Her planetary eyes, and touch her voice

With such a sorrow? "Shade of Memory!"

Cried I, with act adorant at her feet,

"By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,

260

By this last temple, by the golden age,

By great Apollo, thy dear foster-child,

And by thyself, forlorn divinity,

The pale Omega of a wither'd race,

Let me behold, according as thou saidst,

265

What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!"
No sooner had this conjuration past

My devout lips, than side by side we stood

(Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine) Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

270

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star.
Onward I look'd beneath the gloomy boughs,
And saw what first I thought an image huge,
Like to the image pedestall'd so high
In Saturn's temple; then Moneta's voice

275

Came brief upon mine ear. "So Saturn sat

When he had lost his realms;" whereon there grew

A

power within me of enormous ken

To see as a god sees, and take the depth

280

Of things as nimbly as the outward eye

Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme

Of those few words hung vast before my mind

With half-unravell'd web. I sat myself

Upon an eagle's watch, that I might see,

285

And seeing ne'er forget. No stir of life

Was in this shrouded vale,-not so much air

As in the zoning of a summer's day

(270-2) Compare Hyperion, Book I, lines 1 to 3.

Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass;
But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest.
A stream went noiseless by, still deaden'd more
By reason of the fallen divinity

Spreading more shade; the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Prest her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went
No further than to where old Saturn's feet
Had rested, and there slept how long a sleep!
Degraded, cold, 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 listening 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.
Then came the griev'd voice of Mnemosyne,
And griev'd I hearken'd. "That divinity
Whom thou saw'st step from yon forlornest wood,
And with slow pace approach our fallen king,
Is Thea, softest-natured of our brood."
I mark'd the Goddess, in fair statuary
Surpassing wan Moneta by the head,
And in her sorrow nearer woman's tears.
There was a list'ning fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun ;

(289-306) See lines 9 to 25 of Hyperion, Book I.

290

295

300

305

310

315

(315) It will be seen that this passage, though varying much in detail from the later version (Book I, lines 37 to 88), is substantially

As if the venom'd 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

vanward of, p.147.

Leaning, with parted lips some words she spoke
In solemn tenour and deep organ-tone ;
Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in this like accenting; how frail
To that large utterance of the early gods!

320

325

"Saturn, look up! and for what, poor lost king? 330 I have no comfort for thee; no, not one;

I cannot say, wherefore thus sleepest thou?

For Heaven is parted from thee, and the Earth
Knows thee not, so afflicted, for a god.

The Ocean, too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air
Is emptied of thy hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, captious at the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
And thy sharp lightning, in unpractis'd hands,
Scourges and burns our once serene domain.

"With such remorseless speed still come new woes,

That unbelief has not a space to breathe.

Saturn sleep on: me thoughtless, why should I

Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?

335

340

345

the same down to line 363. This is a very notable instance of fine work done on a rough sketch.

Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?
Saturn! sleep on, while at thy feet I weep."

As when upon a tranced summer-night Forests, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a noise, Save from one gradual solitary gust

350

Swelling upon the silence, dying off,

As if the ebbing air had but one wave,

So came these words and went; the while in tears
She prest her fair large forehead to the earth,
Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls,
A soft and silken net for Saturn's feet.
Long, long these two were postured motionless,
Like sculpture builded-up upon the grave
Of their own power. A long awful time

355

360

I look'd upon them: still they were the same;

Intense, that death would take me from the vale

And all its burthens; gasping with despair

Of change, hour after hour I curs'd myself,

375

Until old Saturn rais'd his faded eyes,

(376-9) Compare Hyperion, Book I, lines 89-92.

And look'd around and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,

And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet.

As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves,

Fills forest-dells with a pervading air,

381

Known to the woodland nostril, so the words

Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around,

Even to the hollows of time-eaten oaks,

And to the windings of the foxes' hole,

385

With sad, low tones, while thus he spoke, and sent

Strange moanings to the solitary Pan.

"Moan, brethren, moan, for we are swallow'd up

And buried from all godlike exercise

Of influence benign on planets pale,

390

And peaceful sway upon man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme

Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail;
Moan, brethren, moan; for lo, the rebel spheres
Spin round; the stars their ancient courses keep;
Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth,
Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon;
Still buds the tree, and still the seashores murmur;
There is no death in all the universe,

No smell of death.-There shall be death.

moan;

Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes
Have chang'd a god into an aching palsy.
Moan, brethren, moan, for I have no strength left;
Weak as the reed, weak, feeble as my voice.
Oh! Oh! the pain, the pain of feebleness;
Moan, moan, for still I thaw; or give me help;

(388-93) Compare Book I, lines 106-12.

395

Moan,

400

405