LITMIR.BIZ

      Along the margin-sand large footmarks 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

      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.

      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,

      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

      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 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 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?

      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

      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,

      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,

      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:

      “O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,

      Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;

      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,

      While Fate seem’d strangled in my nervous grasp?

      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

      My strong identity, my real self,

      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;

      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

      Be of ripe progress – Saturn must be King.

      Yes, there must be a golden victory;

      There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown

      Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival

      Upon

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