Helios makes all things right -- night brands and chokes, as if destruction broke over furze and stone and crop of myrtle-shoot and field-wort, destroyed with flakes of iron, the bracken-stems, where tender roots were, sown blight, chaff and waste of darkness to choke and drown. A curious god to find, yet in the end faithful; bitter, the Kyprian's feet -- ah, flecks of whited clay, great hero, vaunted lord -- ah, petals, dust and windfall on the ground -- queen awaiting queen. Better the weight, they tell, the helmet's beaten shell, Athene's riven steel, caught over the white skull, Athene sets to heel the few who merit it. Yet even then, what help, should he not turn and note the height of forehead and the seal of conquest, drawn near, and try the helmet; to lift -- reset the crown Athene weighted down, or break with a light touch mayhap the steel set to protect; to slay or heal. A treacherous god, they say, yet who would wait to test justice or worth or right, when through a fetid night is wafted faint and nearer -- then straight, as point of steel to one who courts swift death, scent of Hesperidean orange-spray. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LOVE SONNETS OF PROTEUS: 60. FAREWELL TO JULIET (9) by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT THE TRANCE by LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE A LEAVE-TAKING: 2 by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE PAL OF MY HEART by JULIA A. BRAND MELANCHOLY by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES WHISTLE O'ER THE LAVE O'T by ROBERT BURNS AN UNPRAISED PICTURE by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON |