Volume Ii Part 32 (1/2)

But still may they who sowed behind the plough True seed fix in the mind an unborn NOW To make the plagues afflicting us things past.

BELLEROPHON

I

Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread; Upon the stature of a G.o.d, He whom the G.o.ds have struck bends low his head.

II

Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc: Once radiant as the javelin flung Right at the centre breastplate of his mark.

III

Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look, Some undermountain narrative he tells, As gapped by Lykian heat the brook Cut from the source that in the upland swells.

IV

The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust With patient inattention hear him prate: And comes the snow, and comes the dust, Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.

V

A crazy beggar grateful for a meal Has ever of himself a world to say.

For them he is an ancient wheel Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day.

VI

He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect; For never singer in the land had been Who him for theme did not reject: Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.

VII

Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight The snorting white-winged brother of the wave, They hear him as a thing by fate Cursed in unholy babble to his grave.

VIII

As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort, Their sires have told; and of a martial prince Bestriding him; and old report Speaks of a monster slain by one long since.

IX

There is that story of the golden bit By G.o.ddess given to tame the lightning steed: A mortal who could mount, and sit Flying, and up Olympus midway speed.

X

He rose like the loosed fountain's utmost leap; He played the star at span of heaven right o'er Men's heads: they saw the snowy steep, Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more.

XI

He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell: And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins; And in his breast a mouthless well Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins.

XII

Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs Of recollections richer than our skies To feed the flow of tuneful strings, Show but a pool of sc.u.m for shooting flies.

PHAETHON--ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE

At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer, Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial mult.i.tudes, And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!

For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black; In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge, Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest--an ocean-song.

Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly, In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios.

Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is!