At The Fall Of An Age
(The story of Achilles rising from the dead for love of Helen
is well enough known. That of Polyxo's vengeance may be less
familiar; it can be found in Pausanias' "Description of Greece,"
explaining the Rhodian worship of Helen as Dendritis, the treegoddess.)
The scene is the fore-court of a noble dwelling on the island of
Rhodes. Portico of the house, with steps of heavy stone and
painted wooden columns, but all worn and old. Black pine-forest
on the hill behind. One great pine stands to the left of the steps,
near the house-wall; it is old, with contorted boughs, one of
which overhangs the steps. The time is nearly twenty years after
the fall of Troy.
Enter a shepherd and his little son, the shepherd leading a reluctant
lamb by a noosed thong. They come from the right
foreground, and go toward the left.
THE SHEPHERD The gods get hungry like you and me, so it has to die.
THE BOY But you called her mine; you promised that I might
rear her. Oh father.
THE SHEPHERD I can't help that. You have a shepherd's eye and
you chose the perfect one. We eat the runts and the lame,
the gods want perfection; the run of the season, that is
neither poor nor perfect, is for wool and breeding. Choose again.
THE BOY Only to lose again.
A man comes in running, from the left.
THE SHEPHERD Hey, Fisherman?
THE FISHERMAN (breathless) You had better fetch in your flock,
and tell cowboy. Pirates I think.
THE SHEPHERD What, what, what?
THE FISHERMAN Ohey, the house! Who is at the door? A ship
has landed.
THE PORTER Who's there? A ship?
THE FISHERMAN Armed men coming ashore from a black ship.
I left Calcho watching.
The porter turns in the doorway. Shouting is heard from
'within the house. The shepherd and boy scurry away out of
sight, tugging the lamb.
THE PORTER What kind of a ship?
THE FISHERMAN (breathless) Akh. Akh. The kind that people sail in.
A few men with spears or pikes begin to come down between
the columns; one is adjusting a leather helmet, another struggles
clumsily with his shield.
Calcho comes in from the left. He is a fisherman too, and carries
the trident fish-spear of his trade.
THE FIRST FISHERMAN Oh, here is Calcho. Didn't they catch you?
THE PORTER Where are they, Calcho? Raiding the pasture?
Speak, man.
CALCHO They are coming quietly up the path.
The spearmen begin to form across the courtyard, at the foot
of the steps. The first fisherman edges around behind them.
THE PORTER What? Armed men? (turning) My lady . . .
He moves to the side, to stand by one of the columns. Polyxo,
the lady of the house, comes to the head of the steps, and
speaks across the spearheads below her.
POLYXO Tell me what you have seen, Calcho.
CALCHO We dare not launch; the west is too full of wind; we
drop our lines from the rock. I heard oars groaning;
That long black ship glided below us like a dream and came in
and landed. These are some great lord's men;
I watched when they leaped the strake. They have fierce obedient
faces; their life is outside them; they would do anything
Without winking. As for the woman with them . . .
POLYXO A woman?
CALCHO For whom they laid the plank to the strand;
I watched and her beauty was like the thoughts of God, burning
and calm.
POLYXO We knew one like that:
Gold and fire and ivory; King Menelaus his adulterous wife: that
Helen, for whose lawless luxury
Ten thousand died; the lord of my love and of this island among
them . . . for a wanton. If this were that fountain
Of death! We've prayed for it; did the men speak like Spartans?
I dream too much.
CALCHO Not a word.
He looks behind him, and joins the defenders of the house,
holding his trident as they hold their pikes. The strangers
come in, masked identically, moving like one machine. The
woman with them might be either their captive or their
queen; a fold of her cloak is drawn over her face.
POLYXO Who are you, strangers? It is peace I think?
The woman drops her cloak from her face and head; the hair
is golden and the face ivory. An exclamation like a sigh of
wonder is heard among Polyxo's people.
HELEN Peace and love, dear.
POLYXO (shuddering) Ah. Yes. Your face, Helen,
Has been much in my dreams. . . . My eyes are too old to see
only the beauty among the tricks of the world.
What are these warriors?
HELEN I’ll tell you that in the house, when you
are kind. Do you remember, Polyxo,
A day in spring, you and I were laughing together beside the
flooded Eurotas? I garlanded
Your dear dark head with flowers before we bathed together,
parting the green reeds of the bank.
Our skies were clear and no grief had come; you were my guest then.
Now I am yours.
The household spearmen have moved to right and left of the
steps at the word "peace" so that the space between the two
women is cleared; Polyxo standing at the head of the steps and
Helen in front of her guard.
POLYXO Grief has come; and that day is dead. ... A man was
here last year from Laconia
Passing to Egypt, who boasted that neither time nor grief nor
weariness touched Helen's face. We judged him A liar.
HELEN You find me much changed, Polyxo.
POLYXO Changed? A woman
who has been a wild cause of misery and death
Will surely be pale with repentance; a woman famously unfaithful,
surely purple with shame; a woman
Pursued by the ghosts of slaughtered men and a screaming city-could
hardly escape marking I think:
The cheeks furrowed, and the eyes a haggard stare between the
red eyelids . . . Nothing nothing nothing
Not a line, not a mark. You have wandered through life uncaring,
untouched, heartless, unmarked, and all your wickedness
Is like a song.
HELEN Must I not love you any more, once my dear friend?
POLYXO Whilst I ... Oh, your beauty is pure,
Young and burning and holy; you are not changed from the
bride Menelaus unveiled or the young wife
The long soft eyes of Paris lustfully lingered on; whilst I look at me.
She uncovers her head, throwing down the Tynan headdress;
her thin gray-white hair, corded throat and wrinkled cheeks are seen.
It was no trick of mine
That drew ten thousand down to black death and burnt the chief
towers of Asia. But you the gods have made
To look pure forever. The gods do strangely.
Perhaps . . . they leave justice to men.
HELEN They are in their cloud;
we know too little about them. We know
They love and surely reward the hospitable house. May I go
into your house, Polyxo? I am homeless.
We have come far; weary are the waves.
POLYXO Not yet. I am thinking
what gift ... Is Menelaus behind you
Baying on the trail? He will find it hard perhaps to raise the Greek
princes a second time.
HELEN My lord
Grew old, and has left me, in the aging world. Carved stones contain
him, with all the careful honors of death,
In high Therapnse.
POLYXO Well old. Some have died
Young. You are all alone then? If any evil-disposed or remembering
person should do you hurt,
No husband would come, nor no fierce lover, to find the quarrel
and avenge you? It is bitter to be left alone.
I have learned that.
HELEN Very bitter. Worse to be exiled. Old friends
I see begin to regard you
Strangely and coldly; they let you stand at the door.
POLYXO I have not only myself to think of, but all
This island people. You come questionably. Tell me who exiled
you, for what new . . . we'll not say crime: the . . .
Adventures of one so immortally beautiful must not be called . . .
HELEN Call them, Oh my lost friend, by any
Bleak shameful name that your heart can bear, but not me beautiful.
That name is my hill of miseries. Many
Women are beautiful; and some have peace; and a few are happy.
I am exiled indeed, but for no crime.
The sons of Menelaus by that other woman have always hated me.
They inherit the kingdom, and I
Am exiled.
POLYXO Not without reason; they would give the people a reason.
HELEN I am not here to be judged. A storm
That struck Therapnae, and the living dead, perhaps had frightened
them.
POLYXO What is this? You shall tell me all the story
Before you come in my door.
HELEN (turning to her guardsmen)
Servants of Achilles: you see that
friendship is a fading and fragile hope
Among the living. With you in the high sepulchres
It stands, if anything does. Oh soldiers, where will you take me, to
what refuge, if I refuse
To humble myself before this woman, but turn and shake off the
eyes of Rhodes and enter the ship,
Where will you sail to?
THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD Queen: to the mound on the Asian
foreland. You know our condition: that we have no home
But the high, holy and quiet sepulchre. A ship is made to sail
home; we shall hasten home.
HELEN (shuddering) Ah, Ah.
I knew that!
THE CAPTAIN The west wind still wildly blows.
HELEN Oh soldiers: you
know that Achilles your master loved me. Look north;
You can see from here like a blue shadow on the raging sea
Ancient Crete, and the snows of Cretan Mount Ida; take me there
and leave me; leave me on the sand
Like a beggar woman, and hasten home.
THE CAPTAIN We must not beach the
black prow again, we must hasten home.
HELEN
To the burial-hill. To the wailing Trojan ghosts. To dust and
ashes. (She turns toward the house.) I will contrive to be
humble.
Polyxo: I am the woman
Whom Theseus loved, and high-born Menelaus, and beautiful-throated
Paris, and Deiphobus,
And one greater than these more terribly, whom I shall name. I
would rather have been a shepherd's daughter
To run barefoot and milk the mountain ewes, and pat the curd
into cheeses.
POLYXO Far better for you;
Or else to be strangled at birth.
HELEN Yet I remember the good gray
elders of Troy, having seen their sons
For my sake slain, and knowing me the poison in the city's heartyet
when they passed me, walking like kings,
They would look at my face with love, they never reproached
me. I have memories of men doing nobly, to make me patient
In the day of humiliation.
(She stands in silence, struggling 'with her pride, 'while Polyxo
bitterly 'watches. Helen continues
But Achilles,
Violent and fierce, whom nothing could bind: for while he lived
he dared affront Agamemnon the king,
And had no reverence for beautiful human flesh, but pierced the
shining feet of Hector slain
And dragged him about and about the city at the chariot's tail,
defiling the beautiful heroic body;
But after he was dead he opposed
The purpose of God. . . . He said my remembered face tormented
him, he had no reverence but lusted for me,
In his life he had never known me, in his death he lusted. He
wrestled with Death in the shut darkness; he broke
The mighty wrists and the mound of burial. He stood on the
broken head of the mound and shouted to his men,
Whose graves pit the wide plain. They had never failed to obey
him, they heard and rose. All the fierce Myrmidons,
Dark faces and fire in the hollow eye-sockets and earth-matted
hair; staring they stood. These men here
Are of those that stood up.
(Movement of Polyxo's people. They retreat a little, but a
line of the best draws across the foot of the steps again, so that
Polyxo is seen again above spearheads. She herself shows fear,
but says
POLYXO Go on. Tell it all. Whatever I resolve
to do will not be shaken
By the lies of the poets you listen to in idle Sparta
Or lonely Therapnse in the long evenings.
HELEN I would to God it
were lies. Why do you hate me, Polyxo?
POLYXO Tell your tale.
HELEN I cannot. I will not. Soldiers:
Will you not speak?
THE MYRMIDONS (clashing their shields, and making a heavy
pacing dance, as of bronze puppets; but I think only the
leader speaks.)
We that broke the walls
And tore open the citadel of Asia,
And the holy city of Priam like a gored ship
Foundered in the roaring seas of our blood:
We have sacked the empire of Death also.
They planted strange seed in Asia who buried Achilles.
The earth had received us and we broke the earth;
The hands of God were upon us to hold us under;
We broke the fingers of God and Fate;
They planted wild seed in Asia who buried Achilles.
When we camped in the dead
Metropolis, we dead, there was nothing living but a wolf and a dog;
The very swallows were burnt
That used to twitter in the eaves of Troy.
Where Priam and the silken processions
Went delicately
By the great hewn stones; in the morning
We pissed on the stones and knew that we dead lived,
And went south from there
Fasting, until we came to a town and killed it.
Punic ships lay on the shore.
They planted strange seed in Asia who buried Achilles.
Oh high blue water
And whirling currents in the lee of islands,
Purple nights and blue days,
Were you not pierced, were you not trampled?
Bear witness how his great heart burned you,
Toward this woman he burned.
HELEN
Stand farther, soldiers. I cannot bear. . . . Oh Polyxo, save me.
Though love is dead and friendship forgotten,
The living should guard the living, and a woman ought to have
pity on a woman . . .
THE MYRMIDONS We beached at sundown
And struck in the night, in the gathered storm.
King Menelaus said "What are these?"
And the spear-point was at his beard.
"Dorian barbarians?"
Look under the torches, Oh King, that flare in the wind in the gates,
Look under the torches.
The Dorians have yellow hair; ours is earth-dark.
The Dorians have black iron helmets, ours are green bronze.
They planted strange seed in Asia who buried Achilles.
HELEN
Be silent, be silent! It is all true. There was only a little guard at
Therapnac. Our troops were north
On the borders, in the doors of the north. They took the high
house and held Therapnae. The storm raged, and the thunder
Shook the towers, while Achilles possessed me. It is true: he
came and possessed me. His body was not like death-
Only his eyes.
THE MYRMIDONS We were the door-holders.
Our master went in and laid off his armor, and the queen of
Laconia
Screamed once, and then sweetly smiled.
The wild male power of the world
Was mated with the perfect beauty.
While Menelaus outside the gate
Howled like a dog in the violet lightnings in the gaps of night
For spears, but all his were fleeing to the mountain.
And the Gods came down against us and we held the doors.
HELEN
You are not a rock but a woman: let me go in, let me go in!
From public shame, and this furnace of eyes.
POLYXO Menelaus died?
HELEN Not that night.
He did die, Of old age, the next day. ... I was compelled, undefended.
POLYXO We are not
blind, we can see you are beautiful
Enough to have stung the body of a violent man in the very
ashes. But I am a woman, and not
A loving woman. Tell me, you dead and stationed soldiers, where
is your master, this woman's lover?
I desire not to offend him by ... any act toward this woman,
if she is still claimed. We have no force
In our pastoral island to oppose the power
That humbled warlike Therapnae bristling with spears.
THE LEADER OF THE MYRMIDONS YOU hide
a knife in your mind, but not too darkly
For eyes that have looked through hollow death, and are whetted
and disillusioned, nor too dreadful. We are charged
To keep this woman whom our lord has enjoyed intact of any
less lover until she dies.
When she dies we may hasten home.
HELEN Will you plot against me
before my face? And vainly. I can pity delusion
Even in dead men; whatever it is you would sell, she will not
buy. My friend has grown cold, but not
Wicked; not monstrous; one can see that without looking
through hollow death. ... As to Achilles,
I will tell you, Polyxo. He went away from Therapnae in the
stormy dawn, gathering his men,
Only detaching these few to guard me. He returned to the
ships; and one had been burned, he took one of ours;
And sailed away to fetch west for the island Leuke, that white
Atlantic splendor in the waves, to find there
The peace, he said, that even the most beautiful woman never
can give. For there one is free of death's
Dreams as of life's. He will never return. I tell you because I
trust you.
POLYXO That is true. Whatever you've done,
Your blood is noble. The free-born
Trust gayly where a slave trembles. I have determined what
I will do.
HELEN Why are you trembling, Polyxo?
POLYXO
We are not accustomed to seeing the dead land on this island.
Come into the house. Come in. Let Helen
Pass, but not those bronze corpses.
THE LEADER OF THE MYRMIDONS We deliver her to you.
A VOICE AMONG POLYXO's MEN Oh beautiful
woman trust her not!
POLYXO Who spoke?
HELEN
I will go in without fear, although I think that you hate me for
some reason. I'd not seek shelter
In a house of cold welcome, but choice has been taken from me.
The ship I came from goes home to black
And quiet death. One endures a cold welcome liefer than death;
I will lay down all pride
And like a suppliant go in. But why do you tremble, Polyxo?
POLYXO Surely with
eagerness. My house is honored.
Helen approaches the steps, and the spears part to let her
pass. Calcho leans from among the spears and 'whispers as
she passes in.
CALCHO
Beautiful woman turn back. Look: her pressed lips mean evil.
HELEN Thank you, fisherman.
POLYXO What did that man
Whisper across the trident?
HELEN Why, nothing, dear. He would bring
me a speckled sea-trout or a great lamprey.
He thinks I am used to kindness. Oh, why do you tremble so?
POLYXO The chill at
sundown. Time brings all things.
They go into the house.
CALCHO Evil is planned. Shall we let the most beautiful woman
in the world fall into a trap, while we stand idle?
ONE OF THE MEN Well, it's a pity . . .
ANOTHER You think our lady lays traps because she had you
whipped once; but well you deserved it.
THE MYRMIDONS
Is there any stir in the house?
Listen: or a cry?
Farm-boys with spears, you sparrows
Playing hawk, be silent.
Splendid was life
In the time of the heroes, the sun went helmeted, the moon was maiden,
When glory gathered on Troy, the picketed horses
Neighed in the morning, and long live ships
Ran on the wave like eagle-shadows on the slopes of mountains.
Then men were equal to things, the earth was beautiful, the
crests of heroes
Waved as tall as the trees.
Now all is decayed, all corrupted, all gone down.
Men move like mice under the shadows of trees,
And the shadows of the tall dead.
The brightness of fire is dulled,
The heroes are gone.
In naked shame Agamemnon
Died of a woman.
The sun is crusted and the moon tarnished,
And Achilles has chosen peace.
Tell me, you island spearmen, you plowboy warriors,
Has anyone cried out in the dark door?
Not yet. The earth darkens.
Slate gray twilight has come; but later a high cloud catching
light fills the scene with a confusing red radiance.
At the fall of an age men must make sacrifice
To renew beauty, to restore strength.
We say that if the perfect beauty were sacrificed,
The very beauty that makes our death-cleansed eyes
Dazzle with tears, would be spread on the sky
And earth like a banner.
All men would begin to desire again, and value
Come back to the earth, and splendor walk there.
There is one perfection to be poured out, one lonely beauty
Left in the world, as lonely as the last eagle.
Has anyone groaned in the house? There it sounds.
A sharp clear broken-off cry like a snapped arrow.
CALCHO
Dead wolves, will her death feed you?
THE MYRMIDONS Our trade was death.
And now we have known it, it is nothing evil.
CALCHO Can we endure this?
He and a few others are going up the steps, when Polyxo
comes out and stands above.
POLYXO Clear the stones.
Armed men are at her side; Calcho and his few -followers
return down.
POLYXO You need not press in, you shall see all. I have caught
the panther.
Oh men of Rhodes, we sometimes exclaim against the great gods,
when the guilty seem to flourish, and the innocent
Fall unavenged. We are always rebuked at last. A murderer may
flee to Caucasus but the broad eyes
Hardly turn and behold him constantly, and see the knife
whetting or the noose hanging, in the very gorge
He runs to hide in, under the snow-shining walls and towers of
the world. Do you remember my lord
Tlepolemus, the husband of my soul and my body? I have caught
his murderer. Numberless thousands have died
By the war-making act of this one woman, the powers of Greece
and the house of Priam; they are not perfectly
Important to us here enisled, but Righteousness counted them;
and while I avenge Tlepolemus the gods are here
Avenging all. I have two black men I bought from Egypt, whose
minds are not made like ours, they feel
No shudder where a Greek would flinch; I bid them lead forth
the murderess, so stripped and shamed as men who were
stricken
On the plain by Troy ... as Tlepolemus . . .
Ah Ah ... was robbed
Of the hacked and dinted armor ... all ... that corselet I
gave him: in the days when I was able to weep,
And prayed it keep safe his breast; the Greeks retreated from his
body fallen in the dust, and grooms and foot-soldiers
Despoiled and stripped him, and left him naked under the glaring
lion of heaven and the Trojan eyes,
White flower in the foul dust, the body I had held in my arms,
the flesh that my mouth had clung to. ... Shall I not
Shame this dead woman? . . . Come.
Helen is led by slaves from the door, her hands bound behind
her back. The confusing red twilight somewhat veils her
nakedness. Her head is held high, and the eyes clear, though
she struggles against the bonds, breathing hard through
parted lips. Her yellow hair is disordered, and hangs like a
heavy fleece on one shoulder.
HELEN (straining at the cords) Are you the stronger? Yet
wretched to the end of time:
Contempt and a hissing: whilst I overcome by treachery am
more than equal to all that may hurt me.
POLYXO Here
Is what made war. Look at it, because it will not be beautiful
to-morrow. No warriors will quarrel for it.
No one will cut through death to come to it. Now, now, I say,
the old aching hatred, the very bitterness
That fouled my wine with aloes and stained my meat with spilt
gall, morning and evening all the empty years,
Is turned sweet; it is better to taste than honey; it smells more
lovely than myrrh and frankincense
Hot from the south. You caught panther!
I am glad that you were a queen in haughty Therapnae; it will
be harder to die; I am glad you are beautiful
Beyond fault, beyond nature: the ridiculous ugliness of death
and corruption look the more dreadful to you;
I am glad you had many lovers, you will lie alone; I am glad time
could not touch you nor age deflower you,
That your beauty is like the African crystal no point can scratch,
unwoundable, uncontaminable;
For what comes now shall very suddenly unpolish it. Ah, Ah, Ah,
I am sick with delight. Call the black ravens, you beautiful
woman.
Oh Helen, black crows and heavy-beaked ravens to be your
lovers, to kiss your eyes. Call the mountains
Of Asia to look at you.
HELEN Rhodians: your mistress you see has
gone mad, you must prevent her not for my sake,
For your own honor from making this place forever abominable.
POLYXO (to a slave) Cast the rope over that branch.
I shall sleep sound at last, who have lain year after year tortured
remembering. To-morrow, coming
From the door at dawn, I shall see my enemy's face puffed
purple and her breasts blackening, and the dragged neck
Not like a dove's, and those fine white feet
Perhaps all shrivelled, perhaps all swollen, who knows? God,
who sent her here, knows. Why do you wait?
Fling the coil, slave, keep the noose in your hands. Hup! A good
cast. I shall not sleep, but call
Torches, and feast all night.
HELEN I see my dark shameful death. Hear
me, Rhodians . . .
POLYXO Let her speak, haltered.
The slave makes to hang the noose on her neck, but when
she looks at him he stands back in awe of her.
VOICES AMONG THE PEOPLE
We cannot suffer this. Oh Oh Oh.
Spear the black men, hang up the old woman.
Pikes and fire, ah? Like spitted pigs. We dare.
They move toward the steps.
POLYXO
I thought that you herd of dogs and peasants . . . Here, the
guard. Peasants: here are the men
Who fought at Troy, men to be trusted, my house garrison.
Fully armed soldiers, old men but dangerous, move mechanically
in two files from the door, right and left of the group
formed by POLYXO and HELEN and the slaves, and make a
fence of spears at the foot of the steps. They are masked with
identical faces of old grim 'warriors; between them and the
Myrmidons the island militia, seethe like a rabble.
POLYXO Rabble, you
know your boundary: the soldiers
Of Tlepolemus. Few, but enough. These will not lust for a harlot.
These are the men that saw
The gods fighting, when the rivers of the plain flowed fire and
the earth roared like water. . . . Veterans of Troy:
It is mine to avenge your labor and pain and your leader's death;
it is yours to keep those plowboys in awe
And herd those herdsmen.
THE MYRMIDONS
Old men you ought to have died
In your good years, not wearily
Gone home to rust.
If you had died and revived again
Your hair would not be snowed under but brown as ours,
And your eyes as fierce.
POLYXO (to the slave) I said, halter that woman. Between the
dead and the living my hatred stands,
HELEN
Will you stand and let me be slain, you men of Rhodes?
POLYXO
What, is life sweet? Cry out. Weep publicly. Show all your
mind, make all your grief like your body naked.
Surely it is all as beautiful as your body, and I shall be merciful.
THE MYRMIDONS
It is beautiful to see men die by violence, but to watch a woman
Killed, is the crown. Oh Queen, die boldly.
HELEN I pray you on my knees, Polyxo.
Life is too dear to be spent on pride. I am not afraid, but I love
life.
POLYXO I tell you, kneeling's
Not half enough. You must act fear, if you feel none. Plead,
scream.
Helen stands again, and 'wrenches at the cords, twisting her
body.
THE MYRMIDONS (coming nearer the house, pressing on the demoralized
crowd)
Queen, life and death are no better than the two ears of a carrion-
Battening dog; there is nothing to choose.
We know them both, and their beauty is beyond them, their
beauty is the value,
As yours is your beauty. We also were sacrificed.
HELEN
Dead wolves, fight for me. Save me. You could blow down this
brittle stubble of Rhodian spears like summer
Fire in the stubble. Flash your fangs, wolves. Fight, you bronze
wolves. For I have the seed of Achilles in me.
For your lord, for your leader's blood, not for me make war.
THE MYRMIDONS
Beautiful blossoms of battle again and forever unfolding
Star the earth, but we dropped petals of one
Shall endure peace, not even to behold them again nor to hear them,
In the quiet places, in enormous neutrality.
Oh perfectly beautiful, pain is brief, endure to be sacrificed.
This great age falls like water and a new
Age is at birth, but without your pain it could never be beautiful.
The golden fleece of your hair, the straining
Shoulders, the dove-throat, the breasts thrust forward by the
strain of bonds,
Shall yield their beauty to the earth and sky,
The wonderful breasts their soul to all the flushed hills of earth,
The long white thighs to the marble mountains.
Mycenae is down in corruption but Athens will stand instead,
The Dorians will make Laconia a land of helots.
HELEN
Dogs, not wolves. Death-whipped dogs. Hear me, veterans
Of Rhodes, old valiant warmen that fought in Asia from the
wall I watched you. . . . No help, no help anywhere?
I am brought to bay here between the bony mercy of unmanned
old age and the eyeless pity of the dead.
Do you see this ebony tool of murder hangs the halter on my
throat, the strangling death?
POLYXO Helen:
Speak quickly, for your end hastens.
HELEN I will speak. I have lived
and seen the great beauty of things, and been loved and
honored.
If now I must die, it is come. Nothing on earth nor in ocean is
hatefuller than death; at least I have not
Wasted my life like this gray murderess, fouling with age, lying
twenty years in the pit of time
Grinding the rust on a knife.
POLYXO Take for your portion agony and
shame. Sweep room there below, guardsmen.
Haul, slaves. May all that cause war, thus perish. ... It is dark;
torches, torches! People of Rhodes, we have caught
And hanged a panther. Pelt the white body with pine cones, pelt
it with clods.
While she is hanged, confused struggle in the brown twilight
between the old guardsmen and the people. The Myrmidons,
chanting in their pacing dance, take no part in it.
THE MYRMIDONS
Wild swan, splendid-bodied,
Silent at last, silent and proud, fly up the dark.
Clash bronze, beat shields, beauty is new-born.
It is not to be whispered in Argos that Helen died like a woman,
Nor told in Laconia that sickness killed her.
Strike swords, blade on blade, the daughter of God
Hangs like a lamp, high in the dark, quivering and white.
The breasts are thrust forward and the head bows, the fleece of gold
Shakes on the straining shoulders, writhes to the long white thighs.
When God looked down from heaven the mound in the Troad
Swarmed like an anthill, what spears are those?
Power that will pierce your people, God of the living,
The warrior-ants of the anthill, the spears from the dark barrow
. . .
Torches are being brought from the house.
Look under the torches, Oh King, that flare in the wind of night,
Look under the torches.
No Dorians are we; they planted strange seed in Asia who buried
Achilles,
Power to pierce death, helmeted heads cracking the grass-roots,
Power to be born again.
Come down and behold us Oh King of heaven and Oh hawks of
Caucasus
Come down and behold us,
You African lions in the tawny wilderness roar in the storm,
For our master is joined with the beauty he remembered in
death, with the splendor of the earth,
While the King of Laconia howls like a starved dog
In the rain, in the violet lightnings, in the gaps of night, and we
hold the gates.
Polyxo comes between torch-bearers to exult.
POLYXO
High violent wind let the tree stand, leave me my vengeance.
Slaves, hold the flaring torches up high;
I can see a hanging whiteness in the wind and smoke. She ought
to be hideous now? How beautiful she is.
Hair veils the face. Where is my triumph? I am very happy.
The high wind swings her slowly spinning
As if to show all her beauty. I did not wantonly, Oh beautiful
woman; my need compelled me. I have done
More than I dared; I have put my pain outside me; it is time to
exult. White mountains, ice-helmeted peaks
That wall the ends of the world, come here and behold my
triumph. Where is my triumph, has the wind snatched it?
There is no woman on earth so happy as I am, having slain my
pain: yet it seems that all present things
Slip away down hill, and I could weep for them.
CALCHO (coming behind her in the darkness and confusion)
Old woman,
revenge is a slippery fish. This from Calcho.
He drives the trident into her side, and tries to escape. One
of the guard strikes him doivn. Polyxo has groaned and fallen
on the steps.
THE MYRMIDONS (who have not ceased from their pacing dance)
Roar in the night, storm, like a lion, spare not the stars.
They have planted wild seed in the air who lifted God's
Daughter on high, wavering aloft, blessing the new
Age at birth with the beauty of her body . . .
POLYXO (slowly, gasping)
Three spears? that fish-spear ah, ah, like a shark or tunny.
Drag . . . the points, black man, the barbed points, out.
Ah. Ah. Ah. No. Their claws catch in my entrails; her death was
kinder. What whiteness
Wavers up there over fires and anguish? Rhodes: I have no son . . .
THE MYRMIDONS (turning and going back by the way they came)
All is accomplished. Islanders, gather the slain.
Seed has been planted in Asia, seed in Therapnae,
High in the dark, seed for the white eagles of dawn.
For us the black ship on the shore, for us the black waters, the black
Hollow of the mound. Heavily beat, bronze upon bronze.
Clash, bronze; beat, shields; beauty is new-born.
The flame is blown from the torches by the violent wind.
