these few days since I was made a wife

Have held more bitterness than all my life,

While I was yet a child.” The great bright tears

Slipped through her lashes. “Oh, my childish years!

Years that were all my own, too sadly few,

When I was happy—and yet never knew

How happy till to-day!” Her maidens came

About her as she wept, whispering her name,

Leda, sweet Leda, with a hundred dear

Caressing words to soothe her heavy cheer.

At last she started up with a fierce pride

Upon her face. “I am a queen,” she cried,

“But had forgotten it a while; and you,

Wenches of mine, you were forgetful too.

Undress me. We would bathe ourself.” So proud

A queen she stood, that all her maidens bowed

In trembling fear and scarcely dared approach

To do her bidding. But at last the brooch

Pinned at her shoulder is undone, the wide

Girdle of silk beneath her breasts untied;

The tunic falls about her feet, and she

Steps from the crocus folds of drapery,

Dazzlingly naked, into the warm sun.

God-like she stood; then broke into a run,

Leaping and laughing in the light, as though

Life through her veins coursed with so swift a flow

Of generous blood and fire that to remain

Too long in statued queenliness were pain

To that quick soul, avid of speed and joy.

She ran, easily bounding, like a boy,

Narrow of haunch and slim and firm of breast.

Lovelier she seemed in motion than at rest,

If that might be, when she was never less,

Moving or still, than perfect loveliness.

At last, with cheeks afire and heaving flank,

She checked her race, and on the river’s bank

Stood looking down at her own echoed shape

And at the fish that, aimlessly agape,

Hung midway up their heaven of flawless glass,

Like angels waiting for eternity to pass.

Leda drew breath and plunged; her gasping cry

Splashed up; the water circled brokenly

Out from that pearly shudder of dipped limbs;

The glittering pool laughed up its flowery brims,

And everything, save the poor fish, rejoiced:

Their idiot contemplation of the Moist,

The Cold, the Watery, was in a trice

Ended when Leda broke their crystal paradise.

Jove in his high Olympian chamber lay

Hugely supine, striving to charm away

In sleep the long, intolerable noon.

But heedless Morpheus still withheld his boon,

And Jove upon his silk-pavilioned bed

Tossed wrathful and awake. His fevered head

Swarmed with a thousand fancies, which forecast

Delights to be, or savoured pleasures past.

Closing his eyes, he saw his eagle swift,

Headlong as his own thunder, stoop and lift

On pinions upward labouring the prize

Of beauty ravished for the envious skies.

He saw again that bright, adulterous pair,

Trapped by the limping husband unaware,

Fast in each other’s arms, and faster in the snare—

And laughed remembering. Sometimes his thought

Went wandering over the earth and sought

Familiar places—temples by the sea,

Cities and islands; here a sacred tree

And there a cavern of shy nymphs.

He rolled

About his bed, in many a rich fold

Crumpling his Babylonian coverlet,

And yawned and stretched. The smell of his own sweat

Brought back to mind his Libyan desert-fane

Of mottled granite, with its endless train

Of pilgrim camels, reeking towards the sky

Ammonian incense to his hornèd deity;

The while their masters worshipped, offering

Huge teeth of ivory, while some would bring

Their Ethiop wives—sleek wineskins of black silk,

Jellied and huge from drinking asses’ milk

Through years of tropical idleness, to pray

For offspring (whom he ever sent away

With prayers unanswered, lest their ebon race

Might breed and blacken the earth’s comely face).

Noon pressed on him a hotter, heavier weight.

O Love in Idleness! how celibate

He felt! Libido like a nemesis

Scourged him with itching memories of bliss.

The satin of imagined skin was sleek

And supply warm against his lips and cheek,

And deep within soft hair’s dishevelled dusk

His eyelids fluttered; like a flowery musk

The scent of a young body seemed to float

Faintly about him, close and yet remote—

For perfume and the essence of music dwell

In other worlds among the asphodel

Of unembodied life. Then all had flown;

His dream had melted. In his bed, alone,

Jove sweating lay and moaned, and longed in vain

To still the pulses of his burning pain.

In sheer despair at last he leapt from bed,

Opened the window and thrust forth his head

Into Olympian ether. One fierce frown

Rifted the clouds, and he was looking down

Into a gulf of azure calm; the rack

Seethed round about, tempestuously black;

But the god’s eye could hold its angry thunders back.

There lay the world, down through the chasméd blue,

Stretched out from edge to edge unto his view;

And in the midst, bright as a summer’s day

At breathless noon, the Mediterranean lay;

And Ocean round the world’s dim fringes tossed

His glaucous waves in mist and distance lost;

And Pontus and the livid Caspian Sea

Stirred in their nightmare sleep uneasily.

And ’twixt the seas rolled the wide fertile land,

Dappled with green and tracts of tawny sand,

And rich, dark fallows and fields of flowers aglow

And the white, changeless silences of snow;

While here and there towns, like a living eye

Unclosed on earth’s blind face, towards the sky

Glanced their bright conscious beauty. Yet the sight

Of his fair earth gave him but small delight

Now in his restlessness: its beauty could

Do nought to quench the fever in his blood.

Desire lends sharpness to his searching eyes;

Over the world his focused passion flies

Quicker than chasing sunlight on a day

Of storm and golden April. Far away

He sees the tranquil rivers of the East,

Mirrors of many a strange barbaric feast,

Where un-Hellenic dancing-girls contort

Their yellow limbs, and gibbering masks make sport

Under the moons of many-coloured light

That swing their lantern-fruitage in the night

Of overarching trees. To him it seems

An alien world, peopled by insane dreams.

But these are nothing to the monstrous shapes—

Not men so much as bastardy of apes—

That meet his eyes in Africa. Between

Leaves of grey fungoid pulp and poisonous green,

White eyes from black and browless faces stare.

Dryads with star-flowers in their woolly hair

Dance to the flaccid clapping of their own

Black dangling dugs through forests overgrown,

Platted with writhing creepers. Horrified,

He sees them how they leap and dance, or glide,

Glimpse after black glimpse of a satin skin,

Among unthinkable flowers, to pause and grin

Out through a trellis of suppurating lips,

Of mottled tentacles barbed at the tips

And bloated hands and wattles and red lobes

Of pendulous gristle and enormous probes

Of pink and slashed and tasselled flesh . . .

He turns

Northward his sickened sight. The desert burns

All life away. Here in the forkéd shade

Of twin-humped towering dromedaries laid,

A few gaunt folk are sleeping: fierce they seem

Even in sleep, and restless as they dream.

He would be fearful of a desert bride

As of a brown asp at his sleeping side,

Fearful of her white teeth and cunning arts.

Further, yet further, to the ultimate parts

Of the wide earth he looks, where Britons go

Painted among their swamps, and through the snow

Huge hairy snuffling beasts pursue their prey—

Fierce men, as hairy and as huge as they.

Bewildered furrows deepen the Thunderer’s scowl;

This world so vast, so variously foul—

Who can have made its ugliness? In what

Revolting fancy were the Forms begot

Of all these monsters? What strange deity—

So barbarously not a Greek!—was he

Who could mismake such beings in his own

Distorted image. Nay, the Greeks alone

Were men; in Greece alone were bodies fair,

Minds comely. In that all-but-island there,

Cleaving the blue sea with its promontories,

Lies the world’s hope, the seed of all the glories

That are to be; there, too, must surely live

She who alone can medicinably give

Ease with her beauty to the Thunderer’s pain.

Downwards he bends his fiery eyes again,

Glaring on Hellas. Like a beam of light,

His intent glances touch the mountain height

With passing flame and probe the valleys deep,

Rift the dense forest and the age-old sleep

Of vaulted antres on whose pebbly floor

Gallop the loud-hoofed Centaurs; and the roar

Of more than human shouting underground

Pulses in living palpable waves of sound

From wall to wall, until it rumbles out

Into the air; and at that hollow shout

That seems an utterance of the whole vast hill,

The shepherds cease their laughter and are still.

Cities asleep under the noonday sky

Stir at the passage of his burning eye;

And in their huts the startled peasants blink

At the swift flash that bursts through every chink

Of wattled walls, hearkening in fearful wonder

Through lengthened seconds for the crash of thunder—

Which follows not: they are the more afraid.

Jove seeks amain. Many a country maid,

Whose sandalled feet pass down familiar ways

Among the olives, but whose spirit strays

Through lovelier lands of fancy, suddenly

Starts broad awake out of her dream to see

A light that is not of the sun, a light

Darted by living eyes, consciously bright;

She sees and feels it like a subtle flame

Mantling her limbs with fear and maiden shame

And strange desire. Longing and terrified,

She hides her face, like a new-wedded bride

Who feels rough hands that seize and hold her fast;

And swooning falls. The terrible light has passed;

She wakes; the sun still shines, the olive trees

Tremble to whispering silver in the breeze

And all is as it was, save she alone

In whose dazed eyes this deathless light has shone:

For never, never from this day forth will she

In earth’s poor passion find felicity,

Or love of mortal man. A god’s desire

Has seared her soul; nought but the same strong fire

Can kindle the dead ash to life again,

And all her years will be a lonely pain.

Many a thousand had he looked upon,

Thousands of mortals, young and old; but none—

Virgin, or young ephebus, or the flower

Of womanhood culled in its full-blown hour—

Could please the Thunderer’s sight or touch his mind;

The longed-for loveliness was yet to find.

Had beauty fled, and was there nothing fair

Under the moon? The fury of despair

Raged in the breast of heaven’s Almighty Lord;

He gnashed his foamy teeth and rolled and roared

In bull-like agony. Then a great calm

Descended on him: cool and healing balm

Touched his immortal fury. He had spied

Young Leda where she stood, poised on the river-side.

 
Even as she broke the river’s smooth expanse,

Leda was conscious of that hungry glance,

And knew it for an eye of fearful power

That did so hot and thunderously lour,

She knew not whence, on her frail nakedness.

Jove’s heart held but one thought: he must possess

That perfect form or die—possess or die.

Unheeded prayers and supplications fly,

Thick as a flock of birds, about his ears,

And smoke of incense rises; but he hears

Nought but the soft falls of that melody

Which is the speech of Leda; he can see

Nought but that almost spiritual grace

Which is her body, and that heavenly face

Where gay, sweet thoughts shine through, and eyes are bright

With purity and the soul’s inward light.

Have her he must: the teasel-fingered burr

Sticks not so fast in a wild beast’s tangled fur

As that insistent longing in the soul

Of mighty Jove. Gods, men, earth, heaven, the whole

Vast universe was blotted from his thought

And nought remained but Leda’s laughter, nought

But Leda’s eyes. Magnified by his lust,

She was the whole world now; have her he must, he must . . .

His spirit worked; how should he gain his end

With most deliciousness? What better friend,

What counsellor more subtle could he find

Than lovely Aphrodite, ever kind

To hapless lovers, ever cunning, too,

In all the tortuous ways of love to do

And plan the best? To Paphos then! His will

And act were one; and straight, invisible,

He stood in Paphos, breathing the languid air

By Aphrodite’s couch. O heavenly fair

She was, and smooth and marvellously young!

On Tyrian silk she lay, and purple hung

About her bed in folds of fluted light

And shadow, dark as wine. Two doves, more white

Even than the white hand on the purple lying

Like a pale flower wearily dropped, were flying

With wings that made an odoriferous stir,

Dropping faint dews of bakkaris and myrrh,

Musk and the soul of sweet flowers cunningly

Ravished from transient petals as they die.

Two stripling cupids on her either hand

Stood near with winnowing plumes and gently fanned

Her hot, love-fevered cheeks and eyelids burning.

Another, crouched at the bed’s foot, was turning

A mass of scattered parchments—vows or plaints

Or glad triumphant thanks which Venus’ saints,

Martyrs and heroes, on her altars strewed

With bitterest tears or gifts of gratitude.

From the pile heaped at Aphrodite’s feet

The boy would take a leaf, and in his sweet,

Clear voice would read what mortal tongues can tell

In stammering verse of those ineffable

Pleasures and pains of love, heaven and uttermost hell.

Jove hidden stood and heard him read these lines

Of votive thanks—

    Cypris, this little silver lamp to thee

      I dedicate.

    It was my fellow-watcher, shared with me

    Those swift, short hours, when raised above my fate

    In Sphenura’s white arms I drank

      Of immortality.

“A pretty lamp, and I will have it placed

Beside the narrow bed of some too chaste

Sister of virgin Artemis, to be

A night-long witness of her cruelty.

Read me another, boy,” and Venus bent

Her ear to listen to this short lament.

    Cypris, Cypris, I am betrayed!

    Under the same wide mantle laid

    I found them, faithless, shameless pair!

    Making love with tangled hair.

“Alas,” the goddess cried, “nor god, nor man,

Nor medicinable balm, nor magic can

Cast out the demon jealousy, whose breath

Withers the rose of life, save only time and death.”

Another sheet he took and read again.

    Farewell to love, and hail the long, slow pain

    Of memory that backward turns to joy.

    O I have danced enough and enough sung;

    My feet shall be still now and my voice mute;

    Thine are these withered wreaths, this Lydian flute,

      Cypris; I once was young.

And piêtous Aphrodite wept to think

How fadingly upon death’s very brink

Beauty and love take hands for one short kiss—

And then the wreaths are dust, the bright-eyed bliss

Perished, and the flute still. “Read on, read on.”

But ere the page could start, a lightning shone

Suddenly through the room, and they were ’ware

Of some great terrible presence looming there.

And it took shape—huge limbs, whose every line

A symbol was of power and strength divine,

And it was Jove.

                 “Daughter, I come,” said he,

“For counsel in a case that touches me

Close, to the very life.” And he straightway

Told her of all his restlessness that day

And of his sight of Leda, and how great

Was his desire. And so in close debate

Sat the two gods, planning their rape; while she,

Who was to be their victim, joyously

Laughed like a child in the sudden breathless chill

And splashed and swam, forgetting every ill

And every fear and all, save only this:

That she was young, and it was perfect bliss

To be alive where suns so goldenly shine,

And bees go drunk with fragrant honey-wine,

And the cicadas sing from morn till night,

And rivers run so cool and pure and bright . . .

Stretched all her length, arms under head, she lay

In the deep grass, while the sun kissed away

The drops that sleeked her skin. Slender and fine

As those old images of the gods that shine

With smooth-worn silver, polished through the years

By the touching lips of countless worshippers,

Her body was; and the sun’s golden heat

Clothed her in softest flame from head to feet

And was her mantle, that she scarcely knew

The conscious sense of nakedness. The blue,

Far hills and the faint fringes of the sky

Shimmered and pulsed in the heat uneasily,

And hidden in the grass, cicadas shrill

Dizzied the air with ceaseless noise, until

A listener might wonder if they cried

In his own head or in the world outside.

Sometimes she shut her eyelids, and wrapped round

In a red darkness, with the muffled sound

And throb of blood beating within her brain,

Savoured intensely to the verge of pain

Her own young life, hoarded it up behind

Her shuttered lids, until, too long confined,

It burst them open and her prisoned soul

Flew forth and took possession of the whole

Exquisite world about her and was made

A part of it. Meanwhile her maidens played,

Singing an ancient song of death and birth,

Seed-time and harvest, old as the grey earth,

And moving to their music in a dance

As immemorial. A numbing trance

Came gradually over her, as though

Flake after downy-feathered flake of snow

Had muffled all her senses, drifting deep

And warm and quiet.

 
From this all-but sleep

She started into life again; the sky

Was full of a strange tumult suddenly—

Beating of mighty wings and shrill-voiced fear

And the hoarse scream of rapine following near.

In the high windlessness above her flew,

Dazzlingly white on the untroubled blue,

A splendid swan, with outstretched neck and wing

Spread fathom wide, and closely following

An eagle, tawny and black. This god-like pair

Circled and swooped through the calm of upper air,

The eagle striking and the white swan still

’Scaping as though by happy miracle

The imminent talons. For the twentieth time

The furious hunter stooped, to miss and climb

A mounting spiral into the height again.

He hung there poised, eyeing the grassy plain

Far, far beneath, where the girls’ upturned faces

Were like white flowers that bloom in open places

Among the scarcely budded woods. And they

Breathlessly watched and waited; long he lay,

Becalmed upon that tideless sea of light,

While the great swan with slow and creaking flight

Went slanting down towards safety, where the stream

Shines through the trees below, with glance and gleam

Of blue aerial eyes that seem to give

Sense to the sightless earth and make it live.

The ponderous wings beat on and no pursuit:

Stiff as the painted kite that guards the fruit,

Afloat o’er orchards ripe, the eagle yet

Hung as at anchor, seeming to forget

His uncaught prey, his rage unsatisfied.

Still, quiet, dead . . . and then the quickest-eyed

Had lost him. Like a star unsphered, a stone

Dropped from the vault of heaven, a javelin thrown,

He swooped upon his prey. Down, down he came,

And through his plumes with a noise of wind-blown flame

Loud roared the air. From Leda’s lips a cry

Broke, and she hid her face—she could not see him die,

Her lovely, hapless swan.

Ah, had she heard,

Even as the eagle hurtled past, the word

That treacherous pair exchanged. “Peace,” cried the swan;

“Peace, daughter. All my strength will soon be gone,

Wasted in tedious flying, ere I come

Where my desire hath set its only home.”

“Go,” said the eagle, “I have played my part,

Roused pity for your plight in Leda’s heart

(Pity the mother of voluptuousness).

Go, father Jove; be happy; for success

Attends this moment.”

On the queen’s numbed sense

Fell a glad shout that ended sick suspense,

Bidding her lift once more towards the light

Her eyes, by pity closed against a sight

Of blood and death—her eyes, how happy now

To see the swan still safe, while far below,

Brought by the force of his eluded stroke

So near to earth that with his wings he woke

A gust whose sudden silvery motion stirred

The meadow grass, struggled the sombre bird

Of rage and rapine. Loud his scream and hoarse

With baffled fury as he urged his course

Upwards again on threshing pinions wide.

But the fair swan, not daring to abide

This last assault, dropped with the speed of fear

Towards the river. Like a winged spear,

Outstretching his long neck, rigid and straight,

Aimed at where Leda on the bank did wait

With open arms and kind, uplifted eyes

And voice of tender pity, down he flies.

Nearer, nearer, terribly swift, he sped

Directly at the queen; then widely spread

Resisting wings, and breaking his descent

’Gainst his own wind, all speed and fury spent,

The great swan fluttered slowly down to rest

And sweet security on Leda’s breast.

Menacingly the eagle wheeled above her;

But Leda, like a noble-hearted lover

Keeping his child-beloved from tyrannous harm,

Stood o’er the swan and, with one slender arm

Imperiously lifted, waved away

The savage foe, still hungry for his prey.

Baffled at last, he mounted out of sight

And the sky was void—save for a single white

Swan’s feather moulted from a harassed wing

That down, down, with a rhythmic balancing

From side to side dropped sleeping on the air.

Down, slowly down over that dazzling pair,

Whose different grace in union was a birth

Of unimagined beauty on the earth:

So lovely that the maidens standing round

Dared scarcely look. Couched on the flowery ground

Young Leda lay, and to her side did press

The swan’s proud-arching opulent loveliness,

Stroking the snow-soft plumage of his breast

With fingers slowly drawn, themselves caressed

By the warm softness where they lingered, loth

To break away. Sometimes against their growth

Ruffling the feathers inlaid like little scales

On his sleek neck, the pointed finger-nails

Rasped on the warm, dry, puckered skin beneath;

And feeling it she shuddered, and her teeth

Grated on edge; for there was something strange

And snake-like in the touch. He, in exchange,

Gave back to her, stretching his eager neck,

For every kiss a little amorous peck;

Rubbing his silver head on her gold tresses,

And with the nip of horny dry caresses

Leaving upon her young white breast and cheek

And arms the red print of his playful beak.

Closer he nestled, mingling with the slim

Austerity of virginal flank and limb

His curved and florid beauty, till she felt

That downy warmth strike through her flesh and melt

The bones and marrow of her strength away.

One lifted arm bent o’er her brow, she lay

With limbs relaxed, scarce breathing, deathly still;

Save when a quick, involuntary thrill

Shook her sometimes with passing shudderings,

As though some hand had plucked the aching strings

Of life itself, tense with expectancy.

And over her the swan shook slowly free

The folded glory of his wings, and made

A white-walled tent of soft and luminous shade

To be her veil and keep her from the shame

Of naked light and the sun’s noonday flame.

Hushed lay the earth and the wide, careless sky.

Then one sharp sound, that might have been a cry

Of utmost pleasure or of utmost pain,

Broke sobbing forth, and all was still again.