Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day

Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity

Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had strayed,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptered; and his realmless eyes were closed ;
While his bowed head seemed listening to the earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seemed no force could wake him from his place; But there came one, who with a kindred hand

Touched 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

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

Or with a finger stayed Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,
Pedestaled haply in a palace court,

When sages looked 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,
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 pressed 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

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!

"Saturn, look up!-though wherefore, poor old King? "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 passed; 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 unpractised 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?

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"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-robed 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

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 touched her fair large forehead to the ground.

It was Hyperion:-a granite peak

His bright feet touched, and there he stayed to view
The misery his brilliance had betrayed
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 Memnon's harp
He uttered, while his hands contemplative
He pressed together, and in silence stood.

Thou knowest

Оn Thou! thou who 'canst melt the heart of stone, And make the desert of the cruel breast A paradise of soft and gentle thoughts! Ah! will it ever be, that thou wilt visit The darkness of my father's soul? In what strong bondage zeal and ancient faith, Passion and stubborn Custom, and fierce Pride, Hold the heart of man. Thou knowest, Merciful! That knowest all things, and dost ever turn Thine eye

of pity on our guilty nature :