The World\'s Desire

H >> H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang >> The World\'s Desire

THE WORLD'S DESIRE

by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang




To

W. B. RICHMOND, A.R.A.



PREFACE

The period in which the story of _The World's Desire_ is cast, was a
period when, as Miss Braddon remarks of the age of the Plantagenets,
"anything might happen." Recent discoveries, mainly by Dr. Schliemann
and Mr. Flinders Petrie, have shown that there really was much
intercourse between Heroic Greece, the Greece of the Achaeans, and the
Egypt of the Ramessids. This connection, rumoured of in Greek legends,
is attested by Egyptian relics found in the graves of Mycenae, and by
very ancient Levantine pottery, found in contemporary sites in Egypt.
Homer himself shows us Odysseus telling a feigned, but obviously not
improbable, tale of an Achaean raid on Egypt. Meanwhile the sojourn of
the Israelites, with their Exodus from the land of bondage, though not
yet found to be recorded on the Egyptian monuments, was probably part of
the great contemporary stir among the peoples. These events, which are
only known through Hebrew texts, must have worn a very different aspect
in the eyes of Egyptians, and of pre-historic Achaean observers, hostile
in faith to the Children of Israel. The topic has since been treated in
fiction by Dr. Ebers, in his _Joshua_. In such a twilight age, fancy has
free play, but it is a curious fact that, in this romance, modern fancy
has accidentally coincided with that of ancient Greece.

Most of the novel was written, and the apparently "un-Greek" marvels
attributed to Helen had been put on paper, when a part of Furtwaengler's
recent great lexicon of Mythology appeared, with the article on Helen.
The authors of _The World's Desire_ read it with a feeling akin to
amazement. Their wildest inventions about the Daughter of the Swan, it
seemed, had parallels in the obscurer legends of Hellas. There actually
is a tradition, preserved by Eustathius, that Paris beguiled Helen
by magically putting on the aspect of Menelaus. There is a mediaeval
parallel in the story of Uther and Ygerne, mother of Arthur, and
the classical case of Zeus and Amphitryon is familiar. Again, the
blood-dripping ruby of Helen, in the tale, is mentioned by Servius in
his commentary on Virgil (it was pointed out to one of the authors
by Mr. Mackail). But we did not know that the Star of the story was
actually called the "Star-stone" in ancient Greek fable. The many voices
of Helen are alluded to by Homer in the _Odyssey_: she was also named
_Echo_, in old tradition. To add that she could assume the aspect of
every man's first love was easy. Goethe introduces the same quality
in the fair witch of his _Walpurgis Nacht_. A respectable portrait of
Meriamun's secret counsellor exists, in pottery, in the British Museum,
though, as it chances, it was not discovered by us until after the
publication of this romance. The Laestrygonian of the Last Battle is
introduced as a pre-historic Norseman. Mr. Gladstone, we think, was
perhaps the first to point out that the Laestrygonians of the _Odyssey_,
with their home on a fiord in the Land of the Midnight Sun, were
probably derived from travellers' tales of the North, borne with the
amber along the immemorial Sacred Way. The Magic of Meriamun is in
accordance with Egyptian ideas; her resuscitation of the dead woman,
Hataska, has a singular parallel in Reginald Scot's _Discovery of
Witchcraft_ (1584), where the spell "by the silence of the Night" is not
without poetry. The general conception of Helen as the World's Desire,
Ideal Beauty, has been dealt with by M. Paul de St. Victor, and Mr. J.
A. Symonds. For the rest, some details of battle, and of wounds, which
must seem very "un-Greek" to critics ignorant of Greek literature, are
borrowed from Homer.

H. R. H. A. L.





THE WORLD'S DESIRE

by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

Come with us, ye whose hearts are set
On this, the Present to forget;
Come read the things whereof ye know
_They were not, and could not be so!_
The murmur of the fallen creeds,
Like winds among wind-shaken reeds
Along the banks of holy Nile,
Shall echo in your ears the while;
The fables of the North and South
Shall mingle in a modern mouth;
The fancies of the West and East
Shall flock and flit about the feast
Like doves that cooled, with waving wing,
The banquets of the Cyprian king.
Old shapes of song that do not die
Shall haunt the halls of memory,
And though the Bow shall prelude clear
Shrill as the song of Gunnar's spear,
There answer sobs from lute and lyre
That murmured of The World's Desire.

* * * * *

There lives no man but he hath seen
The World's Desire, the fairy queen.
None but hath seen her to his cost,
Not one but loves what he has lost.
None is there but hath heard her sing
Divinely through his wandering;
Not one but he has followed far
The portent of the Bleeding Star;
Not one but he hath chanced to wake,
Dreamed of the Star and found the Snake.
Yet, through his dreams, a wandering fire,
Still, still she flits, THE WORLD'S DESIRE!




BOOK I



I

THE SILENT ISLE

Across the wide backs of the waves, beneath the mountains, and between
the islands, a ship came stealing from the dark into the dusk, and from
the dusk into the dawn. The ship had but one mast, one broad brown sail
with a star embroidered on it in gold; her stem and stern were built
high, and curved like a bird's beak; her prow was painted scarlet, and
she was driven by oars as well as by the western wind.

A man stood alone on the half-deck at the bows, a man who looked always
forward, through the night, and the twilight, and the clear morning. He
was of no great stature, but broad-breasted and very wide-shouldered,
with many signs of strength. He had blue eyes, and dark curled locks
falling beneath a red cap such as sailors wear, and over a purple cloak,
fastened with a brooch of gold. There were threads of silver in his
curls, and his beard was flecked with white. His whole heart was
following his eyes, watching first for the blaze of the island beacons
out of the darkness, and, later, for the smoke rising from the far-off
hills. But he watched in vain; there was neither light nor smoke on the
grey peak that lay clear against a field of yellow sky.

There was no smoke, no fire, no sound of voices, nor cry of birds. The
isle was deadly still.

As they neared the coast, and neither heard nor saw a sign of life, the
man's face fell. The gladness went out of his eyes, his features grew
older with anxiety and doubt, and with longing for tidings of his home.

No man ever loved his home more than he, for this was Odysseus, the
son of Laertes--whom some call Ulysses--returned from his unsung second
wandering. The whole world has heard the tale of his first voyage, how
he was tossed for ten years on the sea after the taking of Troy, how
he reached home at last, alone and disguised as a beggar; how he found
violence in his house, how he slew his foes in his own hall, and won his
wife again. But even in his own country he was not permitted to rest,
for there was a curse upon him and a labour to be accomplished. He must
wander again till he reached the land of men who had never tasted salt,
nor ever heard of the salt sea. There he must sacrifice to the Sea-God,
and then, at last, set his face homewards. Now he had endured that
curse, he had fulfilled the prophecy, he had angered, by misadventure,
the Goddess who was his friend, and after adventures that have never yet
been told, he had arrived within a bowshot of Ithaca.

He came from strange countries, from the Gates of the Sun and from White
Rock, from the Passing Place of Souls and the people of Dreams.

But he found his own isle more still and strange by far. The realm of
Dreams was not so dumb, the Gates of the Sun were not so still, as the
shores of the familiar island beneath the rising dawn.

This story, whereof the substance was set out long ago by Rei, the
instructed Egyptian priest, tells what he found there, and the tale of
the last adventures of Odysseus, Laertes' son.

The ship ran on and won the well-known haven, sheltered from wind by two
headlands of sheer cliff. There she sailed straight in, till the leaves
of the broad olive tree at the head of the inlet were tangled in her
cordage. Then the Wanderer, without once looking back, or saying one
word of farewell to his crew, caught a bough of the olive tree with his
hand, and swung himself ashore. Here he kneeled, and kissed the earth,
and, covering his head within his cloak, he prayed that he might find
his house at peace, his wife dear and true, and his son worthy of him.

But not one word of his prayer was to be granted. The Gods give and
take, but on the earth the Gods cannot restore.

When he rose from his knees he glanced back across the waters, but there
was now no ship in the haven, nor any sign of a sail upon the seas.

And still the land was silent; not even the wild birds cried a welcome.

The sun was hardly up, men were scarce awake, the Wanderer said to
himself; and he set a stout heart to the steep path leading up the hill,
over the wolds, and across the ridge of rock that divides the two masses
of the island. Up he climbed, purposing, as of old, to seek the house of
his faithful servant, the swineherd, and learn from him the tidings of
his home. On the brow of a hill he stopped to rest, and looked down on
the house of the servant. But the strong oak palisade was broken, no
smoke came from the hole in the thatched roof, and, as he approached,
the dogs did not run barking, as sheep-dogs do, at the stranger. The
very path to the house was overgrown, and dumb with grass; even a dog's
keen ears could scarcely have heard a footstep.

The door of the swineherd's hut was open, but all was dark within. The
spiders had woven a glittering web across the empty blackness, a sign
that for many days no man had entered. Then the Wanderer shouted twice,
and thrice, but the only answer was an echo from the hill. He went in,
hoping to find food, or perhaps a spark of fire sheltered under the dry
leaves. But all was vacant and cold as death.

The Wanderer came forth into the warm sunlight, set his face to the hill
again, and went on his way to the city of Ithaca.

He saw the sea from the hill-top glittering as of yore, but there were
no brown sails of fisher-boats on the sea. All the land that should now
have waved with the white corn was green with tangled weeds. Half-way
down the rugged path was a grove of alders, and the basin into which
water flowed from the old fountain of the Nymphs. But no maidens were
there with their pitchers; the basin was broken, and green with mould;
the water slipped through the crevices and hurried to the sea. There
were no offerings of wayfarers, rags and pebbles, by the well; and on
the altar of the Nymphs the flame had long been cold. The very ashes
were covered with grass, and a branch of ivy had hidden the stone of
sacrifice.

On the Wanderer pressed with a heavy heart; now the high roof of his own
hall and the wide fenced courts were within his sight, and he hurried
forward to know the worst.

Too soon he saw that the roofs were smokeless, and all the court was
deep in weeds. Where the altar of Zeus had stood in the midst of the
court there was now no altar, but a great, grey mound, not of earth, but
of white dust mixed with black. Over this mound the coarse grass pricked
up scantily, like thin hair on a leprosy.

Then the Wanderer shuddered, for out of the grey mound peeped the
charred black bones of the dead. He drew near, and, lo! the whole heap
was of nothing else than the ashes of men and women. Death had been busy
here: here many people had perished of a pestilence. They had all been
consumed on one funeral fire, while they who laid them there must have
fled, for there was no sign of living man. The doors gaped open, and
none entered, and none came forth. The house was dead, like the people
who had dwelt in it.

Then the Wanderer paused where once the old hound Argos had welcomed him
and had died in that welcome. There, unwelcomed, he stood, leaning on
his staff. Then a sudden ray of the sun fell on something that glittered
in the heap, and he touched it with the end of the staff that he had in
his hand. It slid jingling from the heap; it was the bone of a forearm,
and that which glittered on it was a half-molten ring of gold. On the
gold lambda these characters were engraved:

IKMALIOS MEPOIESEN

(Icmalios made me.)

At the sight of the armlet the Wanderer fell on the earth, grovelling
among the ashes of the pyre, for he knew the gold ring which he had
brought from Ephyre long ago, for a gift to his wife Penelope. This
was the bracelet of the bride of his youth, and here, a mockery and a
terror, were those kind arms in which he had lain. Then his strength was
shaken with sobbing, and his hands clutched blindly before him, and he
gathered dust and cast it upon his head till the dark locks were defiled
with the ashes of his dearest, and he longed to die.

There he lay, biting his hands for sorrow, and for wrath against God and
Fate. There he lay while the sun in the heavens smote him, and he knew
it not; while the wind of the sunset stirred in his hair, and he stirred
not. He could not even shed one tear, for this was the sorest of all the
sorrows that he had known on the waves of the sea, or on land among the
wars of men.

The sun fell and the ways were darkened. Slowly the eastern sky grew
silver with the moon. A night-fowl's voice was heard from afar, it drew
nearer; then through the shadow of the pyre the black wings fluttered
into the light, and the carrion bird fixed its talons and its beak on
the Wanderer's neck. Then he moved at length, tossed up an arm, and
caught the bird of darkness by the neck, and broke it, and dashed it on
the ground. His sick heart was mad with the little sudden pain, and he
clutched for the knife in his girdle that he might slay himself, but
he was unarmed. At last he rose, muttering, and stood in the moonlight,
like a lion in some ruinous palace of forgotten kings. He was faint with
hunger and weak with long lamenting, as he stepped within his own doors.
There he paused on that high threshold of stone where once he had sat in
the disguise of a beggar, that very threshold whence, on another day, he
had shot the shafts of doom among the wooers of his wife and the wasters
of his home. But now his wife was dead: all his voyaging was ended here,
and all his wars were vain. In the white light the house of his kingship
was no more than the ghost of a home, dreadful, unfamiliar, empty
of warmth and love and light. The tables were fallen here and there
throughout the long hall; mouldering bones, from the funeral feast, and
shattered cups and dishes lay in one confusion; the ivory chairs were
broken, and on the walls the moonbeams glistened now and again from
points of steel and blades of bronze, though many swords were dark with
rust.

But there, in its gleaming case, lay one thing friendly and familiar.
There lay the Bow of Eurytus, the bow for which great Heracles had slain
his own host in his halls; the dreadful bow that no mortal man but the
Wanderer could bend. He was never used to carry this precious bow with
him on shipboard, when he went to the wars, but treasured it at home,
the memorial of a dear friend foully slain. So now, when the voices of
dog, and slave, and child, and wife were mute, there yet came out of
the stillness a word of welcome to the Wanderer. For this bow, which
had thrilled in the grip of a god, and had scattered the shafts of the
vengeance of Heracles, was wondrously made and magical. A spirit dwelt
within it which knew of things to come, which boded the battle from
afar, and therefore always before the slaying of men the bow sang
strangely through the night. The voice of it was thin and shrill, a
ringing and a singing of the string and of the bow. While the Wanderer
stood and looked on his weapon, hark! the bow began to thrill! The sound
was faint at first, a thin note, but as he listened the voice of it in
that silence grew clear, strong, angry and triumphant. In his ears and
to his heart it seemed that the wordless chant rang thus:

Keen and low
Doth the arrow sing
The Song of the Bow,
The sound of the string.
The shafts cry shrill:
Let us forth again,
Let us feed our fill
On the flesh of men.
Greedy and fleet
Do we fly from far,
Like the birds that meet
For the feast of war,
Till the air of fight
With our wings be stirred,
As it whirrs from the flight
Of the ravening bird.
Like the flakes that drift
On the snow-wind's breath,
Many and swift,
And winged for death--
Greedy and fleet,
Do we speed from far,
Like the birds that meet
On the bridge of war.
Fleet as ghosts that wail,
When the dart strikes true,
Do the swift shafts hail,
Till they drink warm dew.
Keen and low
Do the grey shafts sing
The Song of the Bow,
The sound of the string.

This was the message of Death, and this was the first sound that had
broken the stillness of his home.

At the welcome of this music which spoke to his heart--this music he had
heard so many a time--the Wanderer knew that there was war at hand.
He knew that the wings of his arrows should be swift to fly, and their
beaks of bronze were whetted to drink the blood of men. He put out his
hand and took the bow, and tried the string, and it answered shrill as
the song of the swallow.

Then at length, when he heard the bowstring twang to his touch, the
fountains of his sorrow were unsealed; tears came like soft rains on a
frozen land, and the Wanderer wept.

When he had his fill of weeping, he rose, for hunger drove him--hunger
that is of all things the most shameless, being stronger far than
sorrow, or love, or any other desire. The Wanderer found his way through
the narrow door behind the dais, and stumbling now and again over fallen
fragments of the home which he himself had built, he went to the inner,
secret storehouse. Even _he_ could scarcely find the door, for saplings
of trees had grown up about it; yet he found it at last. Within the holy
well the water was yet babbling and shining in the moonlight over the
silver sands; and here, too, there was store of mouldering grain, for
the house had been abundantly rich when the great plague fell upon the
people while he was far away. So he found food to satisfy his hunger,
after a sort, and next he gathered together out of his treasure-chest
the beautiful golden armour of unhappy Paris, son of Priam, the false
love of fair Helen. These arms had been taken at the sack of Troy, and
had lain long in the treasury of Menelaus in Sparta; but on a day he had
given them to Odysseus, the dearest of all his guests. The Wanderer
clad himself in this golden gear, and took the sword called "Euryalus's
Gift," a bronze blade with a silver hilt, and a sheath of ivory, which
a stranger had given him in a far-off land. Already the love of life
had come back to him, now that he had eaten and drunk, and had heard the
Song of the Bow, the Slayer of Men. He lived yet, and hope lived in him
though his house was desolate, and his wedded wife was dead, and there
was none to give him tidings of his one child, Telemachus. Even so
life beat strong in his heart, and his hands would keep his head if any
sea-robbers had come to the city of Ithaca and made their home there,
like hawks in the forsaken nest of an eagle of the sea. So he clad
himself in his armour, and chose out two spears from a stand of lances,
and cleaned them, and girt about his shoulders a quiver full of shafts,
and took in hand his great bow, the Bow of Eurytus, which no other man
could bend.

Then he went forth from the ruined house into the moonlight, went
forth for the last time; for never again did the high roof echo to the
footstep of its lord. Long has the grass grown over it, and the sea-wind
wailed!



II

THE VISION OF THE WORLD'S DESIRE

The fragrant night was clear and still, the silence scarce broken by the
lapping of the waves, as the Wanderer went down from his fallen home to
the city on the sea, walking warily, and watching for any light from the
houses of the people. But they were all as dark as his own, many of them
roofless and ruined, for, after the plague, an earthquake had smitten
the city. There were gaping chasms in the road, here and there, and
through rifts in the walls of the houses the moon shone strangely,
making ragged shadows. At last the Wanderer reached the Temple of
Athene, the Goddess of War; but the roof had fallen in, the pillars were
overset, and the scent of wild thyme growing in the broken pavement rose
where he walked. Yet, as he stood by the door of the fane, where he had
burned so many a sacrifice, at length he spied a light blazing from the
windows of a great chapel by the sea. It was the Temple of Aphrodite,
the Queen of Love, and from the open door a sweet savour of incense and
a golden blaze rushed forth till they were lost in the silver of the
moonshine and in the salt smell of the sea. Thither the Wanderer went
slowly, for his limbs were swaying with weariness, and he was half in
a dream. Yet he hid himself cunningly in the shadow of a long avenue
of myrtles, for he guessed that sea-robbers were keeping revel in
the forsaken shrine. But he heard no sound of singing and no tread of
dancing feet within the fane of the Goddess of Love; the sacred plot
of the goddess and her chapels were silent. He hearkened awhile, and
watched, till at last he took courage, drew near the doors, and entered
the holy place. But in the tall, bronze braziers there were no faggots
burning, nor were there torches lighted in the hands of the golden men
and maids, the images that stand within the fane of Aphrodite. Yet, if
he did not dream, nor take moonlight for fire, the temple was bathed in
showers of gold by a splendour of flame. None might see its centre nor
its fountain; it sprang neither from the altar nor the statue of the
goddess, but was everywhere imminent, a glory not of this world, a fire
untended and unlit. And the painted walls with the stories of the loves
of men and gods, and the carven pillars and the beams, and the roof of
green, were bright with flaming fire!

At this the Wanderer was afraid, knowing that an immortal was at hand;
for the comings and goings of the gods were attended, as he had seen,
by this wonderful light of unearthly fire. So he bowed his head, and hid
his face as he sat by the altar in the holiest of the holy shrine, and
with his right hand he grasped the horns of the altar. As he sat there,
perchance he woke, and perchance he slept. However it was, it seemed
to him that soon there came a murmuring and a whispering of the myrtle
leaves and laurels, and a sound in the tops of the pines, and then his
face was fanned by a breath more cold than the wind that wakes the dawn.
At the touch of this breath the Wanderer shuddered, and the hair on his
flesh stood up, so cold was the strange wind.

There was silence; and he heard a voice, and he knew that it was the
voice of no mortal, but of a goddess. For the speech of goddesses was
not strange in his ears; he knew the clarion cry of Athene, the Queen of
Wisdom and of War; and the winning words of Circe, the Daughter of the
Sun, and the sweet song of Calypso's voice as she wove with her golden
shuttle at the loom. But now the words came sweeter than the moaning of
doves, more soft than sleep. So came the golden voice, whether he woke
or whether he dreamed.

"Odysseus, thou knowest me not, nor am I thy lady, nor hast thou ever
been my servant! Where is she, the Queen of the Air, Athene, and why
comest _thou_ here as a suppliant at the knees of the daughter of
Dione?"

He answered nothing, but he bowed his head in deeper sorrow.

The voice spake again:

"Behold, thy house is desolate; thy hearth is cold. The wild hare breeds
on thy hearthstone, and the night-bird roosts beneath thy roof-tree.
Thou hast neither child nor wife nor native land, and _she_ hath
forsaken thee--thy Lady Athene. Many a time didst thou sacrifice to her
the thighs of kine and sheep, but didst thou ever give so much as a
pair of dove to _me_? Hath she left thee, as the Dawn forsook Tithonus,
because there are now threads of silver in the darkness of thy hair? Is
the wise goddess fickle as a nymph of the woodland or the wells? Doth
she love a man only for the bloom of his youth? Nay, I know not; but
this I know, that on thee, Odysseus, old age will soon be hastening--old
age that is pitiless, and ruinous, and weary, and weak--age that cometh
on all men, and that is hateful to the Gods. Therefore, Odysseus, ere
yet it be too late, I would bow even thee to my will, and hold thee for
my thrall. For I am she who conquers all things living: Gods and beasts
and men. And hast thou thought that thou only shalt escape Aphrodite?
Thou that hast never loved as I would have men love; thou that hast
never obeyed me for an hour, nor ever known the joy and the sorrow that
are mine to give? For thou didst but ensure the caresses of Circe, the
Daughter of the Sun, and thou wert aweary in the arms of Calypso, and
the Sea King's daughter came never to her longing. As for her who is
dead, thy dear wife Penelope, thou didst love her with a loyal heart,
but never with a heart of fire. Nay, she was but thy companion, thy
housewife, and the mother of thy child. She was mingled with all the
memories of the land thou lovest, and so thou gavest her a little love.
But she is dead; and thy child too is no more; and thy very country is
as the ashes of a forsaken hearth where once was a camp of men. What
have all thy wars and wanderings won for thee, all thy labours, and all
the adventures thou hast achieved? For what didst thou seek among
the living and the dead? Thou soughtest that which all men seek--thou
soughtest _The World's Desire_. They find it not, nor hast thou found
it, Odysseus; and thy friends are dead; thy land is dead; nothing lives
but Hope. But the life that lies before thee is new, without a remnant
of the old days, except for the bitterness of longing and remembrance.
Out of this new life, and the unborn hours, wilt thou not give, what
never before thou gavest, one hour to me, to be my servant?"