Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/366

328 Through the dense ilex-thickets to the dogs.

Far in the woods ahead their music rang;

And many times that morn we coursed in ring

The forests round that belt Cyllenê's side;

Till I, thrown out and tired, came to halt

On that same spur where we had sate at morn.

And resting there to breathe, I watch'd the chase—

Rare, straggling hunters, foil'd by brake and crag,

And the prince, single, pressing on the rear

Of that unflagging quarry and the hounds.

Now in the woods far down I saw them cross

An open glade; now he was high aloft

On some tall scar fringed with dark feathery pines,

Peering to spy a goat-track down the cliff,

Cheering with hand, and voice, and horn his dogs.

At last the cry drew to the water's edge—

And through the brushwood, to the pebbly strand,

Broke, black with sweat, the antler'd mountain-stag,

And took the lake. Two hounds alone pursued,

Then came the prince; he shouted and plunged in.

—There is a chasm rifted in the base

Of that unfooted precipice, whose rock

Walls on one side the deep Stymphalian Lake;

There the lake-waters, which in ages gone

Wash'd, as the marks upon the hills still show,

All the Stymphalian plain, are now suck'd down.

A headland, with one aged plane-tree crown'd,

Parts from this cave-pierced cliff the shelving bay

Where first the chase plunged in; the bay is smooth,

But round the headland's point a current sets,

Strong, black, tempestuous, to the cavern-mouth.

Stoutly, under the headland's lee, they swam;

But when they came abreast the point, the race