Orpheus and EurydiceAlfred PercevalGravesGraves, Alfred PercevalIllustratorWilliam JohnHennessyHennessy, William John
Metadata research and editing
DVPP Project TeamKaitlynFralickUniversity of Victoria Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry ProjectVictoria, BC, Canada
In the public domain
The Dark Blue2741–49As sweet Eurydice, with footfall light,margin-left: 5.5rem;font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 1.7rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; letter-spacing:
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Orpheus and Eurydice.As sweet Eurydice, with footfall light,Roved the Thessalian woods one moonlit night,Singing amidst the gentle Naiad throng,Who ranged attentive to her voice, a songThat her own Orpheus taught her, suddenlyAristæus, hot with honey-wine, comes by,Follows the music ardently, and ereThe singer and the listening nymphs are ware,Leaps in their midst, and, kindling to her charms,Clasps at Eurydice with eager arms.She, the sweet melody on her lovely lips,Snapt with a scream, from his embraces slips,And crying, ‘ Orpheus, Orpheus,’ swift as light,Flies from the woods, he following, through the night,Until escaped from the pursuer’s handO’er the full Hebrus she has swum to land ;When, through the shelter of the sloping sward,A hooded snake that haunts the river fordShoots his lithe length to meet her from the ground,And, ere she sees it, darts a deadly wound.She still would flee, if but she still may reachHer home, now nigh, and find a friendly leech,Or die at least in her dear love’s embrace—But the black poison runs a swifter race ;Her footsteps fail, her limbs their force forget,Her fluttering sighs came fast and faster yet
;The landscape swims around,—she falters, falls—Thrice strives to rise, and thrice on Orpheus calls,Each cry a fainter echo of the last,And murmuring Orpheus still the gentle spirit passed.Then Aristæus, stricken with remorse,Braves the loud flood, and kneels beside her corse,And chafes her hands, and every art essaysFrom her last sleep the lovely Nymph to raise.But all in vain, and, turning with a tear,Slow he retraces his too swift career.Anon the Naiads from the general flightToward their Hebrus one by one unite ;And when—ah ! woeful hap—they see her slain,Beat their white breasts, and lift the cry of pain,Wood, vale, and mountain mingle in the dirge,The desolate River sobs from verge to verge ;And Night herself, veiling her starry eyes,Leads the lament with long-drawn tempest-sighs.O say not that two sympathetic soulsCan only mix as outward sense controls.Far off the mother of an only daughter,Pierced with her pangs, has trembling resought her :The absent brother feels the fatal powerThat strikes the partner of his natal hour ;And the fond youth, beneath far distant skies,Knows the sad moment when his mistress dies.Thus Orpheus, who had left his lovely spouseFor Delphi’s steep to pay his filial vowsTo King Apollo, starts from sleep to hearHis name thrice shrieked with anguish in his ear :To earth he starts—a weapon wildly snatches—Hies through the hall, the darkling door unlatches,And stands bewildered in the moonlight clear,Crying, ‘ Eurydice, your love is here ;’Till the night airs on his uncovered browsBlowing awhile his woe-stunned wits arouse.But sense no solace yields, and, as he fliesWith homeward haste, still dark and darker riseDeath’s phantom fears, till on the dewy leaOrpheus has clasped his cold Eurydice,And laid alond by her with weeping strongAnd sobs tempestuous tosses all day long.Then King Apollo, pitying the painOf his dear son, whom most he loved of men,Stands by his side, his awful beauty veilingIn softest cloud, and thus rebukes his wailing :‘ Rise, Orpheus, rise, infatuate with grief ;Orpheus, arise, Apollo brings relief ;For not in vain hast thou required my favourWith filial vows and first-fruits sweet of savour ;Nor idly did thy docile genius followThe magic music of thy sire Apollo.No Marsyas thou, but reverently muteTo hear and learn the language of my lute,And therefore thou of living men aloneCanst charm all cruel force with music’s moan.For this did Jason, warned of Chiron old,In choice of questers for the Fleece of Gold,Prefer thee helmsman of the hero crewOf Argo, wisely yielding thee thy due :Else had they never rowed to Colchian seasPast those gray cliffs the dread Symplegades ;For, as with oars that to thy harping clearIn cadence dipped, the desperate course they steer,From the almost shock the shores resilient flewRapt to thy lay and let the questers through ;Thou too, when far upon the western mainFierce thirst possessed the heroes, with thy strainAlone could’st win from the Hesperian MaidsThe golden offspring of their garden shades ;And after, when the Argonautic oarsApproached too near those bark-beguiling shores,Where bleach the bones of many a music-slainMariner—and the Siren Sisters’ strainWas with its amorous enchantment stealingEach quester’s soul, thy heavenly pæan pealingStruck dumb the weird witch-music, and reclaimedTheir service due who else the Quest had shamed.’‘ And what avails that skill,’ the mourner sighs,‘ Oh ! father mine, when low my mistress lies ;Though, when I luted, love stole softly o’er her,The song that won her never can restore her.’‘ Orpheus, I heard you once, when stars were clear,Echoing the strains that thrill from sphere to sphere ;You sang, whilst Argo o’er the ocean hoaryLeaped to the lay, Creation’s awful storySoftly you sang ; and, though you knew it not,Nature was tranced around in troubled thought,Fearful lest thou shouldst wake that louder layIntolerable that shook her natal day.Idly she feared, for I of gods and men,Save Love alone, have knowledge of that strain,And I but once its music can recall—Yet, for I love thee, son, yea more than allMy children, and now pity, bride-bereft,Thee I endue with my transcendent gift,The song of songs, to whose ecstatic strainInforming Love, from Chaos’ dread insane,Called the young Cosmos. Lift that psalm again,And earth shall quake, the empyrean lower,Seas rage, and at the last the Infernal PowerOpe to thy lay the inexorable door,And thy lost mistress to thine arms restore.’He said, and vanished, whilst a rosy sourceOf sudden sunset flowing found the corse,Kissed her cold feet, suffused her bosom’s snow,Blushed in her cheek, and melted on her brow.Then Orpheus : ‘ For the dim discoloured lightOf Hymen’s torch upon my nuptial nightThis radiant omen, Phœbus, I accept ;’Whilst o’er the lute his eager fingers swept,Preluding softly to that mystic strainWhich he but wakened once, and none shall wake again.Then the sphere-music stole upon the harp,Pregnant with rapturous pain and pleasure sharp,All things that are, enchanted, paused to hear,Save the small growths that sprang to be more near ;For joy and sorrow, birth and life, and deathTrembled together in that tuneful breath.Anon the wild sphere-music louder grew,Loud as when first the parent atoms flew,Of air and water, fire and formless earth,Each seed to share an elemental birth ;For to that cadence arched the skyey dome,The soft soil hardened, Ocean sought his home,And shapes of sea and landscape loom around,Till sun and moon and stars the night astound,With living lustre leaping to the sound ;And vendure springs, and with the breathing formThe earth and air and ocean sudden swarm ;And last of all, to crown Creation’s plan,Awakes to life the myriad-mooded man.But, on the even of that natal day,Love’s louder song had died into the lay,That all to subtle-sweet for mortal earsThrills with eternal music through the spheres.Orpheus alone had caught that softer strain,And, as he wakes it now, his eager brain,Inspired by Phœbus, links the sound subduedTo its loud, long-forgotten parent mood.So lutes he, and so sings, with flashing eyesAnd dark dishevelled locks that fall and riseO’er his torn vestments to the cadence wild.Eve fades—night blackens—and Apollo’s child,Unseen as Philomel pours his passionate thoughtWhilst round him all the universe, distraughtBy the fierce phrenzy of awful lyre,All breathing forms, earth, ocean, air, and fire,Hear and make moan as each indwelling essenceThat forms them feels the old Creative PresenceMaddening their rest, and drawing them to mixIn other moulds, and all that is perplex ;Till at the sphere-song, out of centuried sleep,Old Chaos rears him from the utmost deep,Deeming perchance that erst obnoxious hymn,Favourable now unto his empire dim ;Then rocked the earth for fear, the vaulted heavenThundered aghast, far leaped th’ affrighted levin,Shook the deep sea dismayed, and, at the last,Through the song-severed gates of hell the poet passed.Hard by the hideous porch a spectral crewDeform first meet the minstrel’s troubled view ;Grief, Labour, Care, Disease, and tristful AgeAnd Fear and Famine, War, Revenge, and Rage,But shape more dread of all the demon DeathWith infant face distort, a maid beneath,Yet with lean palsied arms and locks of eld,Who first from far the approaching bard beheld,And fain to startle him to swift retreatBegins : ‘ O fool, what strain to Death is sweet.Essay no further, lest this countenance,In wrath revealed, consume thee at a glance.Or canst thou, front to front opposed, outstareHer whose fierce eyes’ intolerable glare,Spite all the horrors of her serpent browAnd hellish aspect, laid Medusa low.’She said, but Orpheus struck his saddest chord,Wept the fell fiend, and past her haunt abhorredThe youth unhurt pursued his darkling way,Till at his feet the Stygian river lay,And rustling round him stole those bloodless ranksThat wait expectant on the oozy banksFor Charon’s bark ; but that grim senior rowedToward the further shore his goblin load.Then Orpheus, for Eurydice the lost,Eager peruses all that phantom host,But vainly, when outspake a giant ghost,Whose shoulders topped the crowd. ‘ Oh ! comrade dear,Orpheus divine, what quest has led thee here,Alive ! O strange, as first I sought this shore,Admetus’ bride, Alcestis, to restore,And with these hands, how forceless now, alas !Fettered the Triple Hound all fear to pass ;Surely some bitter cause thy suppliant dress,Dishevelled hair, and downcast eyes confess.’Then Orpheus weeping, ‘ Ah me, grief on grief,No woe is single, thou too here, my chief,Whom yesterday sang Victor, then she crossedThe ninefold stream before thy life was lost,For, by a serpant slain, Eurydice,My bride, is hither borne. Oh, woe is me !Her now I seek ; but what fate forced thee here,Whom of old Argo’s crew I loved most dear ?’Then great Alcides tells the jealous wileOf Deianeira, by the Centaur’s guile,Malignant, fraught with poison fierce and fireLife-ridding on the self-sought funeral pyre.‘ Console thee, Herakles, my comrade dear,’Orpheus presaged, ‘for short space art thou here.It only needs to expiate the ireOf Dis, conceived what time his hell-hound direThy might o’ermastered, that as yon weak ghostsAs forceless thou awhile shouldst range his coasts.Right soon from Hell exempt, with honours meet,Thee gods shall welcome to a heavenly seat,Constellate in their midst, and for the loveOf woman, bless with Hebe’s bower above.’Now Charon brings his boat once more to land,And Orpheus hastes his service to demand ;But with a hateful scowl the ferrymanIn scornful answer to his suit began,‘ Back, rash intruder in the realms of dark,For long as I direct the Stygian barkNo sprite embodied enters it again,’He said ; but Orpheus woke a soothing strain,So sweet, so softly wildering the brain,That all his grisly length old Charon slept,Then lightly to his seat the poet stepped,And, singing, o’er the stream with easy oarage swept.Stretched on the further shore the Triple HoundOwns with a troubled voice the magic sound,Whom Orpheus passed, and through the palace-gateOf Hell still presses on with hope elate,Until at last before the dusky throneOf Dis and Proserpine he casts him down.Whom, sternly eyeing, Pluto straight addressed :‘ Stranger, declare thy name and what thy quest,No Tityos sure, nor with Alcides’ might,Hast thou approached the realms of nether night ;My minions have been mocked with panic error,If thou, effeminate form, hast caused them terror.Speak, but expect no grace.’ Then ProserpineBroke in, ‘ My Lord, ’tis Orpheus the divine,Offspring of Phœbus and Calliope,Who, when the Fleece-Quest neared sweet Sicily,His descant turned till e’en the sea-beach smiled,To bright-eyed blossom by his song beguiled.’Then Orpheus, with fresh heart, awoke his litany wild.‘ Not out of impious lust, O Nameless Name,Nor friend for friend, as Herakles hither came,Have I adventured to thine empire dreadNo might of mine—aywell, this downcast headAnd feeble limbs provoke thy sharpest scorn—Not his poor prowess hath thy servant borneThus strangely past thy guardian forms of fear,Charon and Cerberus, and set unscathed here,A Power eternal bears me from above—Now in my need forsake me not, O Love—’On whom so crying bitterly a great change,With tremor fierce and sighing thick and strange,Smote suddenly—his labouring limbs assumeStature divine, his front immortal bloom,Erect he starts, a sudden halo brightBurns from his brow, beneath whose living lightHis eyes, bright stars in bluest heaven, shedEthereal influence through that palace dread,Whilst his sweet voice divine went forth amonst the dead,Singing the lives of those two lovers fond,How dutiful in youth, then how beyondCompare in piety ; and how they lovedA long, long love, that but the purer provedBy bitter ordeal ; their brief nuptial blissAnd latest parting ; last the envenomed kissOf the fierce serpent, when with flying foot,Scarce had Eurydice foiled the vile pursuitOf Aristæus, and how she failed and fell,And made her death-bed in the asphodel.Here paused the voice awhile ; but soon againAwaking, poured a most enchanting strainOf a fair goddess in Sicilian meads,And Eros charioting those dusky steedsSoft o’er the lily leaves and grasses green,And to the King of Night bearing his beauteous queen.Last the voice sang how that deep love divineHad never quenched in Dis or Proserpine,Or failed in anywise for Eros’ aid,For which dear services that sweet voice prayedEurydice’s reprieve with its last breath,Then on the darkness dies a most delicious death.The strange song ceased ; but, ere its echo dies,Pluto repents him, and to Minos cries :‘ Eurydice is free, ’tis thine to fixThe law that speeds the lovers o’er the StyxUnto the upper light, whose stern decreeBids Orpheus lead his dear Eurydice,But nor to turn, nor look upon his loveTill they have safely reached the realms above.’Then forth they fare, the living and the dead,He first, she following with painful tread,Till every peril passed and ghostly dread,Upon the very threshold of the day,Fearful lest that dear shape had gone astray,Orpheus looks back, O fool ! for close behindHis love still followed with a faithful mind ;But scarce has turned him when that well-known form,Half-spectre still, yet momently more warmWith waking life, dissolves with shrill despairAnd looks of anguish on the nether air.Rose as she sank a universal knell,And clapped in thunder the grim gates of hellSeven days and nights he strove, but strove in vain,Once more to wake that elemental strain,Nourished the while on nought but tearful sorrow ;But with the eighth inexorable morrowHe sadly rose, one look of longing castOn Tænarus, and, sighing, Thraceward passed,And three long years, amidst the lost one’s bowers,Wandered, wild warbling to her favourite flowers,Laments more melancholy sweet than everEcho had answered by the Hebrus’ river.Thus on Eurydice his constant thoughtStill fixed, no solace of fresh love he sought,Till as he sleeps outworn within that woodWhence she whilere had flown towards the flood,Exasperate each at Orpheus’ slights of love,A Mænad troop steal on him through the grove,Of whom one snatches swiftly from the groundHis lute, low-shivering with ill-omened sound.‘ Io, exultant ! Io ! ’ through the brakes !The Bacchants shout, and shuddering Orpheus wakes,But helpless quite, as of his lyre forlorn,By the wild women limb from limb is torn.‘ Eurydice,’ the passing spirit cries ;‘ Eurydice,’ the troubled vale replies ;‘ Eurydice,’ afar, each snowy summit sighs.Alfred Perceval Graves.