Haggard Wisdom, stately once,

Leers fantastical and trips:
Allegory drums the sconce,

Impiousness nibblenips.
Imp that dances, imp that flits,

Imp o' the demon-growing girl,
Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits

Round you, and with them you whirl
Fast where pours the fountain-rout

Out of Him whose eyes are out:
Multitudes on multitudes,

Drenched in wallowing devilry:
And you ask where you may be,

In what reek of a lair
Given to bones and ogre-broods:

And they yell you Where.
Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.
A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN

I
Last night returning from my twilight walk

I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow
Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk

He reached me flowers as from a withered bough:
O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

II
Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.

Another stood by me, a shape in stone,
Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,

And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:
O Life, how naked and how hard when known!

III
Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.

Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,
And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,

Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline
Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES
I

He who has looked upon Earth
Deeper than flower and fruit,

Losing some hue of his mirth,
As the tree striking rock at the root,

Unto him shall the marvellous tale
Of Callistes more humanly come

With the touch on his breast than a hail
From the markets that hum.

II
Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.

'Twas the season when wintertide,
In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,

Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,
By light throwing shallow shade,

Between the beam and the gloom,
Sicilian Enna, whose Maid

Such aspect wears in her bloom
Underneath since the Charioteer

Of Darkness whirled her away,
On a reaped afternoon of the year,

Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.
O and naked of her, all dust,

The majestic Mother and Nurse,
Ringing cries to the God, the Just,

Curled the land with the blight of her curse:
Recollected of this glad isle

Still quaking. But now more fair,
And momently fraying the while

The veil of the shadows there,
Soft Enna that prostrate grief

Sang through, and revealed round the vines,
Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,

The wheat-blades tripping in lines,
A hue unillumined by sun

Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts:
All the penetrable dun

Of the morn ere she mounts.
III

Nor had saffron and sapphire and red
Waved aloft to their sisters below,

When gaped by the rock-channel head
Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow,

Reverberant over the plain:
A sound oft fearfully swung

For the coming of wrathful rain:
And forth, like the dragon-tongue

Of a fire beaten flat by the gale,
But more as the smoke to behold,

A chariot burst. Then a wail
Quivered high of the love that would fold

Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,
Though a God's: and the wheels were stayed,

And the team of the chariot swart
Reared in marble, the six, dismayed,

Like hoofs that by night plashing sea
Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:

For, lo, the Great Mother, She!
And Callistes gazed, he gave

His eyeballs up to the sight:
The embrace of the Twain, of whom

To men are their day, their night,
Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:

Our Lady of the Sheaves
And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet

Of Enna: he saw through leaves
The Mother and Daughter meet.

They stood by the chariot-wheel,
Embraced, very tall, most like

Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel
Down their shivering columns and strike

Head to head, crossing throats: and apart,
For the feast of the look, they drew,

Which Darkness no longer could thwart;
And they broke together anew,

Exulting to tears, flower and bud.
But the mate of the Rayless was grave:

She smiled like Sleep on its flood,
That washes of all we crave:

Like the trance of eyes awake
And the spirit enshrouded, she cast

The wan underworld on the lake.
They were so, and they passed.

IV
He tells it, who knew the law

Upon mortals: he stood alive
Declaring that this he saw:

He could see, and survive.
V

Now the youth was not ware of the beams
With the grasses intertwined,

For each thing seen, as in dreams,
Came stepping to rear through his mind,

Till it struck his remembered prayer
To be witness of this which had flown

Like a smoke melted thinner than air,
That the vacancy doth disown.

And viewing a maiden, he thought
It might now be morn, and afar

Within him the memory wrought
Of a something that slipped from the car

When those, the august, moved by:
Perchance a scarf, and perchance

This maiden. She did not fly,
Nor started at his advance:

She looked, as when infinite thirst
Pants pausing to bless the springs,

Refreshed, unsated. Then first
He trembled with awe of the things

He had seen; and he did transfer,
Divining and doubting in turn,

His reverence unto her;
Nor asked what he crouched to learn:

The whence of her, whither, and why
Her presence there, and her name,

Her parentage: under which sky
Her birth, and how hither she came,

So young, a virgin, alone,
Unfriended, having no fear,

As Oreads have; no moan,
Like the lost upon earth; no tear;

Not a sign of the torch in the blood,
Though her stature had reached the height

When mantles a tender rud
In maids that of youths have sight,

If maids of our seed they be:
For he said: A glad vision art thou!

And she answered him: Thou to me!
As men utter a vow.

VI
Then said she, quick as the cries

Of the rainy cranes: Light! light!
And Helios rose in her eyes,

That were full as the dew-balls bright,
Relucent to him as dews

Unshaded. Breathing, she sent
Her voice to the God of the Muse,

And along the vale it went,
Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill:

Sweet, but no young maid's throat:
The echo beyond the hill

Ran falling on half the note:
And under the shaken ground

Where the Hundred-headed groans
By the roots of great AEtna bound,

As of him were hollow tones
Of wondering roared: a tale

Repeated to sunless halls.
But now off the face of the vale

Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls
Of the lake's rock-head were gold,

And the breast of the lake, that swell
Of the crestless long wave rolled

To shore-bubble, pebble and shell.
A morning of radiant lids

O'er the dance of the earth opened wide:
The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids

Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,
Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:

There was milk, honey, music to make:
Up their branches the little birds billed:

Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.
O shining in sunlight, chief

• wisdom [´wizdəm] n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词)
• twilight [´twailait] n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词)
• striking [´straikiŋ] a.显著的，明显的 (初中英语单词)
• shallow [´ʃæləu] a.肤浅的；表面的 (初中英语单词)
• aspect [´æspekt] n.面貌；神色；方向 (初中英语单词)
• beaten [´bi:tn] beat 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• marble [´mɑ:bəl] n.大理石 a.大理石的 (初中英语单词)
• embrace [im´breis] vt.&n.拥抱；采纳；信奉 (初中英语单词)
• witness [´witnis] n.见证人 vt.目击 (初中英语单词)
• maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
• hither [´hiðə] ad.到此处 (初中英语单词)
• vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
• shaken [´ʃeikən] shake的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
• sunlight [´sʌnlait] n.日光 (初中英语单词)
• stately [´steitli] a.庄严的，雄伟的 (高中英语单词)
• ballad [´bæləd] n.民歌，民谣 (高中英语单词)
• majestic [mə´dʒestik] a.雄伟的；崇高的 (高中英语单词)
• chariot [´tʃæriət] n.古时双轮战车 (高中英语单词)
• vacancy [´veikənsi] n.空缺；空间；空虚 (高中英语单词)
• infinite [´infinit] a.无限的，无穷的 (高中英语单词)
• reverence [´revərəns] n.尊敬；敬畏；尊严 (高中英语单词)
• virgin [´və:dʒin] a.处女(般)的 n.处女 (高中英语单词)
• pebble [´pebəl] n.卵石 v.(用卵石)铺 (高中英语单词)
• radiant [´reidiənt] a.发光的 n.光源(体) (高中英语单词)
• haggard [´hægəd] a.憔悴的 (英语四级单词)
• blight [blait] n.打击 vt.摧残 (英语四级单词)
• prostrate [´prɔstreit, prɔ´streit] a.俯伏的 vt.弄倒 (英语四级单词)
• sapphire [´sæfaiə] n.蓝宝石 a.深蓝色的 (英语四级单词)
• whence [wens] ad.从何处；从那里 (英语四级单词)
• stature [´stætʃə] n.身高；身材 (英语四级单词)
• trance [trɑ:ns] n.恍惚；出神 (英语六级单词)
• underworld [´ʌndəwə:ld] n.阴间；下层社会 (英语六级单词)
• august [ɔ:´gʌst] a.尊严的；威严的 (英语六级单词)
• ringed [riŋd] a.带环的；戴戒指的 (英语六级单词)