Andromeda, and Other Poems. Charles Kingsley

her child to the last, heart-crushed; and the warmth of her weeping

      Fell on the breast of the maid, as her woe broke forth into wailing.

         ‘Daughter! my daughter! forgive me!  Oh curse not the murderess!  Curse not!

      How have I sinned, but in love?  Do the gods grudge glory to mothers?

      Loving I bore thee in vain in the fate-cursed bride-bed of Cepheus,

      Loving I fed thee and tended, and loving rejoiced in thy beauty,

      Blessing thy limbs as I bathed them, and blessing thy locks as I combed them;

      Decking thee, ripening to woman, I blest thee: yet blessing I slew thee!

      How have I sinned, but in love?  Oh swear to me, swear to thy mother,

      Never to haunt me with curse, as I go to the grave in my sorrow,

      Childless and lone: may the gods never send me another, to slay it!

      See, I embrace thy knees—soft knees, where no babe will be fondled—

      Swear to me never to curse me, the hapless one, not in the death-pang.’

         Weeping she clung to the knees of the maid; and the maid low answered—

      ‘Curse thee!  Not in the death-pang!’  The heart of the lady was lightened.

      Slowly she went by the ledge; and the maid was alone in the darkness.

         Watching the pulse of the oars die down, as her own died with them,

      Tearless, dumb with amaze she stood, as a storm-stunned nestling

      Fallen from bough or from eave lies dumb, which the home-going herdsman

      Fancies a stone, till he catches the light of its terrified eyeball.

      So through the long long hours the maid stood helpless and hopeless,

      Wide-eyed, downward gazing in vain at the black blank darkness.

      Feebly at last she began, while wild thoughts bubbled within her—

      ‘Guiltless I am: why thus, then?  Are gods more ruthless than mortals?

      Have they no mercy for youth? no love for the souls who have loved them?

      Even as I loved thee, dread sea, as I played by thy margin,

      Blessing thy wave as it cooled me, thy wind as it breathed on my forehead,

      Bowing my head to thy tempest, and opening my heart to thy children,

      Silvery fish, wreathed shell, and the strange lithe things of the water,

      Tenderly casting them back, as they gasped on the beach in the sunshine,

      Home to their mother—in vain! for mine sits childless in anguish!

      O false sea! false sea!  I dreamed what I dreamed of thy goodness;

      Dreamed of a smile in thy gleam, of a laugh in the plash of thy ripple:

      False and devouring thou art, and the great world dark and despiteful.’

         Awed by her own rash words she was still: and her eyes to the seaward

      Looked for an answer of wrath: far off, in the heart of the darkness,

      Blight white mists rose slowly; beneath them the wandering ocean

      Glimmered and glowed to the deepest abyss; and the knees of the maiden

      Trembled and sunk in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the midnight,

      Rose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mystical sea-maids.

      Onward toward her they came, and her heart beat loud at their coming,

      Watching the bliss of the gods, as they wakened the cliffs with their laughter.

         Onward they came in their joy, and before them the roll of the surges

      Sank, as the breeze sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked marble,

      Awed; and the crags of the cliff, and the pines of the mountain were silent.

      Onward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea-nymphs,

      Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving; and rainbows

      Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting

      Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus,

      Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean.

         Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which they scattered,

      Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the Tritons

      Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in worship

      Hovered the terns, and the seagulls swept past them on silvery pinions

      Echoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins

      Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore them

      Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the maidens,

      Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming,

      Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of the mermen.

         Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness,

      Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others,

      Pitiful, floated in silence apart; in their bosoms the sea-boys,

      Slain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus;

      Hapless, whom never again on strand or on quay shall their mothers

      Welcome with garlands and vows to the temple, but wearily pining

      Gaze over island and bay for the sails of the sunken; they heedless

      Sleep in soft bosoms for ever, and dream of the surge and the sea-maids.

         Onward they passed in their joy; on their brows neither sorrow nor anger;

      Self-sufficing, as gods, never heeding the woe of the maiden.

      She would have shrieked for their mercy: but shame made her dumb; and their eyeballs

      Stared on her careless and still, like the eyes in the house of the idols.

      Seeing they saw not, and passed, like a dream, on the murmuring ripple.

         Stunned by the wonder she gazed, wide-eyed, as the glory departed.

      ‘O fair shapes! far fairer than I!  Too fair to be ruthless!

      Gladden mine eyes once more with your splendour, unlike to my fancies;

      You, then, smiled in the sea-gleam, and laughed in the plash of the ripple.

      Awful I deemed you and formless; inhuman, monstrous as idols;

      Lo, when ye came, ye were women, more loving and lovelier, only;

      Like in all else; and I blest you: why blest ye not me for my worship?

      Had you no mercy for me, thus guiltless?  Ye pitied the sea-boys:

      Why not me, then, more hapless by far?  Does your sight and your knowledge

      End with the marge of the waves?  Is the world which ye dwell in not our world?’

         Over the mountain aloft ran a rush and a roll and a roaring;

      Downward the breeze came indignant, and leapt with a howl to the water,

      Roaring in cranny and crag, till the pillars and clefts of the basalt

      Rang like a god-swept lyre, and her brain grew mad with the noises;

      Crashing and lapping of waters, and sighing and tossing of weed-beds,

      Gurgle and whisper and hiss of the foam,