Edith Wharton

“ Hast thou, harsh arbitress of fruit and flower,
Cut off the natural increase of the fields?
The baffled herds, tongues lolling, eyes agape,
Range wretchedly from sullen spring to spring,
A million sun-blades lacerate the ground,
And the shrunk fruits untimely drop, like tears
That Earth at her own desolation sheds.
These are the words Zeus bids me bring to thee.
DEMETER
To whom reply: No pasture longs for rain
As for Persephone I thirst and hunger.
Give me my child, and all the earth shall laugh
Like Rhodian rose-fields in the eye of June.
HERMES
What if such might were mine? ”

“ Thou hast not seen them meet,
Ghosts of dead babes and ghosts of tired men,
Or thou wouldst veil thy face, and curse the sun!
DEMETER
Thou wilt forget the things that thou hast seen.
PERSEPHONE
More dreadful are the things thou hast to show.
DEMETER
Art thou so certain? Hard is it for men
To know a god, and it has come to me
That we, we also, may be blind to men.
PERSEPHONE
O mother, thou hast spoken! ”

“ And the pale myrtle scents the rain-washed air --
Ere oleanders down the mountain stream
Pass the wild torch of summer, and my kine
Breathe of gold gorse and honey-laden sage;
Between the first white flowering of the bay
And the last almond's fading from the hill,
Along the fields of Enna came a maid
Who seemed among her mates to move alone,
As the full moon will mow the sky of stars,
And whom, by that transcendence, I divined
Of breed Olympian, and Demeter's child.
DEMETER
All-seeing god! So walks she in my dreams. ”