Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/234

196 On the foamless, long-heaving,

Violet sea,

At sunset nearing

The Happy Islands.

These things, Ulysses,

The wise bards also

Behold, and sing.

But oh, what labor!

O prince, what pain!

They too can see

Tiresias; but the gods,

Who gave them vision,

Added this law:

That they should bear too

His groping blindness,

His dark foreboding,

His scorned white hairs;

Bear Hera's anger

Through a life lengthened

To seven ages.

They see the centaurs

On Pelion: then they feel,

They too, the maddening wine

Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain

They feel the biting spears

Of the grim Lapithæ, and Theseus, drive,

Drive crashing through their bones; they feel,

High on a jutting rock in the red stream,

Alcmena's dreadful son

Ply his bow. Such a price

The gods exact for song:

To become what we sing.