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At Eleusis

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Men of Eleusis, ye that with long staves

Sit in the market-houses, and speak words

Made sweet with wisdom as the rare wine is

Thickened with honey; and ye sons of these

Who in the glad thick streets go up and down

For pastime or grave traffic or mere chance;

And all fair women having rings of gold

On hands or hair; and chiefest over these

I name you, daughters of this man the king,

Who dipping deep smooth pitchers of pure brass

Under the bubbled wells, till each round lip

Stooped with loose gurgle of waters incoming,

Found me an old sick woman, lamed and lean,

Beside a growth of builded olive-boughs

Whence multiplied thick song of thick-plumed throats

Also wet tears filled up my hollow hands

By reason of my crying into them

And pitied me; for as cold water ran

And washed the pitchers full from lip to lip,

So washed both eyes full the strong salt of tears.

And ye put water to my mouth, made sweet

With brown hill-berries; so in time I spoke

And gathered my loose knees from under me.

Moreover in the broad fair halls this month

Have I found space and bountiful abode

To please me. I Demeter speak of this,

Who am the mother and the mate of things:

For as ill men by drugs or singing words

Shut the doors inward of the narrowed womb

Like a lock bolted with round iron through,

Thus I shut up the body and sweet mouth

Of all soft pasture and the tender land,

So that no seed can enter in by it

Though one sow thickly, nor some grain get out

Past the hard clods men cleave and bite with steel

To widen the sealed lips of them for use.

None of you is there in the peopled street

But knows how all the dry-drawn furrows ache

With no green spot made count of in the black:

How the wind finds no comfortable grass

Nor is assuaged with bud nor breath of herbs;

And in hot autumn when ye house the stacks,

All fields are helpless in the sun, all trees

Stand as a man stripped out of all but skin.

Nevertheless ye sick have help to get

By means and stablished ordinance of God;

For God is wiser than a good man is.

But never shall new grass be sweet in earth

Till I get righted of my wound and wrong

By changing counsel of ill-minded Zeus.

For of all other gods is none save me

Clothed with like power to build and break the year.

I make the lesser green begin, when spring

Touches not earth but with one fearful foot;

And as a careful gilder with grave art

Soberly colours and completes the face,

Mouth, chin and all, of some sweet work in stone,

I carve the shapes of grass and tender corn

And colour the ripe edges and long spikes

With the red increase and the grace of gold.

No tradesman in soft wools is cunninger

To kill the secret of the fat white fleece

With stains of blue and purple wrought in it.

Three moons were made and three moons burnt away

While I held journey hither out of Crete

Comfortless, tended by grave Hecate

Whom my wound stung with double iron point;

For all my face was like a cloth wrung out

With close and weeping wrinkles, and both lids

Sodden with salt continuance of tears.

For Hades and the sidelong will of Zeus

And that lame wisdom that has writhen feet,

Cunning, begotten in the bed of Shame,

These three took evil will at me, and made

Such counsel that when time got wing to fly

This Hades out of summer and low fields

Forced the bright body of Persephone:

Out of pure grass, where she lying down, red flowers

Made their sharp little shadows on her sides,

Pale heat, pale colour on pale maiden flesh

And chill water slid over her reddening feet,

Killing the throbs in their soft blood; and birds,

Perched next her elbow and pecking at her hair,

Stretched their necks more to see her than even to sing.

A sharp thing is it I have need to say;

For Hades holding both white wrists of hers

Unloosed the girdle and with knot by knot

Bound her between his wheels upon the seat,

Bound her pure body, holiest yet and dear

To me and God as always, clothed about

With blossoms loosened as her knees went down,

Let fall as she let go of this and this

By tens and twenties, tumbled to her feet,

White waifs or purple of the pasturage.

Therefore with only going up and down

My feet were wasted, and the gracious air,

To me discomfortable and dun, became

As weak smoke blowing in the under world.

And finding in the process of ill days

What part had Zeus herein, and how as mate

He coped with Hades, yokefellow in sin,

I set my lips against the meat of gods

And drank not neither ate or slept in heaven.

Nor in the golden greeting of their mouths

Did ear take note of me, nor eye at all

Track my feet going in the ways of them.

Like a great fire on some strait slip of land

Between two washing inlets of wet sea

That burns the grass up to each lip of beach

And strengthens, waxing in the growth of wind,

So burnt my soul in me at heaven and earth,

Each way a ruin and a hungry plague,

Visible evil; nor could any night

Put cool between mine eyelids, nor the sun

With competence of gold fill out my want.

Yea so my flame burnt up the grass and stones,

Shone to the salt-white edges of thin sea,

Distempered all the gracious work, and made

Sick change, unseasonable increase of days

And scant avail of seasons; for by this

The fair gods faint in hollow heaven: there comes

No taste of burnings of the twofold fat

To leave their palates smooth, nor in their lips

Soft rings of smoke and weak scent wandering;

All cattle waste and rot, and their ill smell

Grows alway from the lank unsavoury flesh

That no man slays for offering; the sea

And waters moved between the heath and corn

Preserve the people of fin-twinkling fish,

And river-flies feed thick upon the smooth;

But all earth over is no man or bird

(Except the sweet race of the kingfisher)

That lacks not and is wearied with much loss.

Meantime the purple inward of the house

Was softened with all grace of scent and sound

In ear and nostril perfecting my praise;

Faint grape-flowers and cloven honey-cake

And the just grain with dues of the shed salt

Made me content: yet my hand loosened not

Its gripe upon your harvest all year long.

While I, thus woman-muffled in wan flesh

And waste externals of a perished face,

Preserved the levels of my wrath and love

Patiently ruled; and with soft offices

Cooled the sharp noons and busied the warm nights

In care of this my choice, this child my choice,

Triptolemus, the king's selected son:

That this fair yearlong body, which hath grown

Strong with strange milk upon the mortal lip

And nerved with half a god, might so increase

Outside the bulk and the bare scope of man:

And waxen over large to hold within

Base breath of yours and this impoverished air,

I might exalt him past the flame of stars,

The limit and walled reach of the great world.

Therefore my breast made common to his mouth

Immortal savours, and the taste whereat

Twice their hard life strains out the coloured veins

And twice its brain confirms the narrow shell.

Also at night, unwinding cloth from cloth

As who unhusks an almond to the white

And pastures curiously the purer taste,

I bared the gracious limbs and the soft feet,

Unswaddled the weak hands, and in mid ash

Laid the sweet flesh of either feeble side,

More tender for impressure of some touch

Than wax to any pen; and lit around

Fire, and made crawl the white worm-shapen flame,

And leap in little angers spark by spark

At head at once and feet; and the faint hair

Hissed with rare sprinkles in the closer curl,

And like scaled oarage of a keen thin fish

In sea-water, so in pure fire his feet

Struck out, and the flame bit not in his flesh,

But like a kiss it curled his lip, and heat

Fluttered his eyelids; so each night I blew

The hot ash red to purge him to full god.

Ill is it when fear hungers in the soul

For painful food, and chokes thereon, being fed;

And ill slant eyes interpret the straight sun,

But in their scope its white is wried to black:

By the queen Metaneira mean I this;

For with sick wrath upon her lips, and heart,

Narrowing with fear the spleenful passages,

She thought to thread this web's fine ravel out,

Nor leave her shuttle split in combing it;

Therefore she stole on us, and with hard sight

Peered, and stooped close; then with pale open mouth

As the fire smote her in the eyes between

Cried, and the child's laugh, sharply shortening

As fire doth under rain, fell off; the flame

Writhed once all through and died, and in thick dark

Tears fell from mine on the child's weeping eyes,

Eyes dispossessed of strong inheritance

And mortal fallen anew. Who not the less

From bud of beard to pale-grey flower of hair

Shall wax vinewise to a lordly vine, whose grapes

Bleed the red heavy blood of swoln soft wine,

Subtle with sharp leaves' intricacy, until

Full of white years and blossom of hoary days

I take him perfected; for whose one sake

I am thus gracious to the least who stands

Filleted with white wool and girt upon

As he whose prayer endures upon the lip

And falls not waste: wherefore let sacrifice

Burn and run red in all the wider ways;

Seeing I have sworn by the pale temples' band

And poppied hair of gold Persephone

Sad-tressed and pleached low down about her brows,

And by the sorrow in her lips, and death

Her dumb and mournful-mouth'd minister,

My word for you is eased of its harsh weight

And doubled with soft promise; and your king

Triptolemus, this Celeus dead and swathed

Purple and pale for golden burial,

Shall be your helper in my services,

Dividing earth and reaping fruits thereof

In fields where wait, well-girt, well-wreathen, all

The heavy-handed seasons all year through;

Saving the choice of warm spear-headed grain,

And stooping sharp to the slant-sided share

All beasts that furrow the remeasured land

With their bowed necks of burden equable.