Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had stray'd,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;
While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning to the Earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seem'd no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one, who with a kindred hand
Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low
With reverence, though to one who knew it not.
She was a Goddess of the infant world;
By her in stature the tall Amazon

15

20

25

Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en
Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;

Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.

30

Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,
Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,

When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face:
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
There was a listening fear in her regard,

35

of the motionless fallen leaf, a line almost as intense and full of the essence of poetry as any line in our language. It were ungracious to take exception to the poor Naiad; but she has not the convincing appropriateness of the rest of this sublime opening.

(35-7) Although the counterpoint of lines 35 and 36 recalls the manner of Shakespeare, it is to a contemporary influence that line 37 points. In Landor's Gebir, Book I, we read—

There was a brightening paleness in his face,
Such as Diana rising o'er the rocks
Shower'd on the lonely Latmian; on his brow
Sorrow there was, yet nought was there severe.

As if calamity had but begun;

As if the vanward clouds of evil days.

Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.
One hand she press'd upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain :
The other upon Saturn's bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his ear

40

45

Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake
In solemn tenour and deep organ tone:

Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in these like accents; O how frail
To that large utterance of the early Gods!

50

Saturn, look up!-though wherefore, poor old King?

(51) Leigh Hunt's remarks upon Keats's failure to finish the poem (see Appendix) are specially appropriate to this passage, "If any living poet could finish this fragment, we believe it is the author himself. But perhaps he feels that he ought not. A story which involves passion, almost of necessity involves speech; and though we may well enough describe beings greater than ourselves by comparison, unfortunately we cannot make them speak by comparison." Of the magnificent three lines before Thea's speech he says, "This grand confession of want of grandeur is all that he could do for them. Milton could do no more. Nay, he did less, when according to Pope he made

God the father turn a school divine.

The moment the Gods speak, we forget that they did not speak like ourselves. The fact is, they feel like ourselves; and the poet would have to make them feel otherwise, which he cannot, unless he venture upon an obscurity which would destroy our sympathy: and what is sympathy with a God, but turning him into a man? We allow, that superiority and inferiority are, after all, human terms, and imply something not so truly fine and noble as the levelling of a great sympathy and love; but poems of the present nature, like Paradise Lost, assume a different principle; and fortunately perhaps, it is one which it is impossible to reconcile with the other."

"I have no comfort for thee, no not one:

"I cannot say, 'O wherefore sleepest thou?'
"For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth
"Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;
"And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,
"Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air
"Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
"Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
"Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
"And thy sharp lightning in unpractis'd hands
"Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
"O aching time! O moments big as years!
"All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth,
"And press it so upon our weary griefs
"That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
"Saturn, sleep on :-O thoughtless, why did I
"Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
"Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?

Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep."

As when, upon a tranced summer-night, 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

55

60

65

70

75

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,

80

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,

85

Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern ;
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:

90

"O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, "Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;

95

"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,

100

"While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp? 105 "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

"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 ;

115

Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.— "Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest "A certain shape or shadow, making way "With wings or chariot fierce to repossess

"A heaven he lost erewhile it must-it must

120

"Be of ripe progress-Saturn must be King. "Yes, there must be a golden victory;

125

"There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown

"Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival

"Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,

"Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir

130

"Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be "Beautiful things made new, for the surprise

"Of the sky-children; I will give command: "Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?"

This passion lifted him upon his feet,
And made his hands to struggle in the air,
His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat,
His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease.
He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep;
A little time, and then again he snatch'd
Utterance thus.-" But cannot I create ?
"Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth
"Another world, another universe,

135

140

"To overbear and crumble this to nought?

"Where is another chaos? Where?"-That word

145

Found way unto Olympus, and made quake

The rebel three.-Thea was startled up,

And in her bearing was a sort of hope,

As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet full of awe.

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

"O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;

151