Saturn (Smith)

Now were the Titans gathered round their king In a waste region slipping toward the verge Of drear extremities that clasp the world— A land half-moulded by the hasty gods, Grotesque, misfeatured, blackly gnarled with stone, And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars; Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep, Conterminate, of Chaos. Here they stood, Old Saturn midmost, like a central peak Among the lesser mounts that guard its base. Defeat, that gloamed within each countenance Like the first tinge of death, upon a sun Gathering like some dusk vapor, found them cold, Heavy of limb, and halting as with weight Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments. A wind cried round them like a trumpet-voice Of phantom hosts—hurried, importunate, And intermittent with a tightening fear. Far off the sunset sprang, and the hard clouds, Molten among the peaks, seemd furnaces In which to make the fetters of the world.

Seared by the lightning of the younger gods, They saw, beyond the grim and crouching hills, Those levins thrust like spears into the heart Of swollen clouds, or cleaving the dark sky Like swords colossal. Then, as the Titans watched, The night rose like a black, enormous mist Around them wherein naught was visible Save the sharp levin leaping in the north; And no sound came except of seas remote That seemed like Chaos ravening past the verge Of all the world, fed with the crumbling coasts Of Matter.

Till the moon, discovering that harsh swart wilderness of sand and stone Tissued and twisted in chaotic weld, Lit with illusory fire each Titan's form, They sate in silence, mute as stranded orbs— The wrack of Time, upcast on ruinous coasts, And in the slow withdrawal of the tide Unvexed awhile. Small solace could they take From that wan radiance glistering frostily Upon the desert seized in iron silence, Like a false triumph over contestless Fates, Or a mirage of life in wastes of death. Yet were they moved to speak, and Saturn's voice, Seeming the soul of that tremendous land Set free in sound, startled the haughty stars:

"O Titans, gods, sustainers of the world, Is this the end ? Must Earth go down to Chaos, Lacking our strength, beneath the unpractised sway Of godlings vain, precipitate with youth, Who think, unrecking of disastrous chance, To bind their will as reins upon the sun, Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens ? Must we behold with eyes of impotence That universal wrack, even though it whelm These our usurpers in impartial doom Beneath the shards and fragments of the world ? Were it not preferable to return, And, meeting them in fight unswervable, Drag down the earth, ourselves, and these our foes, One sacrifice unto the gods of Chaos ? Why should we stay, and live the tragedy Of power that survives its use?"

Now spake Enceladus, when that the echoings Of Saturn's voice had fled remote, and seemed Dead thunders caught and flung from star to star: "Wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the nightward gulf Like to a stone a curious child might cast To test the fall of some dark precipice? Patience and caution should we take as mail, Not rashness for a weapon—too keen sword That cuts the strainèd knot of destiny, Never to be tied again. Were it not best To watch the slow procedure of the days, That we may grasp a time more opportune When desperation is not all our strength Nor the foe newly filled with victory ? Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm For thee, not for the gods of nothingness ?"

He ceased, and after him no lesser god Gave voice upon the shaken silences, None venturing to risk comparison, Inevitable then, of eloquence With his; but, like the ambiguity Of signal stars and lesser overcast And merged in one confusion by the moon, Silence possessed that throng, till Saturn rose. Around his form the light intensified, And strengthened with addition wild and strange, Investing him as with a ghostly robe And gathering like a crown about his brow. His sword, whereon the shadows lay like rust, He took, and dipping it within the moon Made clean its length of blade and from it cast Swift flickerings at the stars. And then his voice Came like a torrent, and from out his eyes Streamed wilder power that mingled with the sound.

And his resurgent power, in glance and word, Poured through the Titans' souls and was become The fountains of their own, and at his flame Their fires relumined twice-rebellious rose, Leaping against the stronghold of the stars. And now they came where sleep, Where, red upon the forefront of the north, Arcturus was a beacon to the winds. And with the flickering winds, that lightly struck The desert dust, then sprang again in air, They passed athwart the foreland of the north. Against their march they saw the shrunken waste, A rivelled region like a world grown old Whose sterile breast knew not the lips of life In all its epoch; or a world that was The nurse of infant Death, ere he became Too large, too strong for its restraining arms, And towered athwart the suns.

And there they crossed Metallic slopes that rang like monstrous shields Under their tread, and dully clanging plains Like body-mail of greater, vaster gods. Where hills made gibbous shadows in the moon, They heard the eldritch laughters of the wind, Seeming the mirth of doom; and 'neath their gaze Gaunt valleys deepened like an old despair. Yet strode they on through the moon's fantasies, Bold with resolve, across a land like doubt.

And now they passed among huge mountain-bulks, Themselves like ambulant mountains, moving slow 'Mid fettered brethren, adding weight and gloom To that mute conclave great against the stars. Emerging thence the Titans marched where still Their own portentous shadows went before Like night that fled but shrunk not, dusking all That desert way.

And now they came where steep, The sleep of weary victory, had seized The younger gods as captives, borne beyond All flight of mounting battle-ecstasies In that deep triumph of forgetfulness. Upon that sleep the striding Titans broke, Vague and immense at first like forming dreams To those disturbèd gods, in mist of drowse Purblind and doubtful yet, though soon they knew Their erst-defeated foes, and rising stood In silent ranks expectant, that appeared To move, with shaking of astonished fires That bristled forth deployed like awful plumes Between the brightening desert and the sky. Then, sudden as the waking from a dream, The battle sprang, where striving deities Moved brightly through the whirled and stricken air, Sweeping it to a froth of fire; and all That ancient, deep-established desert rocked, Shaken as by an onset of the gulfs Of gathered and impatient Chaos, while, Above the place where central battle burned, The moon and stars drew back in dazzlement, Paling to more secluded distances. Lo, where the moon's uncertain light had wrought Disordered shadows and chimeras dim, Hiding the hideous desert with mirage, Or deepening it with gulfs and glooms of hell, Mightier confusion, chaos absolute, Was grown the one thing sure in sky or world. Typhonian maelstrorns caught in fiery storms, Torn by the sweep of Olympian weaponries— Crescented blades that met with rounds of shields; Grappling of shapes, seen through the riven blaze An instant, then once more obscure and known Only by giant heavings of that war Of furious gods and rousèd elements— Theses, round one swollen center, hung ensphered Upon the blasted sand and molten rocks.

So huge that chaos, complicate within With movements of gigantic legionry, Where Jove and Saturn, thunder-crested, led In onset never stayed so strong the strife Of differing impulse, that decision found No foothold, till that first confusion should In ordered conflict re-arrange and stand With its true forces known. This seemed remote With that wide struggle pending terribly, As if the spectrumed wings of Time had made A truce with white Eternity, and both Stood watching from afar.

Through drifts of haze The broadening moon, made ominous with red, Glared from the westering night. And now that war Built for itself, far up, a cope of cloud And drew it down, far off, upon all sides, Impervious to the moon and sworded stars. And by their own wild light the gods fought on 'Neath that stupendous concave like a sky Filled and illumined with glare of shattered suns. And cast by their own light, upon that sky The gods' own shadows moved like shapen gloom, Phantasmagoric, changed and amplified, A shifting frieze that flickered dreadfully In spectral battle indecisive. Then, Swift as it had begun, the contest turned And on the heaving Titans' massive front It seemed that all the motion and the strength Self-thwarting and confounded, of that strife, Was flung in centered impact terrible, with rush of all that fire, tempestuous-blown As if before some wind of further space Striking the earth. Lo, all the Titans' flame Bent back upon themselves and they were hurled In vaster disarray, with vanguard piled On rear and center. Saturn could not stem The loosened torrents of long-pent defeat; He, with his hosts, was but as drift thereon, Borne wildly down the whelmed and reeling world.

Hurling like slanted rain, the violet levin Fell over that flight of Titans, and behind, In striding menace, all-victorious Jove Loomed like some craggy cloud with thunders crowned And footed with the winds. In that defeat, With Jove's pursuit deepened and manifold, Few found escape unscathed, and some went down Like senile suns that grapple with the dark, And reel in flame tremendous, and are still.

Ebbing, the battle left those elder gods Thrown back on iron shores of their despair, A darker and a vaster Tartarus. The victor gods, their storms and thunders spent, Went dwindling northward like embattled clouds, And, where the lingering haze of light dissolved, The pallor of the dawn began to spread On darkness purple like the pain of death. Ringed with that desolation Saturn stood Mute, and the Titans answered unto him With brother silence. Motionless, they appeared Some peristyle of topless columns great, Alone enduring of a fallen fane In wastes of an immenser world whence Life And Faith have vanished, whose enshadowed orb Verges oblivionward. And Twilight slow Crept round those lofty shapes august and seemed Such as might be the ghostly, muffed noon Of mightier suns that totter down to death.

Then turned they, passing from that dismal place Blasted anew with battle, ere the dawn, Striding in flame athwart stupendous chasms And wasteful plains, should overtake them there, Bowed with too heavy a burden of defeat. Slowly they turned, and passed upon the west Where, like a weariness immovable In menace huge, the plain its monstrous bulk, The peaks its hydra heads, the whole world crouched Against their march with the diminished stars.