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Title: Aristeas Relates His Youth
Author: William Rose Benet [
More Titles by Benet]
(Who, in his age, was reported a magician throughout all Greece, as it was said that his soul could leave his body at will.)
Early rose was the light
As I sought the portico
Whence her wings had fluttered in flight
And with surge and flow
Had risen to soar, and go
Out, out over the sea,
Dwindling white and soft and slow
To a memory.
Oh, grief of all years to be!
Most miserable of men!
My throat ached with my tears,
As a sword driven through my ears
Was my anguish then.
Dark were the rooms where they lay
Who loved in the flesh
(Diana's disciples they said!)
In that lupanar of the dead.
Sweet was the flesh they loved,
Graceful the limbs that moved,
Wild the passion that they
Desired afresh
In the night. Were they not of the world,
Of lust and toil and war?
And I--I too?
Yea--till that music swirled
About me, and I knew
I was visited of a star!
A star it was grew and grew
(As hot in the dark I lay,
Panting, after the feast,)
Glorious out of the east,
And a face that made my soul
A slowly uncrumpling scroll,
It glimmered so near and fey!
Her voice rippled like water
In the light gold-green
Of some mid-noon ravine.
She stooped, the moon's daughter,
With her hand underneath my head
And her lips on the lips of the dead.
I arose from my rumpled bed.
A waterfall sliding green
In a silver-mosaicked screen
We two trod under;
Then I turned where her light touch led,
Trembling but unafraid.
Across some Elysian sod,
Winged of heel, I floated--a god!--
Down and into a moon-filled glade,
A glade of wonder....
But the east grew steadily bright,
A glaring sea of light.
I throbbed to drums of dread.
And my eyes still held her flight
When she broke that dream with one kiss
Of agonizing bliss,
Stood in streaming flame by my bed,
Gestured, and fled.
Between the pillars I saw,
Beyond the pillars I heard
Wings of no mortal bird
Flare and withdraw.
And they who had feasted and passioned
Slept, finding light no bar,
Slept in their bodies' ease.
But under those rustling seas
That lapped at the water-stair
I ached to plunge my despair
And my heart, that some grim God fashioned
To be visited of a star!
[The end]
William Rose Benet's poem: Aristeas Relates His Youth
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