At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears-
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.
They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;
Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;
Where lay the porter, in uneasy sprawl,
With a huge empty flagon by his side :
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns :
By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.
And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmared. Angela the old
Died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform;
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought-for slept amongst his ashes cold.
NOTE. "St. Agnes' Eve was kept by our ancestors, much as Hallowe'en was by the Scots, as a period of divination, or seeking a knowledge of futurity. After fasting the whole day, upon going to bed an egg was filled with salt and eaten, which occasioned a great thirst. The vessel the maiden dreamed of drinking from signified, according to situation and circumstances, who would be her husband."-HONE's Everyday Book.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION
OF THIS POEM.
Ir any apology be thought necessary for the appearance of the unfinished poem of "Hyperion," the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with "Endymion," but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.
Fleet Street, June 26, 1820.
DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips.
Along the margin-sand large footmarks went, No further than to where his feet had strayed, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bowed head seemed list'ning to the Earth, His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.
It seemed no force could wake him from his place; But there came one, who with a kindred hand Touched his wide shoulders, after bending low With reverence, though to one who knew it not. She was a Goddess of the infant world; By her in stature the tall Amazon
Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stayed Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,
Pedestalled haply in a palace court,
When sages looked to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face!
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self!
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.
One hand she pressed upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain :
The other upon Saturn's bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his ear
Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake
In solemn tenour and deep organ tone :
Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in these like accents-O how frail
To that large utterance of the early Gods!
"Saturn, look up!--though wherefore, poor old King?
I have no comfort for thee, no, not one:
I cannot say, 'O wherefore sleepest thou?'
For heaven is parted from thee,* and the earth
Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;
And ocean, too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre passed; and all the air
Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands
Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
O aching time! O moments big as years !
All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth,
And press it so upon our weary griefs
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
Saturn, sleep on :-O thoughtless, why did I
Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes'
Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weeps
As when, upon a trancèd summer night,
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
'Tall oaks, branch-charmèd by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave;
By the rebellion of his sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto.
So came these words and went; the while in tears
She touched her fair large forehead to the ground,
Just where her falling hair might be outspread
A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet.
One moon, with alteration slow, had shed
Her silver seasons four upon the night,
And still these two were postured motionless,
Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern ;
The frozen God still couchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,
And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,
As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard
Shook horrid with such aspen-malady :
"O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,*
Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;
Look up, and let me see our doom in it:
Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape
Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice
Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow,
Naked and bare of its great diadem,
Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had power
To make me desolate? whence came the strength ?
How was it nurtured to such bursting forth,
While Fate seemed strangled in my nervous grasp ?
* Hyperion was one of the Titans-the children of Earth and Heaven prung from Chaos. They are spoken of as the elder gods. The names of the chief of them were, Oceanus, Hyperion, Iäpetus, and Ophion, males; and Themis, Mnemosyne, and Eurymone, females. Hyperion was the original sun-god, and was represented with a more glorious beauty than that of Apollo, who succeeded him. Of the Titans, Ophion and Eurymone reigned on Olympus, till they were dethroned by Saturn and Cybele. Milton alludes to them :
"And fabled how the serpent, whom they called
Ophion, with Eurymone (the wide
Encroaching Eve, perhaps,) had first the rule
Of high Olympus-thence by Saturn driven."
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