As though in pain; for still upon the flint

He ground severe his skull, with open mouth

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,

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 rais'd, all prostrate else,
Shadow'd Enceladus; once tame and
mild

As grazing ox unworried in the meads;
Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted,

wroth,

Till on the level height their steps found

ease:

Then Thea spread abroad her trembling

arms

Upon the precincts of this nest of pain, 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.

Such noise is like the roar of bleakgrown pines ;

Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world,

No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here,

Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom

Grew up like organ, that begins anew Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short.

Leave the dinn'd air vibrating silverly. Thus grew it up-" Not in my own sad breast,

Which is its own great judge and

searcher out,

Can I find reason why ye should be thus: Not in the legends of the first of days, Studied from that old spirit-leaved book Which starry Uranus with finger bright Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves

Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom ;

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

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

As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far

Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth

In form 'and shape compact and beautiful,

In will, in action free, companionship, And thousand other signs of purer life; So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us

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

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 itsjoys? 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 'tis the eternal law That first in beauty should be first in might:

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

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.
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, W th music wing'd instead of silent plumes,

To hover round my head, and make me sick

Of joy and grief at once. Grief over

came,

That was before our brows were taught to frown,

Before our lips knew else but solemn sounds;

That was before we knew the winged thing,

Victory, might be lost, or might be won.
And be ye mindful that Hyperion,
Our brightest brother, still is undis
graced-

Hyperion, lo! his radiance is here!"

All eyes were on Enceladus's face, And they beheld, while still Hyperion's

name

Flew from his lips up to the vaulted rocks,

A pallid gleam across his features stern : Not savage, for he saw full many a God Wroth as himself. He look'd upon

them all,

And in each face he saw a gleam of light,

But splendider in Saturn's, whose hoar locks

Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel

When the prow sweeps into a midnight

cove.

In pale and silver silence they remain'd, Till suddenly a splendor, like the morn, Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps, All the sad spaces of oblivion,

And every gulf, and every chasm old, And every height, and every sullen depth,

Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams:

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 Mem

non's harp

[tive He utter'd, while his hands contemplaHe press'd together, and in silence

stood.

Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods, In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods

Gave from their hollow throats the name of "Saturn!"

BOOK III

THUS in alternate uproar and sad peace,
Amazed were those Titans utterly.
O leave them, Muse! O leave them to
their woes ;

For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:

A solitary sorrow best befits

Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find

Many a fallen old Divinity

Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.

Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,

And not a wind of heaven but will breathe

In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute; For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse. Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue,

Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,

And let the clouds of even and of morn Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills; Let the red wine within the goblet boil, Cold as a bubbling well; let faint-lipp'd shells,

On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn

Through all their labyrinths; and let the maid

Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surpris'd.

Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades, Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives