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
Furtwängler'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!
