Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, It seem'd no force could wake him from his place; 15 20 25 Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. 30 Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore. 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, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days. Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 40 45 Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue 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?' 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 One moon, with alteration slow, had shed And still these two were postured motionless, 85 Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern ; As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard 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 "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 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, 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 |