This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,
This calm luxuriance of blissful light,
These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,
Of all my lucent empire? It is left
Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.
The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry,
I cannot see but darkness, death and darkness.
Even here, into my center of repose,
The shady visions come to domineer,
Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp.
Fall!-No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
Over the fiery frontier of my realms
I will advance a terrible right arm
Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,
And bid old Saturn take his throne again."-
He spake, and ceased, the while a heavier threat
Held struggle with his throat but came not forth;
For as in theaters of crowded men
Hubbub increases more they call out "Hush!"
So at Hyperion's words the Phantoms pale
Bestirred themselves, thrice horrible and cold;
And from the mirrored level where he stood
A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh.
At this, through all his bulk an agony
Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown,
Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular
Making slow way, with head and neck convulsed
From overstrained might. Released, he fled
To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours
Before the dawn in season due should blush,
He breathed fierce breath against the sleepy portals,
Cleared them of heavy vapors, burst them wide
Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams.
The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode
Each day from east to west the heavens through,
Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds;
Not therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid,
But ever and anon the glancing spheres,
Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure,
Glowed through, and wrought upon the muffling dark
Sweet-shaped lightnings from the nadir deep
Up to the zenith,- hieroglyphics old,
Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers
Then living on the earth, with laboring thought
Won from the gaze of many centuries:
Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge
Of stone, or marble swart; their import gone,
Their wisdom long since fled. — Two wings this orb
Possessed for glory, two fair argent wings,
Ever exalted at the God's approach:
And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense
Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were;
While still the dazzling globe maintained eclipse,
Awaiting for Hyperion's command.
Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne
And bid the day begin, if but for change.
He might not: - No, though a primeval God:
The sacred seasons might not be disturbed.
Therefore the operations of the dawn
Stayed in their birth, even as here 'tis told.
Those silver wings expanded sisterly,
Eager to sail their orb; the porches wide
Opened upon the dusk demesnes of night;
And the bright Titan, frenzied with new woes,
Unused to bend, by hard compulsion bent
His spirit to the sorrow of the time;
And all along a dismal rack of clouds,
Upon the boundaries of day and night,
He stretched himself in grief and radiance faint.
There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars
Looked down on him with pity, and the voice
Of Cœlus, from the universal space,
Thus whispered low and solemn in his ear.
"O brightest of my children dear, earth-born
And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries
All unrevealed even to the powers
Which met at thy creating; at whose joys
And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft,
I, Cœlus, wonder, how they came and whence;
And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be,
Distinct, and visible; symbols divine,
Manifestations of that beauteous life
Diffused unseen throughout eternal space:
Of these new-formed art thou, O brightest child!
Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses!
There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion
Of son against his sire. I saw him fall,
I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne!
To me his arms were spread, to me his voice
Found way from forth the thunders round his head!
Pale wox I, and in vapors hid my face.
Art thou, too, near such doom? vague fear there is:
For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods.
Divine ye were created, and divine
In sad demeanor, solemn, undisturbed,
Unruffled, like high Gods, ye lived and ruled:
Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath;
Actions of rage and passion; even as
I see them, on the mortal world beneath,
In men who die. - This is the grief, O Son!
Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall!
Yet do thou strive; as thou art capable,
As thou canst move about, an evident God;
And canst oppose to each malignant hour
Ethereal presence: I am but a voice;
My life is but the life of winds and tides,
No more than winds and tides can I avail:-
But thou canst. - Be thou therefore in the van
Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow's barb
Before the tense string murmur. To the earth!
For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes.
Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun,
And of thy seasons be a careful nurse."
Ere half this region whisper had come down,
Hyperion arose, and on the stars
Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide.
Until it ceased; and still he kept them wide:
And still they were the same bright, patient stars.
Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,
Like to a diver in the pearly seas,
Forward he stooped over the airy shore,
And plunged all noiseless into the deep night.
"WHEN THE HOUNDS OF SPRING-"
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
(Chorus from "Atalanta in Calydon.")
[ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, English poet and essayist, grandson of the third Earl of Ashburnham, was born April 5, 1837, in London. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and spent some time with Walter Savage Landor in Florence. His first works were two plays, "The Queen Mother" and "Rosamund." "Atalanta in Calydon" came next. His "Poems and
Ballads" of 1866 were withdrawn from circulation on account of the uproar raised by their eroticism. His later volumes have been too many to detail here. He is considered one of the foremost of English poets in mastery of form and melodic effect.]
WHEN the hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces,
The Mother of Months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come, with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect! Lady of Light!
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamor of waters, and with might:
Bind on thy sandals, O Thou most fleet!
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet:
For the faint East quickens, the wan West shivers,
Round the feet of the Day and the feet of the Night.
Where shall we find her? how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp player:
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the Southwest Wind and the West Wind sing.
For Winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover;
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten;
And frosts are slain, and flowers begotten;
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the Spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes;
Ripe grasses trammel a traveling foot;
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire;
And the oat is heard above the lyre;
And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut husk at the chestnut root.
And Pan by noon, and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing, and fills with delight
The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And, soft as lips that laugh and hide,
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The God pursuing, the Maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
Over her eyebrows, hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
[NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: American story-writer; born at Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804; died at Plymouth, N. H., May 19, 1864. His official positions, in the customhouse at Salem and as United States consul at Liverpool, furnished him with many opportunities for the study of human nature. His literary popularity was of slow growth, but was founded on the eternal verities. His most famous novels are "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), "The House of the Seven Gables" (1851), "The Blithedale Romance" (1852), "The Marble Faun" (1860), "Septimius Felton," posthumous. He wrote a great number of short stories, inimitable in style and full of weird imagination. "Twice told Tales," first series appeared in 1837; "The Snow Image and Other Twice-told Tales," in 1852; "Tanglewood Tales," in 1853.]
WHEN Jason, the son of the dethroned king of Iolchos, was a little boy, he was sent away from his parents, and placed under the queerest schoolmaster that ever you heard of. This learned person was one of the people, or quadrupeds, called
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