tongue

Caught infant-like from the far-foamed

sands.

'O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung,

Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies! Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears, My voice is not a bellows unto ire.

Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring 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-

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.'

370

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 Creüs too,

And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode

And their eternal calm, and all that face,

Or I have dream'd.' 'Yes,' said the su

preme shape,

61

Feel cursed and thwarted, when the liegeless air

Yields to my step aspirant? why should I

is power?