Bells and Pomegranates, First Series/Artemis Prologuizes

by Robert Browning

ARTEMIS PROLOGUIZES.

I am a Goddess of the ambrosial courts,And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassedBy none whose temples whiten this the world.Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along;I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace;On earth I, caring for the creatures, guardEach pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,And every feathered mother's callow brood,And all that love green haunts and loneliness.Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crownsOf poppies red to blackness, bell and stem,Upon my image at Athenai here;And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,Was dearest to me. He, my buskined stepTo follow through the wild-wood leafy ways,And chase the panting stag, or swift with dartsStop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low,Neglected homage to another god:Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smokeOf tapers lulled, in jealousy despatchedA noisome lust that, as the gadbee stings,Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himselfThe son of Theseus her great absent spouse.Hippolutos exclaiming in his rageAgainst the fury of the Queen, she judgedLife insupportable; and, pricked at heartAn Amazonian stranger's race should dareTo scorn her, perished by the murderous cord: Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scrollThe fame of him her swerving made not swerve.And Theseus, read, returning, and believed,And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath,The man without a crime who, last as first,Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth.Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtainedThat of his wishes should be granted three,And one he imprecated straight—"AliveMay ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the princeHad stepped into the fixed boots of the carThat give the feet a stay against the strengthOf the Henetian horses, and aroundHis body flung the rein, and urged their speedAlong the rocks and shingles of the shore,When from the gaping wave a monster flungHis obscene body in the coursers' path.These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawledWallowing about their feet, lost care of himThat reared them; and the master-chariot-poleSnapping beneath their plunges like a reed,Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast,Was yet dragged forward by the circling reinWhich either hand directed; nor they quenchedThe frenzy of their flight before each trace,Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woeful car,Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell,Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sandsOn that detested beach, was bright with bloodAnd morsels of his flesh: then fell the steedsHead foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts, Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.His people, who had witnessed all afar,Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos.But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced(Indomitable as a man foredoomed)That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,I, in a flood of glory visible,Stood o'er my dying votary and, deedBy dee, revealed, as all took place, the truth.Then Theseus lay the wofullest of men,And worthily; but ere the death-veils hidHi sface, the murdered prince full pardon breathedTo his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries,Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cakeShould tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;Lest at my fane the priests disconsolateShould dress my image with some faded poorFew crowns, made favors of, nor dare objectSuch slackness to my worshippers who turnElsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand,As they had climbed Olumpos to reportOf Artemis and nowhere found her throne—I interposed: and, this eventful night,—(While round the funeral pyre the populaceStood with fierce light on their black robes which boundEach sobbing head, while yet their hair they clippedO'er the dead body of their withered prince,And, in his palace, Theseus prostratedOn the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab'Tis bruised on, groans away the heavy grief—As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed, Sending a crowd of sparkles thro' the night,And the gay fire, elate with mastery,Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jarsOf wine, dissolving oils and frankincense,And splendid gums like gold,—my potencyConveyed the perished man to my retreatIn the thrice venerable forest here.And this white-bearded Sage who squeezes nowThe berried plant is Phoibos' son of fame,Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taughtThe doctrine of each herb and flower and root,To know their secret'st virtue and expressThe saving soul of all—who so has soothedWith lavers the torn brow and murdered cheeks,Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,And laid the strips and jagged ends of fleshEven once more, and slacked the sinew's knotOf every tortured limb—that now he liesAs if mere sleep possessed him underneathThese interwoven oaks and pines. Oh, cheer,Divine presenter of the healing rodThy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,Ply, as the Sage directs, these buds and leavesThat strew the turf around the Twain! While IIn fitting silence the event await.