Archibald Lampman - An Athenian Reverie lyrics

How the returning days, one after one, Came ever in their rhythmic round, unchanged, Yet from each looped robe for every man Some new thing falls. Happy is he Who fronts them without fear, and like the gods Looks out unanxiously on each day's gift With calmly curious eye. How many things Even in a little space, both good and ill, Have fallen on me, and yet in all of them The keen experience or the smooth remembrance Hath found some sweet. It scarcely seems a month Since we saw Crete; so swiftly sped the days, Borne onward with how many changing scenes, Filled with how many crowding memories. Not soon shall I forget them, the stout ship, All the tense labour with the windy sea, The cloud-wrapped heights of Crete, beheld far off, And white Cytaeon with its stormy pier, The fruitful valleys, the wild mountain road, And those long days of ever-vigilant toil, Scarcely with sleepless craft and unmoved front Escaping robbers, that quiet restful eve At rich Gortyna, where we lay and watched The dripping foliage, and the darkening fields, And over all huge-browed above the night Ida's great summit with its fiery crown; And then once more the stormy treacherous sea, The noisy ship, the seamen's vehement cries, That battled with the whistling wind, the feet Reeling upon the swaying deck, and eyes Strained anxiously toward land; ah, with what joy At last the busy pier at Nauplia, Rest and firm shelter for our racking brains: Most sweet of all, most dear to memory That journey with Euktemon through the hills By fair Cleonae and the lofty pa**; Then Corinth with its riotous jollity, Remembered like a reeling dream; and here Good Theron's wedding, and this festal day; And I, chief helper in its various rites, Not least, commissioned through these wakeful hours To dream before the quiet thalamos, Unsleeping, like some full-grown bearded Eros, The guardian of love's sweetest mysteries. To-morrow I shall hear again the din Of the loosed cables, and the rowers' chaunt, The rattled cordage and the plunging oars. Once more the bending sail shall bear us on Across the level of the laughing sea. Ere mid-day we shall see far off behind us, Faint as the summit of a sultry cloud, The white Acropolis. Past Sunium With rushing keel, the long Euboean strand, Hymettus and the pine-dark hills shall fade Into the dusk: at Andros we shall water, And ere another starlight hush the shores From seaward valleys catch upon the wind The fragrance of old Chian vintages. At Chios many things shall fall but none Can trace the future; rather let me dream Of what is now, and what hath been, for both Are fraught with life. Here the unbroken silence Awakens thought and makes remembrance sweet. How solidly the brilliant moonlight shines Into the courts; beneath the colonnades How dense the shadows. I can scarcely see Yon painted Dian on the darkened wall; Yet how the gloom hath made her real. What sound, Piercing the leafy covert of her couch, Hath startled her. Perchance some prowling wolf, Or luckless footsteps of the stealthy Pan, Creeping at night among noiseless steeps And hollows of the Erymanthian woods, Roused her from sleep. With listening head, Snatched bow, and quiver lightly slung, she stands, And peers across that dim and motionless glade, Beckoning about her heels the wakeful dogs; Yet Dian, thus alert, is but a dream, Making more real this brooding quietness. How strong and wonderful is night! Mankind Has yielded all to one sweet helplessness: Thought, labour, strife and all activities Have ebbed like fever. The smooth tide of sleep, Rolling across the fields of Attica, Hath covered all the labouring villages. Even great Athens with her busy hands And busier tongues lies quiet beneath its waves. Only a steady murmur seems to come Up from her silentness, as if the land Were breathing heavily in dreams. Abroad No creature stirs, not even the reveller, Staggering, unlanterned, from the cool Piraeus, With drunken shout. The remnants of the feast, The crumpled cushions and the broken wreathes, Lie scattered in yon shadowy court, whose stones Through the warm hours drink up the staining wine. The bridal oxen in their well-filled stalls Sleep, mindless of the happy weight they drew. The torch is charred; the garlands at the door, So gay at morning with their bright festoons, Hang limp and withered; and the joyous flutes Are empty of all sound. Only my brain Holds now in its remote unsleeping depths The echo of the tender hymenaeos And memory of the modest lips that sang it. Within the silent thalamos the queen, The sea-sprung radiant Cytherean reigns, And with her smiling lips and fathomless eyes Regards the lovers, knowing that this hour Is theirs once only. Earth and thought and time Lie far beyond them, a great gulf of joy, Absorbing fear, regret and every grief, A warm eternity: or now perchance Night and the very weight of happiness, Unsought, have turned upon their tremulous eyes The mindless stream of sleep; nor do they care If dawn should never come. How joyously These hours have gone with all their pictured scenes, A string of golden beads for memory To finger over in her moods, or stay The hunger of some wakeful hour like this, The flowers, the myrtles, the gay bridal train, The flutes and pensive voices, the white robes, The shower of sweet-meats, and the jovial feast, The bride cakes, and the teeming merriment, Most beautiful of all, most sweet to name, The good Lysippe with her down-cast eyes, Touched with soft fear, half scared at all the noise, Whose tears were ready as her laughter, fresh, And modest as some pink anemone. How young she looked, and how her smiling lips Betrayed her happiness. Ah, who can tell, How often, when no watchful eye was near, Her eager fingers, trembling and ashamed, Essayed the apple-pips, or strewed the floor With broken poppy petals. Next to her, Theron himself the gladest goodliest figure, His honest face ruddy with health and joy, And smiling like the AEgean, when the sun Hangs high in heaven, and the freshening wind Comes in from Melos, rippling all its floor: And there was Manto too, the good old crone, So dear to children with her store of tales, Warmed with new life: how to her old grey face And withered limbs the very dance of youth Seemed to return, and in her aged eyes The waning fire rekindled: little Maeon, That mischievous satyr with his tipsy wreath, Who kept us laughing at his pranks, and made Old Phyrrho angry. Him too sleep hath bound Upon his rough-hewn couch with subtle thong, Crowding his brain with odd fantastic shapes. Even in sleep his little limbs, I think, Twitch restlessly, and still his tongue gibes on With inarticulate murmur. Ah, quaint Maeon! And Manto, poor old Manto, what dim dreams Of darkly-moving chaos and slow shapes Of things that creep encumbered with huge burdens Gloom and infest her through these dragging hours, Haunting the wavering soul, so near the grave? But all things journey to the same quiet end At last, life, joy and every form of motion. Nothing stands still. Not least inevitable, The sad recession of this pa**ionate love, Whose panting fires, so soon and with such grief, Burn down to ash. Ai! Ai! 'tis a strange madness To give up thought, ambition, liberty, And all the rooted custom of our days, Even life itself for one all pampering dream, That withers like those garlands at the door; And yet I have seen many excellent men Besotted thus, and some that bore till d**h, In the crook'd vision and embittered tongue, The effect of this strange poison, like a scar, An ineradicable hurt; but Fate, Who deals more wondrously in this disease Even than in others, yet doth sometimes will To make the same thing unto different men Evil or good. Was not Demetrios happy, Who wore his fetters with such grace, and spent On Chione, the Naxian, that shrewd girl, His fortune and his youth, yet, while she lived, Enjoyed the rich reward? He seemed like one, That trod on wind, and I remember well, How when she died in that remorseless plague, And I alone stood with him at the pyre, He shook me with his helpless pa**ionate grief. And honest Agathon, the married man, Whose boyish fondness for his pretty wife We smiled at, and yet envied; at the close Of each day's labour how he posted home, And thence no bait, however plumed, could draw him. We laughed, but envied him. How sweet she looked That morning at the Dyonisia, With her rare eyes and modest girlish grace, Leading her two small children by the palm. I too might marry, if the faithful gods Would promise me such joy as Agathon's. Perhaps some day-but no, I am not one To clip my wings, and wind about my feet A net, whose self-made meshes are as stern As they are soft. To me is ever present The outer world with its untravelled paths, The wanderer's dream, the itch to see new things. A single tie could never bind me fast, For life, this joyous, busy, ever-changing life, Is only dear to me with liberty, With space of earth for feet to travel in And space of mind for thought. Not so for all; To most men life is but a common thing, The hours a sort of coin to barter with, Whose worth is reckoned by the sum they buy In gold, or power, or pleasure; each short day That brings not these deemed fruitless as dry sand. Their lives are but a blind activity, And d**h to them is but the end of motion, Grey children who have madly eat and drunk, Won the high seats or filled their chests with gold. And yet for all their years have never seen The picture of their lives, or how life looks To him who hath the deep uneager eye, How sweet and large and beautiful it was, How strange the part they played. Like him who sits Beneath some mighty tree, with half-closed eyes, At ease rejoicing in its murmurous shade, Yet never once awakes from his dull dream To mark with curious joy the kingly trunk, The sweeping boughs and tower of leaves that gave it, Even so the most of men; they take the gift, And care not for the giver. Strange indeed Are they, and pitiable beyond measure, Who, thus unmindful of their wretchedness, Crowd at life's bountiful gates, like fattening beggars; Greedy and blind. For see how rich a thing Life is to him who sees, to whom each hour Brings some fresh wonder to be brooded on, Adds some new group or studied history To that wrought sculpture, that our watchful dreams Cast up upon the broad expanse of time, As in a never-finished frieze, not less The little things that most men pa** unmarked Than those that shake mankind. Happy is he, Who, as a watcher, stands apart from life, From all life and his own, and thus from all, Each thought, each deed, and each hour's brief event, Draws the full beauty, s**s its meaning dry. For him this life shall be a tranquil joy. He shall be quiet and free. To him shall come No gnawing hunger for the coarser touch, No mad ambition with its fateful grasp; Sorrow itself shall sway him like a dream. How full life is; how many memories Flash, and shine out, when thought is sharply stirred; How the mind works, when once the wheels are loosed, How nimbly, with what swift activity. I think, 'tis strange that men should ever sleep, There are so many things to think upon, So many deeds, so many thoughts to weigh, To pierce and plumb them to the silent depth. Yet in that thought I do rebuke myself, Too little given to probe the inner heart, But rather wont, with the luxurious eye, To catch from life its outer loveliness, Such things as do but store the joyous memory With food for solace rather than for thought, Like light-lined figures on a painted jar. I wonder where Euktemon is to-night, Euktemon with his rough and fitful talk, His moody gesture and defiant stride; How strange, how bleak and unapproachable; And yet I liked him from the first. How soon We know our friends, through all disguise of mood, Discerning by a subtle touch of spirit The honest heart within. Euktemon's glance Betrayed him with its gusty friendliness, Flashing at moments from the clouded brow, Like brave warm sunshine, and his laughter too, So rare, so sudden, so contagious, How at some merry scene, some well-told tale, Or swift invention of the winged wit, It broke like thunderous water, rolling out In shaken peals on the delighted ear. Yet no man would have dreamed, who saw us two That first grey morning on the pier at Crete, That friendship could have forged thus easily A bond so subtle and so sure between us; He, gloomy and austere; I, full of thought As he, yet in adverse mood, at ease, Lifting with lighter hands the lids of life, Untortured by its riddles; he, whose smiles Were rare and sudden as the autumn sun; I, to whom smiles are ever near the lip And yet I think he loved me too; my mood Was not unpleasant to him, though I know At times I teased him with flickering talk. How self-immured he was; for all our converse I gathered little, little, of his life, A bitter trial to me, who love to learn The changes of men's outer circumstance, The strokes that fate has shaped them with, and so, Fitting to these their present speech and favour, Discern the thought within. From him I gleaned Nothing. At least the word, however guarded, That sought to try the fastenings of his life With prying hands, how mute and dark he grew, And like the cautious tortoise at a touch Drew in beneath his shell. But ah, how sweet The memory of that long untroubled day, To me so joyous, and so free from care, Spent as I love on foot, our first together, When fate and the reluctant sea at last Had given us safely to dry land; the tramp From grey Mycenae by the pa** to Corinth, The smooth white road, the soft caressing air, Full of the scent of blossoms, the clear sky, Strewn lightly with the little tardy clouds, Old Helios' scattered flock, the low-branched oaks And fountained resting-places, the cool nooks, Where eyes less darkened with life's use than mine Perchance had caught the Naiads in their dreams, Or won white glimpses of their flying heels. How light our feet were: with what rhythmic strides We left the long blue gulf behind us, sown Far out with snowy sails; and how our hearts Rose with the growth of morning, till we reached That moss-hung fountain on the hillside near Cleonae, where the dark anemones Cover the ground, and make it red like fire. Could ever grief, I wonder, or fixed care, Or even the lingering twilight of old age, Divest for me such memories of their sweet? Even Euktemon's obdurate mood broke down. The odorous stillness, the serene bright air, The leafy shadows, the warm blossoming earth, Drew near with their voluptuous eloquence, And melted him. Ah, what a talk we had! How eagerly our nimble tongues ran on, With linked wit, in joyous sympathy. Such hours, I think, are better than long years Of brooding loneliness, mind touching mind To leaping life, and thought sustaining thought, Till even the darkest chambers of grey time, His ancient seats, and bolted mysteries, Open their hoary doors, and at a look Lay all their treasures bare. How, when our thought Wheeling on ever bolder wings at last Grew as it seemed too large for utterance, We both fell silent, striving to recall And grasp such things as in our daring mood We had but glimpsed and leaped at; yet how long We studied thus with absent eyes, I know not; Our thought died slowly out; the busy road, The voices of the pa**ers-by, the change Of garb and feature, and the various tongues Absorbed us. Ah, how clearly I recall them! For in these silent wakeful hours the mind Is strangely swift. With that sharp lines The shapes of things that even years have buried Shine out upon the rapid memory, Moving and warm like life. I can see now The form of that tall peddler, whose strange wares, Outlandish dialect and impudent gait Awoke Euktemon's laughter. In mine ear Is echoing still the cracking string of gibes, They flung at one another. I remember too The grey-haired merchant with his bold black eyes And brace of slaves, the old ship captain tanned With sweeping sea-winds and the pitiless sun, But best of all that dainty amorous pair, Whose youthful spirit neither heat nor toil Could conquer. What a charming group they made? The creaking litter and the long brown poles, The sinewy bearers with their cat-like stride, Dripping with sweat, that merry dark-eyed girl, Whose sudden beauty shook us from our dreams, And chained our eyes. How beautiful she was? Half-hid among the gay Miletian cushions, The lovely laughing face, the gracious form, The fragrant lightly-knotted hair, and eyes Full of the dancing fire of wanton Corinth. That happy stripling, whose delighted feet Swung at her side, whose tongue ran on so gaily, Is it for him alone she wreathes those smiles, And tunes so musically that flexile voice, Soft as the Lydian flute? Surely his gait Proclaimed the lover, and his well-filled girdle Not less the lover's strength. How joyously He strode, unmindful of his ruffled curls, Whose perfumes still went wide upon the wind, His dust-stained robe unheeded, and the stones Whose ragged edges frayed his delicate shoes. How radiant, how full of hope he was! What pleasant memories, how many things Rose up again before me, as I lay Half stretched among the crushed anemones, And watched them, till a far off jutting ledge Precluded sight, still listening till mine ears Caught the last vanishing murmur of their talk. Only a little longer; then we rose With limbs refreshed, and kept a swinging pace Toward Corinth; but our talk, I know not why, Fell for that day. I wonder what there was About those dainty lovers or their speech, From high Cleonae to the city gates, Till sunset found us loitering without aim, Half lost among the dusky-moving crowds, I could get nothing from him but dark looks, Short answers and the old defiant stride. Some memory pricked him. It may be, perchance, A woman's treachery, some luckless pa**ion, In former days endured, hath seared his blood, And dowered him with that cureless bitter humour. To him solitude and the wanderer's life Alone are sweet, the tumults of this world A thing unworthy of the wise man's touch, Its joys and sorrows to be met alike With broad-browed scorn. One quality at least We have in common; we are idlers both, Shifters and wanderers through this sleepless world, Albeit in different moods. 'Tis that, I think, That knit us, and the universal need For near companionship. Howe'er it be, There is no hand that I would gladlier grasp, Either on earth or in the nether gloom, When the grey keel shall grind the Stygian strand, Than stern Euktemon's. That changed Euktemon's mood; for all the way