H. D.

Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow-ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers, clear, with delicate shell- like leaf enclosing frozen lily-leaf, camellia texture, colder than a rose; wind-flower that keeps the breath of the north-wind— these and none other; intimate thoughts and kind reach out to share the treasure of my mind, intimate hands and dear drawn garden-ward and sea-ward all the sheer rapture that I would take to mould a clear and frigid statue; rare, of pure texture, beautiful space and line, marble to grace your inaccessible shrine.

I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest— then you retrace your steps, or find the same slope on the other side, precipitate. I have had enough— border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies, herbs, sweet-cress. O for some sharp swish of a branch— there is no scent of resin in this place, no taste of bark, of coarse weeds, aromatic, astringent— only border on border of scented pinks. Have you seen fruit under cover that wanted light— pears wadded in cloth, protected from the frost, melons, almost ripe, smothered in straw? Why not let the pears cling to the empty branch? All your coaxing will only make a bitter fruit— let them cling, ripen of themselves, test their own worth, nipped, shrivelled by the frost, to fall at last but fair with a russet coat. Or the melon— let it bleach yellow in the winter light, even tart to the taste— it is better to taste of frost— the exquisite frost— than of wadding and of dead grass. For this beauty, beauty without strength, chokes out life. I want wind to break, scatter these pink-stalks, snap off their spiced heads, fling them about with dead leaves— spread the paths with twigs, limbs broken off, trail great pine branches, hurled from some far wood right across the melon-patch, break pear and quince— leave half-trees, torn, twisted but showing the fight was valiant. O to blot out this garden to forget, to find a new beauty in some terrible wind-tortured place.

Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, sparse of leaf, more precious than a wet rose single on a stem— you are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?

Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain, treasure spilled near the shrub-pines to bleach on the boulders: your stalk has caught root among wet pebbles and drift flung by the sea and grated shells and split conch-shells. Beautiful, wide-spread, fire upon leaf, what meadow yields so fragrant a leaf as your bright leaf?

I Weed, moss-weed, root tangled in sand, sea-iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken, and you print a shadow like a thin twig. Fortunate one, scented and stinging, rigid myrrh-bud, camphor-flower, sweet and salt—you are wind in our nostrils. II Do the murex-fishers drench you as they pass? Do your roots drag up colour from the sand? Have they slipped gold under you— rivets of gold? Band of iris-flowers above the waves, you are painted blue, painted like a fresh prow stained among the salt weeds.

Crash on crash of the sea, straining to wreck men; sea-boards, continents, raging against the world, furious, stay at last, for against your fury and your mad fight, the line of heroes stands, godlike: Akroneos, Oknolos, Elatreus, helm-of-boat, loosener-of-helm, dweller-by-sea, Nauteus, sea-man, Prumneos, stern-of-ship, Agchilalos, sea-girt, Elatreus, oar-shaft: lover-of-the-sea, lover-of-the-sea-ebb, lover-of-the-swift-sea, Ponteus, Proreus, Oöos: Anabesneos, who breaks to anger as a wave to froth: Amphiolos, one caught between wave-shock and wave-shock: Eurualos, board sea-wrack, like Ares, man’s death, and Naubolidos, best in shape, of all first in size: Phaekous, sea’s thunderbolt— ah, crash on crash of great names— man-tamer, man’s-help, perfect Laodamos: and last the sons of great Alkinöos, Laodamos, Halios, and god-like Clytomeos. Of all nations, of all cities, of all continents, she is favoured above the rest, for she gives men as great as the sea, to battle against the elements and evil: greater even than the sea, they live beyond wrack and death of cities, and each god-like name spoken is as a shrine in a godless place. But to name you, we, reverent, are breathless, weak with pain and old loss, and exile and despair— our hearts break but to speak your name, Oknaleos— and may we but call you in the feverish wrack of our storm-strewn beach, Eretmeos, our hurt is quiet and our hearts tamed, as the sea may yet be tamed, and we vow to float great ships, named for each hero, and oar-blades, cut of mountain-trees as such men might have shaped: Eretmeos, and the sea is swept, baffled by the lordly shape, Akroneos has pines for his ship’s keel; to love, to mate the sea? Ah there is Ponteos, the very deep roar, hailing you dear— they clamour to Ponteos, and to Proëos leap, swift to kiss, to curl, to creep, lover to mistress. What wave, what love, what foam, For Oöos who moves swift as the sea? Ah stay, my heart, the weight of lovers, of loneliness drowns me, alas that their very names so press to break my heart with heart-sick weariness, what would they be, the very gods, rearing their mighty length beside the unharvested sea?

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you—banded one?

She is afraid, too. So she needs this protection. She has tried to conceal her identity with mockery, "I am a woman of pleasure." She knows what the Greeks think of her, and here is Greece-incarnate, the hero-god; true, he is shipwrecked; nevertheless, though wounded, he carries with him the threat of autocracy. She has lost caste. He is still Achilles. Or who is she? She says that Helen upon the ramparts was a phantom. Then, what is this Helen? Are they both ghosts? And if she is convinced of this, why does she entreat the flame that Achilles kindled, "let me love him, as Thetis, his mother"? Is she afraid of losing even her phantom integrity? And what of it? Thetis — Isis — Aphrodite — it was not her fault. O—no—but through eternity, she will be blamed for this and she feels it coming. She will blacken her face like the prophetic femme noire of antiquity. But it does not work. Achilles is here to impeach her. Why? We must blame someone. Hecate—a witch —a vulture, and finally, as if he had run out of common invective, he taunts her — a hieroglyph . This is almost funny, she must stop him, he is after all, the son of the sea-goddess. She has named Isis, the Egyptian Aphrodite, the primal cause of all the madness. But another, born-of-the-sea, is nearer, his own mother. Again, she thinks of her and reminds Achilles of his divine origin, "O child of Thetis." This is quite enough. Can you throttle a phantom? He tries. The end is inevitable. How could I hide my eyes? how could I veil my face? with ash or charcoal from the embers? I drew out a blackened stick, but he snatched it, he flung it back, "what sort of enchantment is this? what art will you wield with a fagot? are you Hecate? are you a witch? a vulture, a hieroglyph, the sign or the name of a goddess? what sort of goddess is this? where are we? who are you? where is this desolate coast? who am I?    am I a ghost?" "you are living, O child of Thetis, as you never lived before," then he caught at my wrist, "Helena, cursed of Greece, I have seen you upon the ramparts, no art is beneath your power, you stole the chosen, the flower of all-time, of all-history, my children, my legions; for you were the ships burnt, O cursèd, O envious Isis, you — you — a vulture, a hieroglyph"; "Zeus be my witness," I said, "it was he, Amen dreamed of all this phantasmagoria of Troy, it was dream and a phantasy"; O Thetis,O sea-mother, I prayed, as he clutched my throat with his fingers' remorseless steel, let me go out,let me forget, let me be lost. . . . . . . O Thetis,O sea-mother, I prayed under his cloak, let me remember,let me remember, forever,this Star in the night.

Helen achieves the difficult task of translating a symbol in time, into timeless-time or hieroglyph or ancient Egyptian time. She knows the script, she says, but we judge that this is intuitive or emotional knowledge, rather than intellectual. In any case, a night-bird swooped toward them, in their first encounter on the beach. To Achilles, lately arrived from Troy and the carnage of battle, this is a "carrion creature," but Helen would banish these memories. She says she is "instructed," she is enchanted, rather. For from the depth of her racial inheritance, she invokes (as the perceptive visitor to Egypt must always do) the symbol or the "letter" that represents or recalls the protective mother-goddess. This is no death-symbol but a life-symbol, it is Isis or her Greek counterpart, Thetis, the mother of Achilles. We huddled over the fire, was there ever such a brazier? a night-bird hooted past, he started, "a curious flight, a carrion creature — what—" (dear God, let him forget); I said, "there is mystery in this place, I am instructed, I know the script, the shape of this bird is a letter, they call it the hieroglyph; strive not, it is dedicate to the goddess here, she is Isis"; "Isis," he said, "or Thetis," I said, recalling, remembering, invoking his sea-mother; flame, I prayed,flame forget, forgive and forget the other, let my heart be filled with peace, let me love him,as Thetis,his mother, for I knew him, I saw in his eyes the sea-enchantment, but he knew not yet, Helen of Sparta, knew not Helen of Troy, knew not Helena, hated of Greece.

Whirl up, sea— whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us, cover us with your pools of fir.