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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 eve’s one star, | |
| Sat grey-hair’d 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 summer’s 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 seem’d listening to the Earth, | 20 |
| His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. | |
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| It seem’d 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 pigmy’s height: she would have ta’en | |
| Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; | |
| Or with a finger stayed Ixion’s wheel. | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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 | 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 Saturn’s 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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