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    Leda
    Leda
    Leda
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Leda

    By Aldous Huxley

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    About this ebook

    Aldous Huxley is back in the old smooth, mythological world, consecrated by a thousand poets. He pays occasional tribute to ugly fact in the course of this poem, but he is at home while describing Leda with her maids bathing in Eurotas, her shining body, and the clear deep pools! The modern terror of the too-perfect world makes him dwell longer, and more humorously, than his predecessors would have done, upon Jove tossing on his Olympian couch, tortured by his continence, and sending the searchlight of his glowing eye traveling over the earth below to find some object worthy of his god-like lust. (Google)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOtbebookpublishing
    Release dateMar 4, 2019
    ISBN9783965370074
    Author

    Aldous Huxley

    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) is the author of the classic novels Brave New World, Island, Eyeless in Gaza, and The Genius and the Goddess, as well as such critically acclaimed nonfiction works as The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception. Born in Surrey, England, and educated at Oxford, he died in Los Angeles, California.

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      Book preview

      Leda - Aldous Huxley

      LEDA

      BY ALDOUS HUXLEY

      LEDA

      LEDA

      B ROWN and bright as an agate, mountain-cool,

      Eurotas singing slips from pool to pool;

      Down rocky gullies; through the cavernous pines

      And chestnut groves; down where the terraced vines

      And gardens overhang; through valleys grey

      With olive trees, into a soundless bay

      Of the Ægean. Silent and asleep

      Lie those pools now: but where they dream most deep,

      Men sometimes see ripples of shining hair

      And the young grace of bodies pale and bare,

      Shimmering far down—the ghosts these mirrors hold

      Of all the beauty they beheld of old,

      White limbs and heavenly eyes and the hair’s river of gold,

      For once these banks were peopled: Spartan girls

      Loosed here their maiden girdles and their curls,

      And stooping o’er the level water stole

      His darling mirror from the sun through whole

      Rapturous hours of gazing.

      Rapturous hours of gazing.The first star

      Of all this milky constellation, far

      Lovelier than any nymph of wood or green,

      Was she whom Tyndarus had made his queen

      For her sheer beauty and subtly moving grace—

      Leda, the fairest of our mortal race.

      Hymen had lit his torches but one week

      About her bed (and still o’er her young cheek

      Passed rosy shadows of those thoughts that sped

      Across her mind, still virgin, still unwed,

      For all her body was her own no more),

      When Leda with her maidens to the shore

      Of bright Eurotas came, to escape the heat

      Of summer noon in waters coolly sweet.

      By a brown pool which opened smooth and clear

      Below the wrinkled water of a weir

      They sat them down under an old fir-tree

      To rest: and to the laughing melody

      Of their sweet speech the river’s rippling bore

      A liquid burden, while the sun did pour

      Pure colour out of heaven upon the earth.

      The meadows seethed with the incessant mirth

      Of grasshoppers, seen only when they flew

      Their curves of scarlet or sudden dazzling blue.

      Within the fir-tree’s round of unpierced shade

      The maidens sat with laughter and talk, or played,

      Gravely intent, their game of knuckle-bones;

      Or tossed from hand to hand the old dry cones

      Littered about the tree. And one did sing

      A ballad of some far-off Spartan king,

      Who took a wife, but left her, well-away!

      Slain by his foes upon their wedding-day.

      That was a piteous story, Leda sighed,

      To be a widow ere she was a bride.

      Better, said one, "to live a virgin life

      Alone, and never know the name of wife

      And bear the ugly burden of a child

      And have great pain by it. Let me live wild,

      A bird untamed by man! Nay," cried another,

      "I would be wife, if I should not be mother.

      Cypris I honour; let the vulgar pay

      Their gross vows to Lucina when they pray.

      Our finer spirits would be blunted quite

      By bestial teeming; but Love’s rare delight

      Wings the rapt soul towards Olympus’ height."

      Delight? cried Leda. "Love to me has brought

      Nothing but pain and a world of shameful thought.

      When they say love is sweet, the poets lie;

      ’Tis but a trick to catch poor maidens by.

      What are their boasted pleasures? I am queen

      To the most royal king the world has seen;

      Therefore I should, if any woman might,

      Know at its full that exquisite delight.

      Yet these few days since I was made a wife

      Have held more bitterness than all my life,

      While I was yet a child." The great bright tears

      Slipped through her lashes. "Oh, my childish years!

      Years that were all my own, too sadly few,

      When I was happy—and yet never knew

      How happy till to-day!" Her maidens came

      About her as she wept, whispering her name,

      Leda, sweet Leda, with a hundred dear

      Caressing words to soothe her heavy cheer.

      At last she started up with a fierce pride

      Upon her face. I am a queen, she cried,

      "But had forgotten it a while; and you,

      Wenches of mine, you were forgetful too.

      Undress me. We would bathe ourself." So proud

      A queen she

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