Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/278

POEMS OF GREECE The portals of that chamber whence all winds

Of love flow ever toward the fourfold Earth,

Hypnos kept on, walking, yet half afloat

In the sweet air; and fluttering with cool wings

Above their couch fanned the reposeful pair

To slumber. Thus, a careless twilight hour,

Unknowing Eôs and her torch, they slept.

Ill-fated rest! Awake, ye fleet-winged Loves,

Your mistress! Eôs, rouse the sleeping God,

And warn him of the coming of the Day!

Alectryôn, wake! In vain: Eôs swept by,

Radiant, a blushing finger on her lips.

In vain! Close on her flight, from furthest East,

The peering Hêlios drove his lambent car,

Casting the tell-tale beams on earth and sky,

Until Olympos laughed within his light,

And all the House of Fire grew roofed with gold;

And through its brazen windows Hêlios gazed

Upon the sleeping lovers: thence away

To Lemnos flashed, across the rearward sea,

A messenger, from whom the vengeful smith,

Hêphaistos, learned the story of his wrongs;

Whence afterward rude scandal spread through Heaven.

But they, the lovers, startled from sweet sleep

By garish Day, stood timorous and mute,

Even as a regal pair, the hart and hind,

When first the keynote of the clarion horn

Pierces their covert, and the deep-mouthed hound

Bays, following on the trail; then, with small pause

For amorous partings, sped in diverse ways.

She, Aphroditê, clothed in pearly cloud,

Dropt from Olympos to the eastern shore;

Thence floated, half in shame, half laughter-pleased,

Southward across the blue Ægaean sea,

That had a thousand little dimpling smiles 248