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But chiefly, while the restless twofold bat
Goes flapping round the rainy eaves above,

Where one broad opening letteth in the moon,
He starteth, thinking of that grey-haired man,

His sire: then oftentimes the white-armed child
Of thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comes

And droops above him with her short sweet sighs
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For Love distraught - for dear Love's faded sake
That weeps and sings and weeps itself to death

Because of casual eyes, and lips of frost,
And careless mutterings, and most weary years.

Bethink you, doth the wan 锟絞yptian count
This passion, wasting like an unfed flame,

Of any worth now; seeing that his thighs
Are shrunken to a span and that the blood,

Which used to spin tumultuous down his sides
Of life in leaping moments of desire,

Is drying like a thin and sluggish stream
In withered channels - think you, doth he pause

For golden Thebe and her red young mouth?
Ah, golden Thebe - Thebe, weeping there,

Like some sweet wood-nymph wailing for a rock,
If Octis with the Apollonian face -

That fair-haired prophet of the sun and stars -
Could take a mist and dip it in the West

To clothe thy limbs of shine about with shine
And all the wonder of the amethyst,

He'd do it - kneeling like a slave for thee!
If he could find a dream to comfort thee,

He'd bring it: thinking little of his lore,
But marvelling greatly at those eyes of thine.

Yea, if the Shepherd waiting for thy steps,
Pent down amongst the dank black-weeded rims,

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Could shed his life like rain about thy feet,

He'd count it sweetness past all sweets of love
To die by thee - his life's end in thy sight.

Oh, but he loves the hunt, doth Ogyges!
And therefore should we blow the horn for him:

He, sitting mumbling in his surf-white cave
With helpless feet and alienated eyes,

Should hear the noises nathless dawn by dawn
Which send him wandering swiftly through the days

When like a springing cataract he leapt
From crag to crag, the strongest in the chase

To spear the lion, leopard, or the boar!
Oh, but he loves the hunt; and, while the shouts

Of mighty winds are in this mountained World,
Behold the white bleak woodman, Winter, halts

And bends to him across a beard of snow
For wonder; seeing Summer in his looks

Because of dogs and calls from throats of hair
All in the savage hills of Hyria!

And, through the yellow evenings of the year,
What time September shows her mooned front

And poppies burnt to blackness droop for drouth,
The dear Demeter, splashed from heel to thigh

With spinning vine-blood, often stoops to him
To crush the grape against his wrinkled lips

Which sets him dreaming of the thickening wolves
In darkness, and the sound of moaning seas.

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So with the blustering tempest doth he find

A stormy fellowship: for when the North
Comes reeling downwards with a breath like spears,

Where Dryope the lonely sits all night
And holds her sorrow crushed betwixt her palms,

He thinketh mostly of that time of times
When Zeus the Thunderer - broadly-blazing King -

Like some wild comet beautiful but fierce,
Leapt out of cloud and fire and smote the tops

Of black Ogygia with his red right hand,
At which great fragments tumbled to the Deeps -

The mighty fragments of a mountain-land -
And all the World became an awful Sea!

But, being tired, the hairless Ogyges
Best loveth night and dim forgetfulness!

``For,'' sayeth he, ``to look for sleep is good
When every sleep is as a sleep of death

To men who live, yet know not why they live,
Nor how they live! I have no thought to tell

The people when this time of mine began;
But forest after forest grows and falls,

And rock by rock is wasted with the rime,
While I sit on and wait the end of all;

Here taking every footstep for a sign;
An ancient shadow whiter than the foam!''

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BY THE SEA.

THE caves of the sea have been troubled to-day
With the water which whitens, and widens, and fills;

And a boat with our brother was driven away
By a wind that came down from the tops of the hills.

Behold I have seen on the threshold again
A face in a dazzle of hair!

Do you know that she watches the rain, and the main,
And the waves which are moaning there?

Ah, moaning and moaning there!
Now turn from your casements, and fasten your doors,

And cover your faces, and pray, if you can;
There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores,

And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man!
Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge,

So sad with the sound of the foam!
Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge;

And his boat may never come home!
Ah, never and never come home!

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SONG OF THE CATTLE-HUNTERS

WHILE the morning light beams on the fern-matted streams,
And the water-pools flash in its glow,

Down the ridges we fly, with a loud ringing cry -
Down the ridges and gullies we go!

And the cattle we hunt, they are racing in front,
With a roar like the thunder of waves;

As the beat and the beat of our swift horses' feet
Start the echoes away from their caves!

As the beat and the beat
Of our swift horses' feet

Start the echoes away from their caves!
Like a wintery shore that the waters ride o'er,

All the lowlands are filling with sound;
For swiftly we gain where the herds on the plain,

Like a tempest, are tearing the ground!
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And we'll follow them hard to the rails of the yard,
Over gulches and mountain-tops grey,

Where the beat and the beat of our swift horses' feet
Will die with the echoes away!

Where the beat and the beat
Of our swift horses' feet

Will die with the echoes away!
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KING SAUL AT GILBOA.
WITH noise of battle and the dust of fray,

Half-hid in fog, the gloomy mountain lay;
But Succoth's watchers from their outer fields,

Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields
For, where the yellow river draws its spring,

The hosts of Israel travelled thundering!
There, beating like the storm that sweeps to sea

Across the reefs of chafing Galilee,
The car of Abner and the sword of Saul

Drave Gaza down Gilboa's southern wall;
But swift and sure the spears of Ekron flew,

Till peak and slope were drenched with bloody dew!
``Shout, Timnath, shout!'' the blazing leaders cried,

And hurled the stone and dashed the stave aside:
``Shout, Timnath, shout! Let Hazor hold the height,

Bend the long bow and break the lords of fight!''
From every hand the swarthy strangers sprang,

Chief leaped on chief, with buckler buckler rang!
The flower of armies! Set in Syrian heat,

The ridges clamoured under labouring feet;
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Nor stayed the warriors till, from Salem's road,
The crescent horns of Abner's squadrons glowed.

Then, like a shooting splendour on the wing,
The strong-armed son of Kish came thundering;

And as in Autumn's fall, when woods are bare,
Two adversetempests meet in middle air,

So Saul and Achish, grim with heat and hate,
Met by the brook and shook the scales of Fate.

For now the struggle swayed, and, firm as rocks
Against the storm-wind of the equinox,

The rallied lords of Judah stood and bore
All day the fiery tides of fourfold war.

But he that fasted in the secret cave,
And called up Samuel from the quiet grave,

And stood with darkness and the mantled ghosts
A bitter night on shrill Samarian coasts,

Knew well the end - of how the futile sword
Of Israel would be broken by the Lord;

How Gath would triumph, with the tawny line
That bend the knee at Dagon's brittle shrine;

And how the race of Kish would fall to wreck,
Because of vengeance stayed at Amalek;

Yet strove the sun-like king, nor rested hand
Till yellow evening filled the level land;

Then Judah reeled before a biting hail
Of sudden arrows shot from Akor's vale,

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Where Libnah, lapped in blood from thigh to heel,

Drew the tense string, and pierced the quivering steel.
There fell the sons of Saul, and, man by man,

The chiefs of Israel, up to Jonathan;
And while swift Achish stooped and caught the spoil,

Ten chosen archers, red with sanguine toil
Sped after Saul, who, faint and sick, and sore

With many wounds, had left the thick of war:
He, like a baffled bull by hunters prest,

Turned sharp about, and faced the flooded west,
And saw the star-like spears and moony spokes

Gleam from the rocks and lighten through the oaks;
A sea of splendour! How the chariots rolled

On wheels of blinding brightness manifold!
While stumbling over spike and spine and spur

Of sultry lands, escaped the son of Ner
With smitten men. At this the front of Saul

Grew darker than a blasted tower wall;


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