The poetical works of Matthew Arnold/The Strayed Reveller
THE STRAYED REVELLER.
THE PORTICO OF CIRCE'S PALACE. EVENING.
A Youth. Circe.
THE YOUTH.
Faster, faster,
O Circe, goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train,
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
Thou standest, smiling
Down on me! thy right arm,
Leaned up against the column there,
Props thy soft cheek;
Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
I held but now.
Is it then evening
So soon? I see, the night-dews,
Clustered in thick beads, dim
The agate brooch-stones
On thy white shoulder;
The cool night-wind, too,
Blows through the portico,
Stirs thy hair, goddess,
Waves thy white robe!
CIRCE.
Whence art thou, sleeper?
THE YOUTH.
When the white dawn first
Through the rough fir-planks
Of my hut, by the chestnuts,
Up at the valley-head,
Came breaking, goddess!
I sprang up, I threw round me
My dappled fawn-skin;
Passing out, from the wet turf,
Where they lay, by the hut door,
I snatched up my vine-crown, my fir-staff,
All drenched in dew,—
Came swift down to join
The rout early gathered
In the town, round the temple,
Iacchus' white fane
On yonder hill.
Quick I passed, following
The woodcutters' cart-track
Down the dark valley. I saw
On my left, through the beeches,
Thy palace, goddess,
Smokeless, empty!
Trembling, I entered; beheld
The court all silent,
The lions sleeping,
On the altar this bowl.
I drank, goddess!
And sank down here, sleeping,
On the steps of thy portico.
CIRCE.
Foolish boy! Why tremblest thou?
Thou lovest it, then, my wine?
Wouldst more of it? See how glows,
Through the delicate, flushed marble,
The red creaming liquor,
Strewn with dark seeds!
Drink, then! I chide thee not,
Deny thee not my bowl.
Come, stretch forth thy hand, then—so!
Drink—drink again!
THE YOUTH.
Thanks, gracious one!
Ah, the sweet fumes again!
More soft, ah me!
More subtle-winding,
Than Pan's flute-music!
Faint—faint! Ah me,
Again the sweet sleep!
CIRCE.
Hist! Thou—within there!
Come forth, Ulysses!
Art tired with hunting?
While we range the woodland,
See what the day brings.
ULYSSES.
Ever new magic!
Hast thou then lured hither,
Wonderful goddess, by thy art,
The young, languid-eyed Ampelus,
Iacchus' darling,
Or some youth beloved of Pan,
Of Pan and the nymphs;
That he sits, bending downward
His white, delicate neck
To the ivy-wreathed marge
Of thy cup; the bright, glancing vine-leaves
That crown his hair,
Falling forward, mingling
With the dark ivy-plants;
His fawn-skin, half untied,
Smeared with red wine-stains? Who is he,
That he sits, overweighed
By fumes of wine and sleep,
So late, in thy portico?
What youth, goddess,—what guest
Of gods or mortals?
CIRCE.
Hist! he wakes!
I lured him not hither, Ulysses.
Nay, ask him!
THE YOUTH.
Who speaks? Ah! who comes forth
To thy side, goddess, from within?
How shall I name him,—
This spare, dark-featured,
Quick-eyed stranger?
Ah! and I see too
His sailor's bonnet,
His short coat, travel-tarnished,
With one arm bare!—
Art thou not he, whom fame
This long time rumors
The favored guest of Circe, brought by the waves?
Art thou he, stranger,—
The wise Ulysses,
Laertes' son?
ULYSSES.
I am Ulysses.
And thou too, sleeper?
Thy voice is sweet.
It may be thou hast followed
Through the islands some divine bard,
By age taught many things,—
Age, and the Muses;
And heard him delighting
The chiefs and people
In the banquet, and learned his songs,
Of gods and heroes,
Of war and arts,
And peopled cities,
Inland, or built
By the gray sea. If so, then hail!
I honor and welcome thee.
THE YOUTH.
The gods are happy.
They turn on all sides
Their shining eyes,
And see below them
The earth and men.
They see Tiresias
Sitting, staff in hand,
On the warm, grassy
Asopus bank,
His robe drawn over
His old sightless head,
Revolving inly
The doom of Thebes.
They see the centaurs
In the upper glens
Of Pelion, in the streams
Where red-berried ashes fringe
The clear-brown shallow pools,
With streaming flanks, and heads
Reared proudly, snuffing
The mountain wind.
They see the Indian
Drifting, knife in hand,
His frail boat moored to
A floating isle thick-matted
With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants,
And the dark cucumber.
He reaps and stows them,
Drifting—drifting; round him,
Round his green harvest-plot,
Flow the cool lake-waves,
The mountains ring them.
They see the Scythian
On the wide steppe, unharnessing
His wheeled house at noon.
He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal,—
Mares' milk, and bread
Baked on the embers. All around,
The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starred
With saffron and the yellow hollyhock
And flag-leaved iris-flowers.
Sitting in his cart
He makes his meal; before him, for long miles,
Alive with bright green lizards,
And the springing bustard-fowl,
The track, a straight black line,
Furrows the rich soil; here and there
Clusters of lonely mounds
Topped with rough-hewn,
Gray, rain-bleared statues, overpeer
The sunny waste.
They see the ferry
On the broad, clay-laden
Lone Chorasmian stream; thereon,
With snort and strain,
Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
To either bow
Firm-harnessed by the mane; a chief,
With shout and shaken spear,
Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern
The cowering merchants in long robes
Sit pale beside their wealth
Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops,
Of gold and ivory,
Of turquoise-earth, and amethyst,
Jasper and chalcedony,
And milk-barred onyx-stones.
The loaded boat swings groaning
In the yellow eddies;
The gods behold them.
They see the heroes
Sitting in the dark ship
On the foamless, long-heaving,
Violet sea,
At sunset nearing
The Happy Islands.
These things, Ulysses,
The wise bards also
Behold, and sing.
But oh, what labor!
O prince, what pain!
They too can see
Tiresias; but the gods,
Who gave them vision,
Added this law:
That they should bear too
His groping blindness,
His dark foreboding,
His scorned white hairs;
Bear Hera's anger
Through a life lengthened
To seven ages.
They see the centaurs
On Pelion: then they feel,
They too, the maddening wine
Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain
They feel the biting spears
Of the grim Lapithæ, and Theseus, drive,
Drive crashing through their bones; they feel,
High on a jutting rock in the red stream,
Alcmena's dreadful son
Ply his bow. Such a price
The gods exact for song:
To become what we sing.
They see the Indian
On his mountain lake; but squalls
Make their skiff reel, and worms
In the unkind spring have gnawn
Their melon-harvest to the heart. They see
The Scythian; but long frosts
Parch them in winter-time on the bare steppe,
Till they too fade like grass; they crawl
Like shadows forth in spring.
They see the merchants
On the Oxus-stream; but care
Must visit first them too, and make them pale:
Whether, through whirling sand,
A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
In the walled cities the way passes through,
Crushed them with tolls; or fever-airs,
On some great river's marge,
Mown them down, far from home.
They see the heroes
Near harbor; but they share
Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,—
Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy;
Or where the echoing oars
Of Argo first
Startled the unknown sea.
The old Silenus
Came, lolling in the sunshine,
From the dewy forest-coverts,
This way, at noon.
Sitting by me, while his fauns
Down at the water-side
Sprinkled and smoothed
His drooping garland,
He told me these things.
But I, Ulysses,
Sitting on the warm steps,
Looking over the valley,
All day long, have seen,
Without pain, without labor,
Sometimes a wild-haired mænad,
Sometimes a faun with torches,
And sometimes, for a moment,
Passing through the dark stems
Flowing-robed, the beloved,
The desired, the divine,
Beloved Iacchus.
Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars!
Ah, glimmering water,
Fitful earth-murmur,
Dreaming woods!
Ah, golden-haired, strangely smiling goddess,
And thou, proved, much-enduring,
Wave-tossed wanderer!
Who can stand still?
Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me—
The cup again!
Faster, faster,
O Circe, goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train,
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!