This is a collection of poems by Louise Imogen Guiney. The collection is split into four parts. After the titular poem, which is its own part, this volume contains ten narrative poems concerning some well-known and some lesser known legends. The third part of the volume is one of lyrics, and the fourth contains a number of sonnets.
By : Louise Imogen Guiney (1861 - 1920)
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High on the lone and wave-scarred porphyry,
The promontoried porch of Attica,
Past evenfall, sat he whose reverend hair
Down-glittered with the breaker’s volleying foam
Visioned before him in the level dark:
Ægeus, of wronged Pandion heir, and king.
And round about his knees, and at his feet,
In saffrons and sad greens alone bedight,
Sat, clustered in dim wayward sidelong groups
Sheer to the ocean’s edge, those liegemen fond
Who with him wished and wept. As thro’ the hours
Of ebbing autumn, on a northward hill,
Lies summer’s russet ruined panoply,
Knotted and heaped by the fantastic winds
Hap-hazard, while the first adventuring snow
Globes itself on the summit; so they clung
Secure among the rangèd crevices,
Month after month, and wakeful night on night
Vigilant; ever neighbored and o’ertopped
With that white presence, and the boding sky.
And Ægeus prayed: ‘O give me back but him!
My desert palm, my moorland mid-day fount,
My leopard-foot, in equal tameless grace
Swaying suavely down cool garden-paths
Or into battle’s maw: my lad of Athens!
With bronze and tangly curls a-toss, to show
Infancy’s golden-silken underglow;
The glad eye dusking blue, as is the sea
Ere fiery sunset tricks it; and the lashes
In one close sombre file against his cheek,
Enphalanxed in perpetual trail and droop,
Wherethro’ gleams laughter as thro’ sorrow’s pale.
And anger’s self doth tremble maidenly;
The massy throat; the nostril mobile, smooth;
The breast full-orbed with arduous large pride,
As I so oft have marked, when from the chase,
The witness-dropping knife swung with the bow,
Heading the burdened company, he came,
Aye vermeil with the wholesome wind, outwrestler
Of storms and perils all. High-mettled Theseus!
Keystone of greatness, bond of expectation,
Stay of this realm! in his strong-sinewed beauty
Dear unto men as Tanais bright-sanded
Whose flood harmonious lapses on the ear,
And makes for hearts yoke-wearied, thither roaming,
Thrice feastful holiday. Ah, righteous gods!
Forasmuch as I love him and await him,
Who from my youth have been your servitor,
Yield my old age its boon of vindication:
Haven the happy ship here, ere I die.’...
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