Poems

THESEUS AND HIPPOLYTA

TO J. G. FAIRFAX
Noon smote down on the field,
Burning on spears and helms,
Shining from Theseus' shield.
As a wave of the sea that whelms
A rock, and its crest uprears,
Through the wreck of the trampled wheat
The charge of the charioteers
Thundering broke. A sleet
Veiled light, and the air was alive,
As with hissing of snakes, as with swarms
Of the Spring by a populous hive,
As with wind, and the clamour of storms:
So hurtled the arrowy hail
Loosed from the Amazon ranks,
Smote ringing on brazen mail,
[Pg 2]
Struck fanged through the shuddering flanks
Of the stallions; and half were hurled
In the dust, and broken, and brayed
By the chariots over them whirled,
Which, eager and undismayed,
Swept ruining on to the hordes
Of the Amazonian camp,
With the lightning of terrible swords;
Till the dead were heaped, as a ramp
For the quick. But the chariots shocked
On the thicket of close-set spears;
And the long ranks reeled, and rocked,
Broke; and the charioteers
Went through them, cleaving as ploughs
Cleave earth: they were rent, and tossed
With the tumult of tortured boughs.
And the stallions, with foam embossed,
Fought, tearing each other with teeth,
In the red, blind rage of their lust,
Screaming; and writhed underneath
The wounded, trodden as must
Of the grapes trodden out in the press,
Empurpling the knees, and bare
[Pg 3]
Thighs of the men. Through the stress
Of their shoulders drove as a share,
Hippolyta. Avenging she came;
And they streamed, and they surged round her car,
The women: her face was a flame
As she rode through the tempest of war;
And they cried, made glad with the sight,
As those desiring the dawn,
When the darkness is cloven by light,
Cry for gladness: they rallied, upborne,
When she rayed as the sun through their cloud.
But she strung the bow, and she prayed
Unto Artemis, calling aloud,
As a maid might call to a maid;
And the Goddess of shining brows
Heard, as she paused from the chace
Upon Tainaros hoary with snows;
And a shadow darkened her face:
A shadow, and then a ray
Lightening, glorying, smiled,
As her thought pierced years to a day
Unborn, and an unborn child,
[Pg 4]
With the pure fount of his praise
Lifted to her, from the shrine
Rock-hewn, at the three cross-ways
In a waste of hills, as wine
Gladdening her; and she shed
A wonder, a terror, a fear,
A beauty that filled with dread,
A glory no eyes might bear
On her maid; stooped, hushed, from the height
Her thought, as a bird on the wing,
Rained down from her, swifter than light.
Hippolyta notched on the string
An arrow, and loosed it, and smote,
As he drove at her car with a jest,
Agelaus, cleaving his throat
Speechless; and smote through the breast
Polytherses; and Euenor then
Felt the teeth of the flints at his veins,
As his mares dragged him back to his men
All bloody, entangled in reins;
Then Damastor she smote: and they fled
As doves or as linnets fly
When a hawk that has towered overhead
[Pg 5]
Stoops, ravening, out of the sky
On their quires. But her arrows sighed
After them, swifter than feet:
They ran, shrieked, stumbled, and died,
Shot through with her shafts. In the wheat,
With the sunlight gilding their greaves,
Helmets, and shields, and mail,
They lay, strewn thickly as leaves
When Autumn has swung his flail.
But afar, where Thermodon rolled
The deep, swift strength of its flood
To the ocean turbidly gold,
Drave Theseus, eager for blood;
And as herds stampede in affright
At the reek of the beast in the air
Precipitately through the night
When a lion forth comes from his lair,
So the women before him fled
In a rout, headlong, overborne,
For he drave as a beast all red,
With the blood of the prey he had torn,
Circled them round; they were rent,
Whirled under him, flung from him, far
[Pg 6]
Seaward, and lost; until spent,
Heaped in a mound by her car
Broken, and dying, and dead,
Hippolyta saw. And she fled.
Theseus followed. Afar,
Over the storm of the spears,
He had seen her face as a star
Shine; and no tremble of tears
Softened her terrible eyes,
Cruel they shone there, and blue
With the beauty of windless skies.
But her bowstring ever she drew,
Loosening arrows that sang
Through the air exulting as wind;
And the clamour of battle rang
Most by her car, while behind
The fierce, wild women upheld
Their queen, and their anger burned
In staring eyeballs. She felled
A man as her car overturned,
Sped onward, her swift white feet
The dead and the dying spurned
[Pg 7]