And comes the snow, and comes the dust,

Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.
V

A crazy beggargrateful for a meal
Has ever of himself a world to say.

For them he is an ancient wheel
Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day.

VI
He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect;

For never singer in the land had been
Who him for theme did not reject:

Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.
VII

Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight
The snorting white-winged brother of the wave,

They hear him as a thing by fate
Cursed in unholy babble to his grave.

VIII
As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort,

Their sires have told; and of a martial prince
Bestriding him; and old report

Speaks of a monster slain by one long since.
IX

There is that story of the golden bit
By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed:

A mortal who could mount, and sit
Flying, and up Olympus midway speed.

X
He rose like the loosed fountain's utmost leap;

He played the star at span of heaven right o'er
Men's heads: they saw the snowy steep,

Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more.
XI

He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell:
And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins;

And in his breast a mouthless well
Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins.

XII
Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs

Of recollections richer than our skies
To feed the flow of tuneful strings,

Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies.
PHAETHON--ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE

At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer,
Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,

And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!
For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to

black;
In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge,

Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest--an ocean-song.
Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly,

In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios.
Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is!

To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon,
Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary,

Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage,
He would grant his son's petition, whatsoever the sign thereof.

Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: 'Rule of day give me; give
it me,

Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendingly
I, divine, proclaim my birthright.' Darkened Helios, and his

utterance
Choked prophetic: 'O half mortal!' he exclaimed in an agony,

'O lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for another thing:
Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious!

Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculous
Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy?

Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently;
As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them;

Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine origin
Shall be known even as when I strike on the string'd shell with

melody,
And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the

cavities,
Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships

thereon.'
Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his eloquence

Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks
away.

What shall move a soul from madness? Lost, lost in delirium,
Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent,

'By the oath! the oath! thine oath!' cried. The effulgent foreseer
then,

Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy's beaming countenance
Looked and moaned, and urged him for love's sake, for sweet life's

sake, to yield the claim,
To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity.

But he, vehement, passionate, called out: 'Let me show I am what I
say,

That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with their
whispering.

Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels,
How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily,

Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial,
And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear dew-

drinkers:
Yea, for this I gaze on life's light; throw for this any sacrifice.'

All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath irrevocable
Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless.

Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so
decreed.

They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries.
Swift the rippleripples follow'd, as of aureate Helicon,

Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the
distances,

And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight!
Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air!

Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory!
Chafed the youth with their spirit surcharged, as when blossom is

shaken by winds,
Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, quick

On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morning
rose:

Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest
fields,

When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it:
Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate

(If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil),
Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate:

Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution'd urgently betweenwhiles:
Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, wickedness,

That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint; but the voice of
Gods;

None but Gods can curb. He spake: vain were the words: scarcely
listening,

Mounted Phaethon, swinging reins loose, and, 'Behold me, companions,
It is I here, I!' he shouted, glancing down with supremacy;

'Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of men;
I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day!'

Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenly
Beat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and that;