Nor ever, says he who heard,

Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,
From bosom of singer or bird

A sweetness thus rich of the God
Whose harmonies always are sane.

She sang of furrow and seed,
The burial, birth of the grain,

The growth, and the showers that feed,
And the green blades waxing mature

For the husbandman's armful brown.
O, the song in its burden ran pure,

And burden to song was a crown.
Callistes, a singer, skilled

In the gift he could measure and praise,
By a rival's art was thrilled,

Though she sang but a Song of Days,
Where the husbandman's toil and strife

Little varies to strife and toil:
But the milky kernel of life,

With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil
The song did give him to eat:

Gave the first rapt vision of Good,
And the fresh young sense of Sweet

The grace of the battle for food,
With the issue Earth cannot refuse

When men to their labour are sworn.
'Twas a song of the God of the Muse

To the forehead of Morn.
IX

Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:
Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:

The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,
Bent abeam, with a whitened track,

Surprised, fast hauling the net,
As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.

She said: Is it night? O not yet!
With a travail of thoughts in her look.

The mountain heaved up to its peak:
Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;

Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.
Night? but never so fell a scowl

Wore night, nor the sky since then
When ocean ran swallowing shore,

And the Gods looked down for men.
Broke tempest with that stern roar

Never yet, save when black on the whirl
Rode wrath of a sovereign Power.

Then the youth and the shuddering girl,
Dim as shades in the angry shower,

Joined hands and descended a maze
Of the paths that were racing alive

Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways,
Incessant, with sound of a hive.

The height was a fountain-urn
Pouring streams, and the whole solid height

Leaped, chasing at every turn
The pair in one spirit of flight

To the folding pineforest. Yet here,
Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,

The stillness bred spectral fear
Of the awfulness ranging without,

And imminent. Downward they fled,
From under the haunted roof,

To the valley aquake with the tread
Of an iron-resounding hoof,

As of legions of thunderful horse
Broken loose and in line tramping hard.

For the rage of a hungry force
Roamed blind of its mark over sward:

They saw it rush dense in the cloak
Of its travelling swathe of steam;

All the vale through a thin thread-smoke
Was thrown back to distance extreme:

And dull the full breast of it blinked,
Like a buckler of steel breathed o'er,

Diminished, in strangeness distinct,
Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:

An Enna of fields beyond sun,
Out of light, in a lurid web;

And the traversing fury spun
Up and down with a wave's flow and ebb;

As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,
Retire, and in ravenous greed,

Inveterate, swell its return.
Up and down, as if wringing from speed

Sights that made the unsighted appear,
Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.

Lo, a sea upon land held career
Through the plain of the vale half-devoured.

Callistes of home and escape
Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.

She gazed at the Void of shape,
She put her white hand to his reach,

Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.
And divided from day, from night,

From air that is breath, stood she,
Like the vale, out of light.

X
Then again in disorderly words

He muttered of home, and was mute,
With the heart of the cowering birds

Ere they burst off the fowler's foot.
He gave her some redness that streamed

Through her limbs in a flitting glow.
The sigh of our life she seemed,

The bliss of it clothing in woe.
Frailer than flower when the round

Of the sickle encircles it: strong
To tell of the things profound,

Our inmost uttering song,
Unspoken. So stood she awhile

In the gloom of the terror afield,
And the silence about her smile

Said more than of tongue is revealed.
I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:

It said: and not joylessly shone
The remembrance of light through the screen

Of a face that seemed shadow and stone.
She led the youth trembling, appalled,

To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise
Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called,

And the hurricaneblackness had eyes.
It launched like the Thunderer's bolt.

Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side
Would have clasped her and dared a revolt

Sacrilegious as ever defied
High Olympus, but vainly for strength

His compassionate heart shook a frame
Stricken rigid to ice all its length.

On amain the black traveller came.
Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,

Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,
And the lord of the steeds was in form

He, the God of implacable brow,
Darkness: he: he in person: he raged

Through the wave like a boar of the wilds
From the hunters and hounds disengaged,

And a name shouted hoarsely: his child's.
Horror melted in anguish to hear.

Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path
Of the terrible Charioteer,

With the foam and torn features of wrath,
Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;

And the steeds clove it, rushing at land
Like the teeth of the famished at meat.

Then he swept out his hand.
XI

This, no more, doth Callistes recall:
He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,

On the maiden the chariot fall,
As a thundercloud swings on the moon.

Forth, free of the deluge, one cry
From the vanishing gallop rose clear:

And: Skiegeneia! the sky
Rang; Skiegeneia! the sphere.

And she left him therewith, to rejoice,
Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,

The life of their day in her voice,
Left her life in her name.

XII
Now the valley in ruin of fields

And fair meadowland, showing at eve
Like the spear-pitted warrior's shields

After battle, bade men believe
That no other than wrathfullest God

Had been loose on her beautiful breast,
Where the flowery grass was clod,

Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.
The valley, discreet in grief,

Disclosed but the open truth,
And Enna had hope of the sheaf:

There was none for the desolate youth
Devoted to mourn and to crave.

Of the secret he had divined
Of his friend of a day would he rave:

How for light of our earth she pined:
For the olive, the vine and the wheat,

Burning through with inherited fire:
And when Mother went Mother to meet,

She was prompted by simple desire
In the day-destined car to have place

At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,
And be drawn to the dear earth's face.

She was fire for the blue and the green
Of our earth, dark fire; athirst

As a seed of her bosom for dawn,
White air that had robed and nursed

Her mother. Now was she gone
With the Silent, the God without tear,

Like a bud peeping out of its sheath
To be sundered and stamped with the sere.

And Callistes to her beneath,
As she to our beams, extinct,

Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.
In division so were they linked.

But the song which had betrayed
Her flight to the cavernous ear

For its own keenly wakeful: that song
Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer

Of the husbandman's heart made strong
Through droughts and deluging rains

• singer [´siŋə] n.歌手，演唱者 (初中英语单词)
• measure [´meʒə] n.量度；范围 vt.测量 (初中英语单词)
• vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
• forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
• sovereign [´sɔvrin] a.至高无上的 n.君主 (初中英语单词)
• height [hait] n.高度；顶点；卓越 (初中英语单词)
• haunted [´hɔ:tid] a.常出现鬼的，闹鬼的 (初中英语单词)
• valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
• dissolve [di´zɔlv] v.(使)溶解；解除 (初中英语单词)
• swiftly [´swiftli] ad.迅速地，敏捷地 (初中英语单词)
• breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
• terror [´terə] n.恐怖；惊骇 (初中英语单词)
• maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
• gallop [´gæləp] n.&v.奔驰；急速行进 (初中英语单词)
• therewith [ðɛə´wið] ad.于是，随即 (初中英语单词)
• goddess [´gɔdis] n.女神 (初中英语单词)
• flight [flait] n.逃走；飞行；班机 (初中英语单词)
• keenly [´ki:nli] ad.敏锐地；强烈地 (初中英语单词)
• sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
• strife [straif] n.竞争；吵架；冲突 (高中英语单词)
• tempest [´tempist] n.暴风雨 (高中英语单词)
• stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
• downward [´daunwəd] a.下降的，向下的 (高中英语单词)
• remembrance [ri´membrəns] n.记忆(力)；回忆 (高中英语单词)
• vainly [´veinli] ad.虚荣地；自负地 (高中英语单词)
• chariot [´tʃæriət] n.古时双轮战车 (高中英语单词)
• anguish [´æŋgwiʃ] n.(极度的)痛苦；苦恼 (高中英语单词)
• desolate [´desəleit] a.荒凉的；孤独的 (高中英语单词)
• furrow [´fʌrəu] n.沟 vt.犁；使起皱纹 (英语四级单词)
• boulder [´bəuldə] n.大石头，卵石；巨砾 (英语四级单词)
• hurricane [´hʌrikən] n.飓风 (英语四级单词)
• blackness [´blæknis] n.黑色；阴险 (英语四级单词)
• flowery [´flauəri] a.多花的 (英语四级单词)
• kernel [´kə:nl] n.(果实)核；去壳谷粒 (英语六级单词)
• imminent [´iminənt] a.临头的，逼近的 (英语六级单词)
• sickle [´sikəl] n.镰刀 (英语六级单词)
• olympus [əu´limpəs] n.(希腊)奥林匹斯山 (英语六级单词)
• compassionate [kəm´pæʃənit] a.有同情心的 vt.同情 (英语六级单词)
• hoarsely [´hɔ:sli] ad.嘶哑地 (英语六级单词)
• deluge [´delju:dʒ] n.大洪水 vt.泛滥 (英语六级单词)
• discreet [di´skri:t] a.谨慎的，考虑周到的 (英语六级单词)