Poems (Millay)/Ode to Silence
Ode to Silence
Aye, but she?Your other sister and my other soul,Grave Silence, lovelierThan the three loveliest maidens, what of her?Clio, not you,Not you, Calliope,Nor all your wanton line,Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort meFor Silence once departed,For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,Whom evermore I follow wistfully,Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;Thalia, not you,Not you, Melpomene,Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore,I seek in this great hall,But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.I seek her from afar.I come from temples where her altars are,From groves that bear her name,Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,And cymbals struck on high and $trident faces Obstreperous in her praiseThey neither love nor know,A goddess of gone days,Departed long ago,Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanesOf her old sanctuary,A deity obscure and legendary,Of whom there now remains,For sages to decipher and priests to garble,Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble,Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,And the inarticulate snow,Leaving at last of her least signs and tracesNone whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places.
"She will love well," I said,"If love be of that heart inhabiter,The flowers of the dead;The red anemone that with no soundMoves in the wind, and from another woundThat sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,That blossoms underground,And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.And will not Silence know In the black shade of what obsidian steepStiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?(Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home,Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,Reluctant even as she,Undone Persephone,And even as she set out again to growIn twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam).She will love well," I said,"The flowers of the dead;Where dark Persephone the winter round,Uncomforted for home, uncomforted,Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily,With sullen pupils focussed on a dream,Stares on the stagnant streamThat moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell,There, there will she be found,She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in a swound."
"I long for Silence as they long for breathWhose helpless nostrils drink the bitter sea;What thing can beSo stout, what so redoubtable, in DeathWhat fury, what considerable rage, if only she, Upon whose icy breast,Unquestioned, uncaressed,One time I lay,And whom always I lack,Even to this day,Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away,If only she therewith be given me back?"
I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,And in among the bloodless everywhereI sought her, but the air,Breathed many times and spent,Was fretful with a whispering discontent,And questioning me, importuning me to tellSome slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more,Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I went.I paused at every grievous door,And harked a moment, holding up my hand,—and for a spaceA hush was on them, while they watched my face;And then they fell a-whispering as before;Se that I smiled at them and left them, seeing she was not there. I sought her, too,Among the upper gods, although I knewShe was not like to be where feasting is,Nor near to Heaven's lord,Being a thing abhorredAnd shunned of him, although a child of his,(Not yours, not yours; to you she owes not breath,Mother of Song, being sown of Zeus upon a dream of Death).Fearing to pass unvisited some placeAnd later learn, too late, how all the while,With her still face,She had been standing there and seen me pass, without a smile,I sought her even to the sagging board whereatThe stout immortals sat;But such a laughter shook the mighty hallNo one could hear me say:Had she been seen upon the Hill that day?And no one knew at allHow long I stood or when at last I sighed and went away.
There is a garden lying in a lullBetween the mountains and the mountainous sea,I know not where, but which a dream diurnalPaints on my lids a moment till the hull Be lifted from the kernelAnd Slumber fed to me.Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene,Though it would seem a ruined place and afterYour lichenous heart, being fullOf broken columns, caryatidesThrown to the earth and fallen forward on their jointless knees,And urns funereal altered into dustMinuter than the ashes of the dead,And Psyche's lamp out of the earth up-thrust,Dripping itself in marble wax on what was once the bedOf Love, and his young body asleep, but now is dust instead.
There twists the bitter-sweet, the white wisteriaFastens its fingers in the strangling wall,And the wide crannies quicken with bright weeds;There dumbly like a worm all day the §till white orchid feeds;But never an echo of your daughters' laughterIs there, nor any sign of you at allSwells fungous from the rotten bough, grey mother of Pieria! Only her shadow once upon a stoneI saw,—and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone.
I tell you you have done her body an ill,You chatterers, you noisy crew!She is not anywhere!I sought her in deep Hell;And through the world as well;I thought of Heaven and I sought her there;Above nor underground s Silence to be found,That was the very warp and woof of you,Lovely before your songs began and after they were through!Oh, say if on this hillSomewhere your sister's body lies in death,So I may follow there, and make a wreathOf my locked hands, that on her quiet breastShall lie till age has withered them!
(Ah, sweetly from the restI seeTurn and consider meCompassionate Euterpe!)"There is a gate beyond the gate of Death,Beyond the gate of everlasting Life, Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell," she saith,"Whereon but to believe is horror!Whereon to meditate engenderethEven in deathless spirits such as IA tumult in the breath,A chilling of the inexhaustible bloodEven in my veins that never will be dry,And in the austere, divine monotonyThat is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.
This is her province whom you lack and seek;And seek her not elsewhere.Hell is a thoroughfareFor pilgrims,—Herakles,And he that loved Euridice too well,Have walked therein; and many more than these;And witnessed the desire and the despairOf souls that passed reluctantly and sicken for the air;You, too, have entered Hell,And issued thence; but thence whereof I speakNone has returned;—for thither fury bringsOnly the driven ghosts of them that flee before all things.Oblivion is the name of this abode: and she is there." Oh, radiant Song! Oh, gracious Memory!Be long upon this heightI shall not climb again!I know the way you mean,—the little night,And the long empty day,—never to seeAgain the angry light,Or hear the hungry noises cry my brain!
Ah, but she,Your other sister and my other soul,She shall again be mine;And I shall drink her from a silver bowl,A chilly thin green wine,Not bitter to the taste,Not sweet,Not of your press, oh, restless, clamorous nine,—To foam beneath the frantic hoofs of mirth—But savouring faintly of the acid earth,And trod by pensive feetFrom perfect clusters ripened without hasteOut of the urgent heatIn some clear glimmering vaulted twilight under the odorous vine.
Lift up your lyres! Sing on!But as for me, I seek your sister whither she is gone.