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DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale | |
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, | |
Far from the fiery noon, and eves one star, | |
Sat grey-haird Saturn, quiet as a stone, | |
Still as the silence round about his lair; | 5 |
Forest on forest hung about his head | |
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, | |
Not so much life as on a summers day | |
Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass, | |
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. | 10 |
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. | |
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Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, | 15 |
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, | |
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; | |
While his bowed head seemd listening to the Earth, | 20 |
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. | |
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It seemd 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. | 25 |
She was a Goddess of the infant world; | |
By her in stature the tall Amazon | |
Had stood a pigmys height: she would have taen | |
Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; | |
Or with a finger stayed Ixions wheel. | 30 |
Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, | |
Pedestald haply in a palace-court, | |
When sages lookd to Egypt for their lore. | |
But oh! how unlike marble was that face: | |
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made | 35 |
Sorrow more beautiful than Beautys 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 | 40 |
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 Saturns bended neck | 45 |
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 | 50 |
To that large utterance of the early Gods! | |
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