Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice

Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow,
Naked and bare of its great diadem,
Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had
power

To make me desolate? whence came the strength?

How was it nurtured to such bursting forth, While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp?

But it is so; and I am smother'd up,
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
Of admonitions to the winds and seas, 109
Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in. - I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where
I sit

Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!

Or the familiar visiting of one
Upon the first toll of his passing-bell,
Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp;
But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve,
Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace
bright

Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold, And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks,

Glared a blood-red through all its thousand courts,

Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries; 180 And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds Flush'd angerly: while sometimes eagles' wings,

Unseen before by Gods or wondering men, Darken'd the place; and neighing steeds were heard,

Not heard before by Gods or wondering

O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!
O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!
O lank-ear'd Phantoms of black-weeded
pools!

230

Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why

Is my eternal essence thus distraught
To see and to behold these horrors new?
Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?

Am I to leave this haven of my rest,
This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,
This calm luxuriance of blissful light,
These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,
Of all my lucent empire? It is left
Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.
The blaze, the splendour, and the symme-
try,

240

I cannot see - but darkness, death and darkness.

Unused to bend, by hard compulsion bent
His spirit to the sorrow of the time;
And all along a dismal rack of clouds,
Upon the boundaries of day and night,
He stretch'd himself in grief and radiance
faint.

There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars Look'd down on him with pity, and the voice

Of Cœlus, from the universal space,
Thus whisper'd low and solemn in his ear:
'O brightest of my children dear, earth-born
And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries 310
All unrevealed even to the powers
Which met at thy creating; at whose joys
And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft,
I, Cœlus, wonder, how they came and
whence;

And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be,

Distinct, and visible; symbols divine, Manifestations of that beauteous life Diffused unseen throughout eternal space: Of these new-form'd art thou, oh brightest child!

Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses !

320

Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath;

Actions of rage and passion; even as
I see them, on the mortal world beneath,
In men who die.—This is the grief, O
Son !

Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall !
Yet do thou strive; as thou art capable,
As thou canst move about, an evident
God;

And canst oppose to each malignant hour
Ethereal presence:— - I am but a voice; 340
My life is but the life of winds and tides,
No more
than winds and tides can I

Ever as if just rising from a sleep, Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns;

And thus in thousand hugest phantasies Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe. Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon, Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge Stubborn'd with iron. All were not assembled:

Some chain'd in torture, and some wandering.

Cous, and Gyges, and Briareüs,

20

With many more, the brawniest in assault, Were pent in regions of laborious breath; Dungeon'd in opaque element to keep Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs

Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd;

Without a motion, save of their big hearts
Heaving in pain, and horribly convulsed
With sanguine, feverous, boiling gurge of
pulse.

Mnemosyne was straying in the world;
Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered; 30
And many else were free to roam abroad,
But for the main, here found they covert
drear.

Scarce images of life, one here, one there,
Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal

cirque

Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, In dull November, and their chancel vault, The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout

night.