gave

40

Or word, or look, or action of despair. Creus was one; his ponderous iron mace Lay by him, and a shatter'd rib of rock Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined.

Iapetus another; in his grasp,

A serpent's plashy neck; its barbed tongue Squeezed from the gorge, and all its uncurl❜d length

Dead; and because the creature could not spit

Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove. Next Cottus: prone he lay, chin uppermost, As though in pain: for still upon the flint 50 He ground severe his skull, with open month

And eyes at horrid working. Nearest him Asia, born of most enormous Caf,

Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs, Though feminine, than any of her sons: More thought than woe was in her dusky face,

60

For she was prophesying of her glory;
And in her wide imagination stood
Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes,
By Oxus or in Ganges' sacred isles.
Even as Hope upon her anchor leans,
So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk
Shed from the broadest of her elephants.
Above her, on a crag's uneasy shelve,
Upon his elbow raised, all prostrate else,
Shadow'd Enceladus; once tame and mild
As grazing ox unworried in the meads;
Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth,
He meditated, plotted, and even now
Was hurling mountains in that second

Upon the precincts of this nest of pain, 90 And sidelong fix'd her eye on Saturn's face:

There saw she direst strife; the supreme God

At war with all the frailty of grief,

Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge, Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair.

Against these plagues he strove in vain: for Fate

Had pour'd a mortal oil upon his head,
A disanointing poison: so that Thea,
Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass
First onwards in, among the fallen tribe. 100

As with us mortal men, the laden heart Is persecuted more, and fever'd more, When it is nighing to the mournful house Where other hearts are sick of the same

bruise;

So Saturn, as he walk'd into the midst, Felt faint, and would have sunk among the

rest,

But that he met Enceladus's eye,

And the which book ye know I ever kept For my firm-based footstool:

-

Ah, in

141

firm! Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent Of element, earth, water, air, and fire, At war, at peace, or inter-quarrelling One against one, or two, or three, or all Each several one against the other three, As fire with air loud warring when rainfloods

Drown both, and press them both against earth's face,

Where, finding sulphur, a quadruple wrath Unhinges the poor world; - not in that strife,

Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep,

151

Can I find reason why ye should be thus:
No, nowhere can unriddle, though I search,
And pore on Nature's universal scroll
Even to swooning, why ye, Divinities,
The first-born of all shaped and palpable
Gods,

Should cower beneath what, in comparison,
Is untremendous might. Yet ye are here,
O'erwhelm'd, and spurn'd, and batter'd, ye
are here!

O Titans, shall I say "Arise!" - Ye

proof

How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop;
And in the proof much comfort will I give,
If ye will take that comfort in its truth. 180
We fall by course of Nature's law, not
force

Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou
Hast sifted well the atom-universe;
But for this reason, that thou art the King,
And only blind from sheer supremacy,
One avenue was shaded from thine eyes,
Through which I wander'd to eternal truth.
And first, as thou wast not the first of pow-

And fated to excel us, as we pass

In glory that old Darkness: nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule

Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil

221

Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, And feedeth still, more comely than itself? Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves? Or shall the tree be envious of the dove Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings To wander wherewithal and find its joys? We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs

Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves, But eagles golden-feather'd, who do tower Above us in their beauty, and must reign In right thereof; for 't is the eternal law That first in beauty should be first in might:

229

Yea, by that law, another race may drive
Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.
Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas,
My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?
Have ye beheld his chariot, foam'd along
By noble winged creatures he hath made?
I saw him on the calmed waters scud,
With such a glow of beauty in his eyes,
That it enforced me to bid sad farewell
To all my empire; farewell sad I took,
And hither came, to see how dolorous fate
Had wrought upon ye; and how I might
best

241

Give consolation in this woe extreme. Receive the truth, and let it be your balm.'

Whether through poz'd conviction, or

disdain,

270

Full of calm joy it was, as I of grief;
Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth;
So that I felt a movement in my heart
To chide, and to reproach that solitude
With songs of misery, music of our woes;
And sat me down, and took a mouthed
shell
And murmur'd into it, and made melody -
O melody no more! for while I sang,
And with poor skill let pass into the breeze
The dull shell's echo, from a bowery strand
Just opposite, an island of the sea,
There came enchantment with the shifting
wind,

That did both drown and keep alive my

ears.

I threw my shell away upon the sand,
And a wave fill'd it, as my sense was fill'd
With that new blissful golden melody. 280

| A living death was in each gush of sounds,

Each family of rapturous hurried notes, That fell, one after one, yet all at once, Like pearl beads dropping sudden from their string:

And then another, then another strain, Each like a dove leaving its olive perch, With music wing'd instead of silent plumes, To hover round my head, and make me sick

Of joy and grief at once. Grief overcame, And I was stopping up my frantic ears, 290 When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands,

A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune,

And still it cried, "Apollo ! young Apollo ! The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!"

I fled, it follow'd me, and cried, "Apollo !" O Father, and O Brethren, had ye felt Those pains of mine; O Saturn, hadst thou felt,

Ye would not call this too indulged tongue Presumptuous, in thus venturing to be heard.'

And all the everlasting cataracts,

And all the headlong torrents far and near, Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,

Now saw the light and made it terrible.
It was Hyperion:-a granite peak
His bright feet touch'd, and there he stay'd
to view

The misery his brilliance had betray'd
To the most hateful seeing of itself.
Golden his hair of short Numidian curl,
Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade
In midst of his own brightness, like the
bulk

Of Memnon's image at the set of sun
To one who travels from the dusking
East:

Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp,

He utter'd, while his hands contemplative He press'd together, and in silence stood. Despondence seized again the fallen Gods At sight of the dejected King of Day, 380 And many hid their faces from the light: But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes Among the brotherhood; and, at their glare,

Uprose Iäpetus, and Creus too,

And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode