Poems (Sackville)/The Helots

by Margaret Sackville

THE HELOTS

(Sparta, 500 b.c.)

In peace and in peril
 They feed on our lives,
When the war-lust is sterile,
 With lashes, with knives
They goad us, and rich with our life blood the land waxes fruitful and thrives.

What pain can defeat us?
 What terror dismay?
What passion may heat us—
 Degenerate clay,
Called forth at the bidding of princes mere bodies to torture and slay?

We have sprung from the dust;
 Not of ours was the breed,
When the earth's barren crust,
 As the great gods decreed,
Brought forth from its stones a new people tremendous in purpose and deed.

We follow despair;
 In our eyes is no light;
Cold shadows ensnare
 And deaden our sight;
We see but a darkness eternal—deep gulfs of deplorable night.

Down-trodden, down-smitten
 We live, for in death
Has a god's hand re-written
 The evil Life saith,
The songs which Life sings in derision with bitter and insolent breath?

The greatest and fairest,
 The lords of the earth,
Thou, Pluto, declarest
 Shall share in thy mirth—
Shall laugh with thy laughter and slumber in meadows of infinite dearth.

How then if the strong men
 Thus prosper in Hell
Shall the outcast among men
 Eternally dwell?
If the kernel is crushed and made shapeless shall any take heed for the shell?

Of dust the gods made us
 And mocked us with life;
In flesh they arrayed us,
 And filled us with strife:
For a guerdon they gave us the fetter—for pleasure the lash and the knife,

For freedom we pine not,
 We claim no release;
But we pray that the fine knot
 That binds us may crease
Each sinew, each nerve of our masters with pain that can fail not nor cease.

Our gods are not their gods—
 We worship alone
Pale Dæmons and sere gods
 Unpæaned, unknown—
Whose favour no incense may quicken, whose anger no prayer may atone,

Not radiant Apollo,
 Whose voice if men long
To hear and to follow
 With glory of song,
Will scatter their souls as the sea-flakes, as foam when the tempest is strong.

But a god of hushed weeping,
 Of terrible mirth,
For ever unsleeping—
 The kings of the earth
He sees, and his anger 1Is pregnant, his curses are fruitful of birth.

Not crowned Aphrodite
 Gold-girdled, is ours,
But a goddess more mighty
 Who burns and devours
All love and is girt with a serpent—with thorns, and sick nightshade for flowers.

No pale Dionysus,
 No madness divine,
Can lure or entice us
 With fury of wine
From the tendrils of bitter vine garlands, which poison our hearts as they twine.

But a god of dull madness,
 A god of the dead,
Who never from sadness
 Of Hades was led
By Zeus, but treads where mere shadows have trod and for ever shall tread.

All Pallas could tell us
 We scorn in our hearts,
But strong to impel us
 With clamorous darts
Of hatred arises a goddess who numbers each tear as it starts.

Not Artemis claims us—
 No servants of Pan
Are we, but one names us
 Whose fingers can span
The weapons of wrath and destruction—the terrible godhead of Man.

Let them shrink from our gods,
 Let them tremble, for we
Shall shatter their rods
 And strike till the sea,
Till the earth, by their anguish made eager, proclaim us triumphant and free.

They have urged us like cattle,
 Like sheep have they slain,
But hate in the chattel
 May guide as a brain—
Once quickened, the hand of the lifeless not soon is made lifeless again.

The sword once arisen
 Not soon to its sheath
Shall return, for its prison
 It scorns when the grief
Of those it transfixes and tortures have brought to its hunger relief.

They fear us—they hate us
 These lords, and they keep
Stern watch to abate us—
 (The river is deep,
The current is strong in its fury, the cliffs that surround it are steep).

Though we serve them in battle
 We laugh, for we hear
In our foeman's death rattle
 The sound of their fear,
The cries of their women and children, the shriek of their doom that is near.

Ye gods, without pity—
 Our gods are more strong—
Ye kings of the city,
 Who goad us with wrong—
With wrong and with wild desperation, demand of your spirits, How long!