Artemis to Actaeon
()
About this ebook
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.
Read more from Edith Wharton
The Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glimpses of the Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. Illustrated: The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mother's Recompense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of Fiction: The Classic Guide to the Art of the Short Story and the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Touchstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Old Maid: The 'Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reef Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Son at the Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Roman Fever and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roman Fever: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Backward Glance: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twilight Sleep Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Age of Innocence: The Wild and Wanton Edition Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHere and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Artemis to Actaeon
Related ebooks
Artemis to Actaeon, and Other Verses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSea Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen HUGO Meets Shakespeare Vol 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Flowers of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Supressed Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe White Canoe, and Other Verse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Lattice, and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmores: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAkra the Slave Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelections From 'The Flowers Of Evil' (Le Fleurs Du Mal) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmores Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFour-Leaf Clover: A Little Book of Verse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Lonely Flute Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems (1828) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ride to the Lady, and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRose and Roof-Tree — Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlfred Lord Tennyson: The Complete Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoetry: A Magazine of Verse, Volume I October-March, 1912-13 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Epic of Women, and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRotation of the Suns Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Essential Alfred Tennyson Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlfred Lord Tennyson – The Complete Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rhyme A Dozen - 12 Poets, 12 Poems, 1 Topic ― Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tradition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Artemis to Actaeon
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Artemis to Actaeon - Edith Wharton
I
ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON
THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs
The mortal legend—thou that couldst not live
Nor look on me (so the divine decree)!
That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough,
The clod commoved with April, and the shapes
Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark.
Mocked I thee not in every guise of life,
Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in her well,
Wooed through their laughter, and like echo fled,
Luring thee down the primal silences
Where the heart hushes and the flesh is dumb?
Nay, was not I the tide that drew thee out
Relentlessly from the detaining shore,
Forth from the home-lights and the hailing voices,
Forth from the last faint headland's failing line,
Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge
And hid thee in the hollow of my being?
And still, because between us hung the veil,
The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet
Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life,
Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face
Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul
Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy thought.
And mine?
The gods, they say, have all: not so!
This have they—flocks on every hill, the blue
Spirals of incense and the amber drip
Of lucid honey-comb on sylvan shrines,
First-chosen weanlings, doves immaculate,
Twin-cooing in the osier-plaited cage,
And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew:
Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself!
And so they pale, for lack of warmth they wane,
Freeze to the marble of their images,
And, pinnacled on man's subserviency,
Through the thick sacrificial haze discern
Unheeding lives and loves, as some cold peak
Through icy mists may enviously descry
Warm vales unzoned to the all-fruitful sun.
So they along an immortality
Of endless-envistaed homage strain their gaze,
If haply some rash votary, empty-urned,
But light of foot, with all-adventuring hand,
Break rank, fling past the people and the priest,
Up the last step, on to the inmost shrine,
And there, the sacred curtain in his clutch,
Drop dead of seeing—while the others prayed!
Yes, this we wait for, this renews us, this
Incarnates us, pale people of your dreams,
Who are but what you make us, wood or stone,
Or cold chryselephantine hung with gems,
Or else the beating purpose of your life,
Your sword, your clay, the note your pipe pursues,
The face that haunts your pillow, or the light
Scarce visible over leagues of labouring sea!
O thus through use to reign again, to drink
The cup of peradventure to the lees,
For one dear instant disimmortalised
In giving immortality!
So dream the gods upon their listless thrones.
Yet sometimes, when the votary appears,
With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes,
Too young, they rather muse, too frail thou art,
And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil
And nuptial garland for so slight a thing?
And so to their incurious loves return.
Not so with thee; for some indeed there are
Who would behold the truth and then return
To pine among the semblances—but I
Divined in thee the questing foot that never
Revisits the cold hearth of yesterday
Or calls achievement home. I from afar
Beheld thee fashioned for one hour's high use,
Nor meant to slake oblivion drop by drop.
Long, long hadst thou inhabited my dreams,
Surprising me as harts surprise a pool,
Stealing to drink at midnight; I divined
Thee rash to reach the heart of life, and lie
Bosom to bosom in occasion's arms.