Lift thine eyes; that temple is yonder. O Pausanias, the sculptor's work-room is the earth."
Alcman paused, and sweeping his hand once more over his lyre, chanted as follows:
"Dewdrop that weepest on the sharp-barbèd thorn, Why didst thou fall from Day's golden chalices? 'My tears bathe the thorn,' said the Dewdrop, 'To nourish the bloom of the rose.'
"Soul of the Infant, why to calamity Comest thou wailing from the calm spirit-source? 'Ask of the Dew,' said the Infant, 'Why it descends on the thorn!'
"Dewdrop from storm, and soul from calamity Vanish soon--whither? let the Dew answer thee; 'Have not my tears been my glory? Tears drew me up to the sun.'
"What were thine uses, that thou art glorified? What did thy tears give, profiting earth or sky? 'There, to the thorn-stem a blossom, Here, to the Iris a tint.'"
Alcman had modulated the tones of his voice into a sweetness so plaintive and touching, that, when he paused, the hand-maidens had involuntarily risen and gathered round, hushed and noiseless. Cleonice had lowered her veil over her face and bosom; but the heaving of its tissue betrayed her half-suppressed, gentle sob; and the proud mournfulness on the Spartan's swarthy countenance had given way to a soft composure, melancholy still--but melancholy as a lulled, though dark water, over which starlight steals through disparted cloud.
Cleonice was the first to break the spell which bound them all.
"I would go within," she murmured faintly.
"The sun, now slanting, strikes through the vine-leaves, and blinds me with its glare."
Pausanias approached timidly, and taking her by the hand, drew her aside, along one of the grassy alleys that stretched onwards to the sea.
The handmaidens tarried behind to cluster nearer round the singer. They forgot he was a slave.
Note:
[28] Anaxagoras was then between 20 and 30 years of age.--See Ritter, vol. ii., for the sentiment here ascribed to him, and a general view of his tenets.
CHAPTER II.
"Thou art weeping still, Cleonice!" said the Spartan, "and I have not the privilege to kiss away thy tears."
"Nay, I weep not," answered the girl, throwing up her veil; and her face was calm, if still sad--the tear yet on the eyelids, but the smile upon the lip--[Greek: dakruoen gelaoisa]. "Thy singer has learned his art from a teacher heavenlier than the Pierides, and its name is Hope."
"But if I understand him aright," said Pausanias, "the Hope that inspires him is a goddess who blesses us little on the earth."
As if the Mothon had overheard the Spartan, his voice here suddenly rose behind them, singing:
"There the Beautiful and Glorious Intermingle evermore."
Involuntarily both turned. The Mothon seemed as if explaining to the handmaids the allegory of his marriage song upon Helen and Achilles, for his hand was raised on high, and again, with an emphasis, he chanted:
"There, throughout the Blessed Islands, And amid the Race of Light, Do the Beautiful and Glorious Intermingle evermore."
"Canst thou not wait, if thou so lovest me?' said Cleonice, with more tenderness in her voice than it had ever yet betrayed to him; "life is very short. Hush!" she continued, checking the passionate interruption that burst from his lips; "I have something I would confide to thee: listen. Know that in my childhood I had a dear friend, a maiden a few years older than myself, and she had the divine gift of trance which comes from Apollo. Often, gazing into space, her eyes became fixed, and her frame still as a statue's; then a shiver seized her limbs, and prophecy broke from her lips. And she told me, in one of these hours, when, as she said, 'all space and all time seemed spread before her like a sunlit ocean,' she told me of my future, so far as its leaves have yet unfolded from the stem of my life. Spartan, she prophesied that I should see thee--and--" Cleonice paused, blushing, and then hurried on, "and she told me that suddenly her eye could follow my fate on the earth no more, that it vanished out of the time and the space on which it gazed, and saying it she wept, and broke into funeral song. And therefore, Pausanias, I say life is very short for me at least--"
"Hold," cried Pausanias; "torture not me, nor delude thyself with the dreams of a raving girl. Lives she near? Let me visit her with thee, and I will prove thy prophetess an impostor."
"They whom the Priesthood of Delphi employ throughout Hellas to find the fit natures for a Pythoness heard of her, and heard herself. She whom thou callest impostor gives the answer to perplexed nations from the Pythian shrine. But wherefore doubt her?--where the sorrow? I feel none. If love does rule the worlds beyond, and does unite souls who love nobly here, yonder we shall meet, O descendant of Hercules, and human laws will not part us there."
"Thou die! die before me! thou, scarcely half my years! And I be left here, with no comfort but a singer's dreamy verse, not even mine ambition! Thrones would vanish out of earth, and turn to cinders in thine urn."
"Speak not of thrones," said Cleonice, with imploring softness, "for the prophetess, too, spake of steps that went towards a throne, and vanished at the threshold of darkness, beside which sate the Furies. Speak not of thrones, dream but of glory and Hellas--of what thy soul tells thee is that virtue which makes life an Uranian music, and thus unites it to the eternal symphony, as the breath of the single flute melts when it parts from the instrument into the great concord of the choir.