Page:Acharnians and two other plays (1909).djvu/186

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Before the creation of Æther and Light,

Chaos and Night together were plight,

In the dungeon of Erebus foully bedight.

Nor Ocean, or Air, or substance was there,

Or solid or rare, or figure or form,

But horrible Tartarus ruled in the storm:

At length, in the dreary chaotical closet

Of Erebus old, was a privy deposit,

By Night the primæval in secrecy laid;

A Mystical Egg, that in silence and shade

Was brooded and hatched; till time came about:

And Love, the delightful, in glory flew out,

In rapture and light, exulting and bright,

Sparkling and florid, with stars in his forehead,

His forehead and hair, and a flutter and flare,

As he rose in the air, triumphantly furnished

To range his dominions, on glittering pinions,

All golden and azure, and blooming and burnished:

He soon, in the murky Tartarean recesses,

With a hurricane's might, in his fiery caresses

Impregnated Chaos; and hastily snatched

To being and life, begotten and hatched,

The primitive Birds: but the Deities all,

The celestial Lights, the terrestrial Ball,

Were later of birth, with the dwellers on earth,

More tamely combined, of a temperate kind;

When chaotical mixture approached to a fixture.

Our antiquity proved; it remains to be shown,

That Love is our author, and master alone,

Like him, we can ramble, and gambol and fly

O'er ocean and earth, and aloft to the sky:

And all the world over we're friends to the lover,

And when other means fail, we are found to prevail,

When a Peacock or Pheasant is sent as a present.

All lessons of primary daily concern,

You have learnt from the Birds, and continue to learn,

Your best benefactors and early instructors;

We give you the warning of seasons returning.

When the Cranes are arranged, and muster afloat

In the middle air, with a creaking note,

Steering away to the Lybian sands;