Helen of Troy

“ ENGLISH LOVE-SONGS.
In a fair and far-off country, hidden to none, though visited by few, dwell a little band of lovely ladies, to whose youth and radiance the poets have added the crowning gift of immortality. There they live, with faint alluring smiles that never fade; and at their head is Helen of Troy, white-bosomed, azure-eyed, to whom men forgave all things for her beauty's sake. ”

“ When the Greek heroes leave Troy town, Agamemnon leads Cassandra captive, Neoptolemus is followed by Andromache, and Hecuba weeps torrents of tears in the strong grasp of Odysseus. A crowd of Trojan women fill the air with shrill laments, tearing their tresses and strewing dust upon their heads. Meanwhile, Helen is delayed by no desire to wail or weep; but a comely shame sits on her black eyes and glowing cheeks. Her heart leaps, and her whole form is as lovely as Aphrodite was when the gods discovered her with Ares in the net of Hephæstus. ”

“ In a way, it had all begun long before, when the Helen of Troy slipped through the narrows of my old New England port on a day in early June, the wind abeam, and was passed by a ship outward bound under full press of canvas. The scene came back to Hastings there in the dim light of the stateroom; the New England shore dark against the yellow sunset; the ship, phantom-like, her sails barred by shadows of spar and rigging; then the rumbling voice of the mate of the Helen of Troy: “The Winnemere, as I’m alive! It ain’t in nature to be meeting with her always. ”

“ Corrupt and fierce through Sparta's line.
Bred through me—bred through delicate hands
And wandering eyes and wanton lips,
Sighing after strange flesh as sighed these lips,
Straying after new sin as strayed these hands.
Mother of Helen! She whose breasts
To new desires unshaped the world;
Above Troy's summit towered these breasts,
Helen who wantoned with the world!
Helen is dead (she had love enough
To laugh at doom and mock at shrine)
And Clytemnestra, quiet enough
To-night beneath Apollo's shrine.
And I am left, the source, the spring
Of all their madness. ”

“ To mortal men no sweeter boon than rest;
And surely such a tale as thine is best
To make the dainty-footed hours go by,
Till sinks the sun in darkness and the West,
And soft stars lead the Night along the sky.”
XXI.
Then at the word of Helen Paris spoke,
“My tale is shorter than a summer day,—
My mother, ere I saw the light, awoke,
At dawn, in Ilios, shrieking in dismay,
Who dream’d that ’twixt her feet there fell and lay
A flaming brand, that utterly burn’d down
To dust of crumbling ashes red and grey,
The coronal of towers and all Troy town. ”

“ The character and history of Helen of Troy have been conceived of in very different ways by poets and mythologists. In attempting to trace the chief current of ancient traditions about Helen, we cannot really get further back than the Homeric poems, the Iliad and Odyssey. Philological conjecture may assure us that Helen, like most of the characters of old romance, is “merely the Dawn,” or Light, or some other bright being carried away by Paris, who represents Night, or Winter, or the Cloud, or some other power of darkness. ”

“ The viewless neighbours of our world she strips
The veil and shrieketh Troy's apocalypse:
"Woe to thee, Ilios! The fire, the fire! And rain,
Rain like to blood and tears to drown the plain
And cover all the earth up in a shroud,
One great death-clout for thee, Ilios the proud!
Touch not, handle not——" Outraged then she turned
To Helen—"O thou, for whom Troy shall be burned,
O ruinous face, O breasts made hard with gall,
Now are ye satisfied? Ye shall have all,
All Priam's sons and daughters, all his race
Gone quick to death, hailing thee, ruinous face!" ”

“ Thus, in the Helen of Virgil, we have splendid personal beauty combined with an accumulation of the most profoundly odious moral features. She is lost in sensuality, a traitress alike to Greece and to Troy, willing to make miserable victims of others in the hope of purchasing her own immunity: all her deep remorse and sorrow, all her tenderness and modesty, are blotted out from her character, and the void places in the picture are filled by the detestation, with which both Greeks and Trojans regarded, as indeed they might well regard, such a monster. ”

“ What fool desires a woman that no arms
May crush the wine of, and no lips find sweet?
All
Helen of Troy, Call Helen up, Call Helen!
Matthiolus
Show us that mind can fashion out of air
The beauty that the flesh surrendered up. ”

“ Of Priam's regal crown for other brows—
She, though foredoomed she knew, held to her vows,
And duly paid the thankless evening rite—
There came to Paris' house late in the night
Deïphobus his brother, young and trim,
For speech with fair-tressed Helen, for whose slim
And budded grace long had he sighed in vain;
And found her in full hall, and showed his pain
And need of her. To whom when she draws close
In hot and urgent crying words he shows
His case, hers now, that here she tarry not
Lest evil hap more dread than she can wot:
"For this," he says, "is Troy's extremest hour." ”

“ Penelope, we know for certain, made no excuses for her beautiful cousin, but hated her as the cause of her own sorrows and of the deaths of thousands of men in war, for all the Greek princes were bound by their oath to fight for Menelaus against any one who injured him and stole his wife away. But Helen was very unhappy in Troy, and blamed herself as bitterly as all the other women blamed her, and most of all Œnone, who had been the love of Paris. The men were much more kind to Helen, and were determined to fight to the death rather than lose the sight of her beauty among them. ”

“ Helena, you are no moon-goddess, but your namesake of Troy—the world’s desire.”
“Yet even Helen had her Paris,” interposed Caliphronas quickly.
“Every woman has her Paris nowadays,” said Crispin quickly, to forestall the angry reply of the rival lover; “only it is a city instead of a man, which is just as charming and more manageable. If Menelaus had been ruler of Lutetia, Helen would never have been persuaded to leave it for a dull provincial town like Troy.”
“‘Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris!’” observed Justinian quietly. ”

“ XXI.
Then the stars cross’d the zenith, and there came
On Troy that hour when slumber is most deep,
But any man that watch’d had seen a flame
Spring from the tall crest of the Trojan keep;
While from the belly of the Horse did leap
Men arm’d, and to the gates went stealthily,
While up the rocky way to Ilios creep
The Argives, new return’d across the sea.
XXII.
Now when the silence broke, and in that hour
When first the dawn of war was blazing red,
There came a light in Helen’s fragrant bower,
As on that evil night before she fled
From Lacedaemon and her marriage bed ”

“ Anastasia Falaise.
“Well, what do you make of that, my dear?” said Horace Lestrange, feeling after his matches. “Seems to let us out, doesn’t it?”
Edith let the paper fall into her lap and looked into the fire.
“Poor woman!” she said very gently. “Do you know, Horace, she reminds me just a little of Helen of Troy. Helen used to talk like that, as if the soul had been eaten out of her words. I think a woman must be very unhappy to write like that.”
“It is time you went to bed, Edith; you look tired,” said her husband. “Just throw that letter on the fire, will you?” ”

“ To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,
With these your white enchanting fingers touch’d,
Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more
Than all the island kings—disarm great Hector.
HELEN.
’Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,
Yea, overshines ourself.
PARIS.
Sweet, above thought I love thee.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II. Troy. Pandarus’ orchard. Enter Pandarus and Troilus’ Boy, meeting. ”

“ Sometimes Fair Helen came to look across the plain to the fellow-countrymen whom she had forsaken; and although she was the cause of all this war, the Trojans half forgave her when she passed by, because her beauty was like a spell, and warmed hard hearts as the sunshine mellows apples. So for nine years the Greeks plundered the neighboring towns, but the city Troy stood fast, and the Grecian ships waited with folded wings. ”

“ But no heavenly spark can be detected in Fifine; and he is reduced to seeking a virtue for her, a justification for himself, in that very fact. If she has no virtue, she also pretends to none. If she gives nothing to society, she asks nothing of it. His fancy raises up a procession of such women as the world has crowned: a Helen, a Cleopatra, some Christian saint; he bids Elvire see herself as part of it—as the true Helen, who, according to the legend, never quitted Greece, contemplated her own phantom within the walls of Troy—and be satisfied that she is "best" of all. ”

“ And Paris trembled before his brother's wrath, but some of his old manhood returned to him.
"Thou speakest as all men speak who know not Aphrodite's power," he said. "Nevertheless, if thou wilt have it so, send forth a herald to Menelaus, and tell him I accept his challenge, and will fight him for the sake of Helen, his wife. And let the hosts of the Achæans and the hosts of Troy lay down their arms, and we two will stand up alone between them, and whichsoever of us shall fall in death, his side shall give up Helen to the victor; and the war shall cease, and peace be made between the nations." ”

“ She stopped him, took him by the hand, urged him to restrain his useless anger, and calmed and quieted him with soothing words. "It is not Helen," said she, "that has caused the destruction of Troy. It is through the irresistible and irrevocable decrees of the gods that the city has fallen. It is useless for you to struggle against inevitable destiny, or to attempt to take vengeance on mere human means and instrumentalities. Think no more of Helen. ”

“ And there she found Helen, fairest of women, her white arms swiftly moving back and forward as she wove a great purple web of double wool, and wrought thereon pictures of many battles of the Greeks and the men of Troy.
"Come hither, dear lady," said Iris, "and see a wondrous thing. For they that so fiercely fought with each other, now sit in silence. The battle is stayed; they lean upon their shields, and their tall spears are thrust in the earth by their sides. But for thee are Menelaus and Paris now going to fight, and thou shalt be the wife of the conqueror." ”

“ Her first book of poems was "Sonnets to Duse" (1907) , but "Helen of Troy" (1911) was the true launch of her career, followed by "Rivers to the Sea" (1915) , "Love Songs" (1917) , "Flame and Shadow" (1920) and more. Her final volume, "Strange Victory", is considered by many to be predictive of her suicide. ”

“ Here thou shalt not die, nor by torment, for thy death shall come to thee from the water as the dead seer foretold, but ere thou diest, once more thou shalt look upon the Golden Helen, and hear her words of love and know her kiss, though thine she shall not be. And learn that a great host marches upon the land of Khem, and with it sails a fleet of thine own people, the Achæans. Go down and meet them and take what comes, where the swords shine that smote Troy. ”

“ And the face of the woman was the face of the maiden, and even more beautiful, but sad with grief and with an ancient shame. Then he remembered how once he had stolen into Troy town from the camp of the Achæans, and how he had crept in a beggar’s rags within the house of Priam to spy upon the Trojans, and how Helen, the fairest of women, had bathed him, and anointed him with oil, and suffered him to go in peace, all for the memory of the love that was between them of old. ”

“ The morning found Troy in ashes, her wealth in the hands of the Greeks, and her inhabitants dead or in slavery.
Priam was slain at his own family altar, and the beautiful but perfidious Helen, the cause of so much bloodshed and misery, the cause of the overthrow of one of the greatest cities of ancient times, was taken captive by her former people.
Think for thyself—one good idea, But known to be thine own, Is better than a thousand gleaned From fields by others sown. ”

“ Andromache. How great the ill that even Helen weeps!
Why does she weep? What trickery or crime
Plots now the Ithacan? From Ida's top,
Or Troy's high tower, will he cast the maid 955
Upon the rocks? Or hurl her to the deep
From the great cliff which, from its riven side,
Out of the shallow bay, Sigeon lifts?
What wouldst thou cover with deceitful face?
No ill were heavier than this: to see 960
Pyrrhus the son of Priam's Hecuba.
Speak, plainly tell the penalty thou bringst.
Take from defeat at least this evil,—fraud.
Thou seest thou dost not find us loth to die.
Helen. ”

“ Of Ida; and the heavy clouds and chill
Were gathering like mourners, sad and slow,
And Zeus did thunder mightily, and fill
The dells and glades of Ida deep with snow.
XLVI.
Now Paris was not sated with the fame
And rich reward Troy gave his archery;
But o’er the wine he boasted that the game
That very night he deem’d to win, or die;
“For scarce their watch the tempest will defy,”
He said, “and all undream’d of might we go,
And fall upon the Argives where they lie,
Unseen, unheard, amid the silent snow.” ”

“ But when the flame wax’d fierce, the singing died;
And soon with red wine from a golden cup
Priests drench’d the pyre; but no man might divide
The ashes of the Bridegroom from the Bride.
Nay, they were wedded, and at rest again,
As in those old days on the mountain-side,
Before the promise of their youth was vain.
BOOK VI—THE SACK OF TROY. THE RETURN OF HELEN
The sack of Troy, and of how Menelaus would have let stone Helen, but Aphrodite saved her, and made them at one again, and how they came home to Lacedaemon, and of their translation to Elysium. ”