FullReads

II

O ye that know the fairy throng,
And heed their secret under-song;
In flower or leaf’s still ecstasy
Of birth and bud their passion see,
In wind or calm, in driving rain
Or frozen snow discern them strain
To utter and to be; who lie
At dawn in dewy brakes to spy
The rapture of their flying feet–
Follow me now those coursers fleet,
Sucked in their wake, down ruining
Through channelled night, where only sing
The shrill gusts streaming through the hair
Of them who sway and bend them there,
And peer in vain with shielded eyes
To rend the dark. Clinging it lies,
Thick as wet gossamer that shrouds
October brushwoods, or low clouds
That from the mountain tops roll down
Into the lowland vales, to drown
Men’s voices and to choke their breath
And make a silence like to death.
But this was hot and dry; it came
And smote them, like the gush of flame
Fanned in a smithy, that outpours
And floods with fire the open doors.
Downward their course was, swift as flight
Of meteor flaring through the night,
Steady and dreadful, with no sound
Of wheels or hoofs upon the ground,
Nor jolt, nor jar; for once past through
Earth’s portals, steeds and chariot flew
On wings invisible and strong
And even-oaring, such as throng
The nights when birds of passage sweep
O’er cities and the folk asleep:
Such was their awful flight. Afar
Showed Hades glimmering like a star
Seen red through fog: and as they sped
To that, the frontiers of the dead
Revealed their sullen leagues and bare,
And sad forms flitting here and there,
Or clustered, waiting who might come
Their empty ways with news of home.
Yet all one course at length must hold,
Or late or soon, and all be tolled
By Charon in his dark-prowed boat.
Thither was swept the chariot
And crossed dry-wheeled the coiling flood
Of Styx, and o’er the willow wood
And slim gray poplars which do hem
The further shore, Hell’s diadem–
So by the tower foursquare and great
Where King Aidoneus keeps his state
And rules his bodyless thralls they stand.

Dark ridge and hollow showed the land
Fold over fold, like waves of soot
Fixt in an anguish of pursuit
For evermore, so far as eye
Could range; and all was hot and dry
As furnace is which all about
Etna scorcheth in days of drouth,
And showeth dun and sinister
That fair isle linked to main so fair.
Nor tree nor herbage grew, nor sang
Water among the rocks: hard rang
The heel on metal, or on crust
Grew tender, or went soft in dust;
Neither for beast nor bird nor snake
Was harbourage; nor could such slake
Their thirst, nor from the bitter heat
Hide, since the sun not furnished it;
But airless, shadowless and dense
The land lay swooning, dead to sense
Beneath that vault of stuprous black,
Motionless hanging, without wrack
Of cloud to break and pass, nor rent
To hint the blue. Like the foul tent
A foul night makes, it sagged; for stars
Showed hopeless faces, with two scars
In each, their eyes’ immortal woe,
Ever to seek and never know:
In all that still immensity
These only moved–these and the sea,
Which dun and sullen heaved, with surge
And swell unseen, save at the verge
Where fainted off the black to gray
And showed such light as on a day
Of sun’s eclipse men tremble at.