As when, upon a tranced summernight,

Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods,

Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,

Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,

Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,

As if the ebbing air had but one wave; So came these words and went; the while in tears

She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground,

Just where her falling hair might be outspread

A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. One moon, with alteration slow, had shed

Her silver seasons four upon the night, And still these two were postured motionless,

Like natural sculpture in cathedral cav

ern;

The frozen God still couchant on the earth,

And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom

gone,

And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,

And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,

As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard

Shook horrid with such aspen-malady: "O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face; Look up, and let me see our doom in it; Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape 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 nurtur'd 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, 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!

Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round

Upon all space space starr'd, and lorn of light;

Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;

Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if

"This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,

O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;

I know the covert, for thence came I hither."

Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went

With backward footing through the shade a space :

He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way

Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist

Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest.

Meanwhile in other realms big tears

were shed,

And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies;

And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape,
In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye,
That inlet to severe magnificence
Stood full blown, for the God to enter in.

He enter'd, but he enter'd full of wrath'; His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,

And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire. That scar'd away the meek ethereal Hours

And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared,

From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,

Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light,

And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades,

Until he reach'd the great main cupola;

There standing

fierce beneath, he stamped his foot,

And from the basements deep to the high towers

Jarr'd his own golden region; and before The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas'd,

His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,

To this result: "O dreams of day and night!

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

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 splendor, and the sym-
metry,

I cannot see-but darkness, death and darkness.

Even here, into my centre of repose,
The shady visions come to domineer,
Insult, and blind, and stifle up my

pomp.

Fall!-No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
Over the fiery frontier of my realms
I will advance a terrible right arm
Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel
Jove,

And bid old Saturn take his throne again."

He spake, and ceas'd, the while a heavier threat

Held struggle with his throat but came not forth;

For as in theatres of crowded men Hubbub_increases more they call out “Hush!”

So at Hyperion's words the Phantoms pale

Bestirr'd themselves, thrice horrible and cold;

And from the mirror'd level where he stood

A mist arose, as from a scunimy marsh. At this, through all his bulk an agony Crept gradual, from the feet unto the

crown.

Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd

From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled

To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours

Before the dawn in season due should blush,

He breath'd fierce breath against the sleepy portals.

Clear'd them of heavy vapors, burst them wide

Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams. The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode Each day from east to west the heavens through,

Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds: Not therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid,

But ever and anon the glancing spheres, Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure,

Glow'd through, and wrought upon the muffling dark

Sweet-shaped lightnings from the nadir deep

Up to the zenith,-hieroglyphics old, Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers Then living on the earth, with laboring

thought

Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night; And the bright Titan, phrenzied with

new woes,

Unus'd 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 Coelus, from the universal space, Thus whisper'd low and solemn in his

ear.

"O brightest of my children dear, earthborn

And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries All unrevealed even to the powers Which met at thy creating; at whose joy And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft,

I, Coelus, 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 Diffus'd unseen throughout eternal

space;

Of these new-form'd art thou, oh brightest child!

Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses!

There is sad feud among ye, and rebel

lion

Of son against his sire. I saw him fall, I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne!

To me his arms were spread, to me his voice

Found way from forth the thunders round his head!

Pale wox I and in vapors hid my face. Art thou, too, near such doom? vague

fear there is:

For I have seen my sons most unlike
Gods.

Divine ye were created, and divine
In sad demeanor, solemn, undisturb'd,
Unruffled, like high Gods, ye liv'd and
ruled :

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; My life is but the life of winds and tides, No more than winds and tides can I avail :

But thou canst.-Be thou therefore in the van

Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow's barb

Before the tense string murmur.--To the earth!

For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes.

Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun,

And of thy seasons be a careful

nurse.

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.

Coeus, and Gyges, and Briareüs,
Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion,
With many more, the brawniest in as
sault,

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 convuls'd With sanguine feverous boiling gurge

of pulse.

Mnemosyne was straying in the world; Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered;

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