Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/273

Rh 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

Forests, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,

Dream, and so dream all night without a noise,

Save from one gradual solitary gust

Swelling upon the silence, dying off,

As if the ebbing air had but one wave,

So came these words and went; the while in tears

She prest her fair large forehead to the earth,

Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls,

A soft and silken net for Saturn's feet.

Long, long these two were postured motionless,

Like sculpture builded-up upon the grave

Of their own power. A long awful time

I look'd upon them: still they were the same;

The frozen God still bending to the earth,

And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet;

Moneta silent. Without stay or prop

But my own weak mortality, I bore

The load of this eternal quietude,

The unchanging gloom and the three fixed shapes

Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon;

For by my burning brain I measured sure

Her silver seasons shedded on the night,

And every day by day methought I grew

More gaunt and ghostly. Oftentimes I pray'd

Intense, that death would take me from the vale

And all its burthens; gasping with despair

Of change, hour after hour I curs'd myself,

Until old Saturn rais'd his faded eyes,

And look'd around and saw his kingdom gone,

And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,

And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet.

As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves

Fills forest-dells with a pervading air,

Known to the woodland nostril, so the words

Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around,

Even to the hollows of time-eaten oaks,

And to the windings of the foxes' hole,

With sad, low tones, while thus he spoke, and sent

Strange moanings to the solitary Pan.

'Moan, brethren, moan, for we are swallow'd up

And buried from all godlike exercise

Of influence benign on planets pale,

And peaceful sway upon man's harvesting,

And all those acts which Deity supreme

Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail;

Moan, brethren, moan; for lo, the rebel spheres

Spin round; the stars their ancient courses keep;

Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth,

Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon;

Still buds the tree, and still the seashores murmur;

There is no death in all the universe,

No smell of death.—There shall be death. Moan, moan;

Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes

Have chang'd a god into an aching palsy.

Moan, brethren, moan, for I have no strength left;

Weak as the reed, weak, feeble as my voice.

Oh! Oh! the pain, the pain of feebleness;

Moan, moan, for still I thaw; or give me help,

Throw down those imps, and give me victory.

Let me hear other groans, and trumpets blown

Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival,

From the gold peaks of heaven's high-piled clouds;

Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir

Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be

Beautiful things made new, for the surprise

Of the sky-children.' So he feebly ceased,

With such a poor and sickly-sounding pause,

Methought I heard some old man of the earth

Bewailing earthly loss; nor could my eyes

And ears act with that unison of sense

Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form,

And dolorous accent from a tragic harp

With large limb'd visions. More I scrutinized.

Still fixt he sat beneath the sable trees,

Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms,

With leaves all hush'd; his awful presence there

(Now all was silent) gave a deadly lie

To what I erewhile heard: only his lips

Trembled amid the white curls of his beard;

They told the truth, though round the snowy locks

Hung nobly, as upon the face of heaven

A mid-day fleece of clouds. Thea arose

And stretcht her white arm through the hollow dark,

Pointing somewhither: whereat he too rose,

Like a vast giant, seen by men at sea

To grow pale from the waves at dull midnight.

They melted from my sight into the woods;

Ere I could turn, Moneta cried, 'These twain

Are speeding to the families of grief,