Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/274

POEMS OF GREECE There came a day when Arês left at rest

His spear, and smoothed his harmful, unhelmed brow,

Calling Alectryôn to his side, and said:

Through misty valleys of the lower world;

The Earth shall be at peace a summer's night;

Men shall have calm, and the unconquered host

Peopling the walls of Troas, and the tribes

Of Greece, shall sleep sweet sleep upon their arms;

For Aphroditê, queen of light and love,

Awaits me, blooming in the House of Fire,

Girt with the cestus, infinite in grace,

Dearer than battle and the joy of war:

She, for whose charms I would renounce the sword

Forever, even godhood, would she wreathe

My brows with myrtle, dwelling far from Heaven.

Hêphaistos, the lame cuckold, unto whose

Misshapen squalor Zeus hath given my queen,

To-night seeks Lemnos, and his sooty vault

Roofed by the roaring surge; wherein, betimes,

He and his Cyclops pound the ringing iron,

Forging great bolts for Zeus, and welding mail,

White-hot, in shapes for Heroes and the Gods.

Do thou, Alectryôn, faithful to my trust,

Hie with me to the mystic House of Fire.

Therein, with wine and fruitage of her isle,

Sweet odors, and all rarest sights and sounds,

My Paphian mistress shall regale us twain.

But when the feast is over, and thou seest

Arês and Aphroditê pass beyond

The portals of that chamber whence all winds

Of love flow ever toward the fourfold Earth,

Watch by the entrance, sleepless, while we sleep;

And warn us ere the glimpses of the Dawn;

Lest Hêlios, the spy, may peer within

Our windows, and to Lemnos speed apace, 244