HELIOS
H. D. · 1924
_Helios makes all things right:--
night brands and chokes
as if destruction broke
over furze and stone and crop
of myrtle-shoot and field-wort,
destroyed with flakes of iron,
the bracken-stems,
where tender roots were sown,
blight, chaff and waste
of darkness to choke and drown._
_A curious god to find,
yet in the end faithful;
bitter, the Kyprian's feet--
ah flecks of whited clay,
great hero, vaunted lord--
ah petal, dust and wind-fall
on the ground--queen awaiting queen._
_Better the weight, they tell,
the helmet's beaten shell,
Athene's riven steel,
caught over the white skull,
Athene sets to heal
the few who merit it._
_Yet even then, what help,
should he not turn and note
the height of forehead and the mark of conquest,
draw near and try the helmet;
to left--reset the crown
Athene weighted down,
or break with a light touch
mayhap the steel set to protect;
to slay or heal._
_A treacherous god, they say,
yet who would wait to test
justice or worth or right,
when through a fetid night
is wafted faint and nearer--
then straight as point of steel
to one who courts swift death,
scent of Hesperidean orange-spray._