Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE LAST OF HELEN, by GORDON BOTTOMLEY Poet's Biography First Line: Spring. A hid land of sodden sickly sleep Last Line: Her heart that is both present and forgotten. Subject(s): Helen Of Troy; Mythology - Classical | ||||||||
SPRING. A hid land of sodden sickly sleep, Torpor, exhaustion, breathless heaviness, Closed to the world by mouse-soft mist and stillness That made earth's freshness into a shut maze Subtracted from the earth like a veiled chamber Where ancient queens did terrible things by twilight; And, if at some chance sunset's passionate reach (As of shorn space that would regain its own) Through one tired sinking in the thunder-haze Slipped an elation of suffused light, Nought came of it -- the mist closed afterward. The rain-sunk furrows of neglected fallows Seemed ridgy with long, shallow-buried limbs; The mildewed straw of past, ungarnered crops Was combed by lean rain-fingers into manes Tumbled and lying over the marshy corn-lands, While the peaked self-sown wheat blaked up between; The rivers had no banks, but washed across From holm to toft as though on flat grass poured. A mill-pond shrank in mallows and branchy cresses, Crusted with crepitant scum worn in one place To oil-green night where single bubbles broke Hinting an old gross fat hoar purblind pike Waiting to feel a minnow flick past above him; The empty race was lined with dripping fungus And fathomed by evening-primrose lights deep-seeded; Though all was windless, yet the small millorchard Was still more void and ignorant of breath, So that dead leaves, being stirred by draggled flies, Spun on the branches where corroded blossom Of apple and pear and young wan leaves curled up; The unsought former fruit lay nibbled and rusty About the boles, spent plums were lifting pulp, The old high grass rustled like delicate bones As the hushed rabbits hunched unhurried through it; Flowers white in the thunder-light chocked the garden, Erect as though for warm grey-veiling rain, While thrushes ran like rats among the larkspurs, Stopping to listen for the worms beneath (Worms make some oozing noise that birds can hear): A purposeless wayfarer sped indoors The moist warm silence to forget and hide from. Because the moon was nearer than the sun The moon-days were the paler, and thereafter Limpid and lucent seemed the equal night. Then, when weak suns drew up the mist no more It felt to part in unknown wind o'erhead, Till pools saw in an aged, wrinkled sky Troubled and hoary stars come out rheum-filmed, Startling one life with ages of decay. This was nigh Lacedaemon in old days, When Helen was sole Queen in Lacedaemon; Though earth forgot its name was Lacedaemon. It all began when Menelaos died. Do you remember Troy? Ay, the old tale Of how the gaunt Laconian ships slid down; Of all the godlikeness man's earth could know; Of the shrieky night the wooden mare unbellied, When a piled town was litten for a candle To shew one man his way to bed again. Well, then there waxed blithe days, for Menelaos Loved ever more the Queen of terrible days Who made him be the master and so famous; Until he grew most grateful for her sin That brought him in the end the nations' envy Of fame and Helen, and dread and Helen, and Helen. Yea, he would laugh "My brother Agamemnon Left his tall wife at home and fought for mine; Yet his was none the better for home-biding, While he was somewhat worse on't in the end. When Paris died I thought to touch my own, Love having passed I was the most remaining; Men would have deemed there was no more to fight for, But Helen knew 'twas best to fight for her." Then he would ask her how those others kissed. And Helen? 'Twas ever the strongest Helen loved: Paris who mustered all the earth for her; Deiphobus because his captaining Could feed the woman's joy of deep witholding; Then Menelaos who undid all this, Sweetly despising as he proudly watched her Nestle contentedly and feel so safe With that last Troy-light ever in her face. So that when Menelaos came to die He set her up as his incarnate rule To be his inmost regent in her queendom, Knowing that to affirm her on his throne Would be to make her his rare monument, Perpetuation and continuous life, Because each thought of her would keep his deeds Topmost and make her but a shape of him To express his height by her renown for ever And hold her his for ever and for ever: Wherefore he went with the grave effortless cry "This is the eternal Helen in her halls." 'Twas then she grew sole Queen in Lacedaemon And swayed men by her quiet longing ways That moved elusive thoughts outside their minds, As when you tread unknown glebe-paths at nightfall And hear the pheasants withdrawing through the corn. I speak as if I'd seen her? How is that strange? Be told I've seen her many and many's the time. What was the like of her? How should I say it? I never wondered if she was beautiful. A memory and a desire made her face, With satisfied sleepy pity that forgot you Even as she looked in hopeless, clear remoteness: She could well make you know her choice and meaning The reaching way she lifted up to meet you So that she seemed to give herself to you, Yet in the end the whole was still to give And her inscrutability bewildered The possibilities of mortality. And so she was sole Queen in Lacedaemon And huddled dumbly in contemptuous ease, Longing for all the old unhappy days. It was so good being fought for when the fight Heaved this way and that like her own heart and mind: It was so good being mastered three times over, And now she was outside all mastery And knew not what to live for, so estranged. Old pain and dread, mourning and eagerness, Wistful terrible anticipations, Shrinking and shamefast forwardness, new kindling, Ever had meant unheard-of luminous growth; But stale past wisdom made her soul stand still -- The thing learnt matters not, only the learning. Do you remember how young folk together Will strive in hardship into the longest night, Eager and earnest in unnoticed happiness Because they are together, the world shut out, Glad in their work, poignantly sensitive By most sharp sympathy of passionate effort, Lit by the comfort of joint loneliness? Do not the creeping years soften the strife Yet keep it vivid by thought's cherishing, Withdraw the hardship into dear romance That happened in a place of clear remoteness, An inner intimate glow of mellow rareness; So that they are desired and needed still Because one feels the fellowship again, And the fair comrades with their hands on yours, And ever and ever the joy of being together? Do you remember? Helen remembered too, And ached for fights to watch and deaths to weep. But still the antique customary awe Showed the Laconians their twilight Queen In the brave, sinking light of all she stood for; Till, as she made one half-unheeded progress Down Lacedaemon street, she heard a moan "Is that the lass of Troy" and turned and saw A lean brown shipman weeping to distortion. Then Helen knew she must have grown quite old. Her pain was such as draws the nipples inward And blurs the breasts to girlish hollowness; So that she watched the land with eyes intolerant, Turned home and shut her palace-doors for ever, Yea, shut her harbours and her mountain passes To hide herself from knowledge and from change. No one again saw her once dangerous face Under the black perpetual veil that clouded Her body to dim hints of distant things When she appeared among the indifferent wrack That kept a moonlight court with her and windled In chambers perfumed by too much old incense (Spent kinds no man remembered how to make), Or paced her gardens of the ravelled blooms And grey old peacocks whose moth-dusty tails Tarnished and dimmed as though beneath her breath. Nay, not a body-woman ever saw her: But when she loosed her heavy hair for combing One Summer bedtime in an empty chamber, A gardener waiting for a kitchen-girl Among the rose-espaliers far below Looked at her casement as a night-breeze passed And blew spread tresses up among low rafters, Revealing a spare something which had been The loneliest discomfort men should know -- Though all great beauty must be very lonely, Being fruitful of uneasiness to men With something equal to it in their minds: But while the gardener looked the kitchen-girl Kissed him, and he forgot to look again. Ever she was the goddess of all death And exile and high grief, and now was these. What could her thoughts be but new-visioned thoughts Of Paris lost, Deiphobus betrayed, And Menelaos tricked beginning and end, All uselessly because she made their strength, Their beauty, joy, and agony feed her life That now she could not use without their worship? Yea, and of these men wondered which she needed When, passing some walled pleasance ere the dawn, They heard her voice, the last of their long greatness. "Love, ere the ending I am cold. Would I had given all I sold; For my desires are satisfied, I know no pleasure to abide, My world is mine and used and grey -- There is nought left but going away. I wish I might have loved you more, To let you give me all your store; I wish I might have loved like you, Deep-quickened to remembering woe. I am not sorry for my weal -- Ah, come to me and make me feel. There is nought left but going away. "I brood on you and cannot pray -- If I could clasp you back to me I might live fully all I see; Surely I should not grow so old Nor watch my endless lapsed play told Unpassionedly. Love, I am cold. I long to hear none bids me stay; There is nought left but going away." One day, in Spring, a woman said to me "Surely I know that women and men have souls, Because I have once watched a man's soul die: But until then I never had believed it." Well, and this Helen here so went away, Leaving her body to do its aimless errand: I know not any mark of when that ceased. The sun's place changes slowly in the heavens, So that the holies reared to hold the dawn On the god's day three thousand years ago Lag cold and dark -- the light is gone from them: And Helen's still aglow her first fair way, But we can read even less than all her lovers Her heart that is both present and forgotten. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BOOK OF THE DEAD MAN (#11): 1. ABOUT THE DEAD MAN AND MEDUSA by MARVIN BELL THE BOOK OF THE DEAD MAN (#11): 2. 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