Ogyges

Stand out, swift-footed leaders of the horns,     And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliff     With shocks of clamour, let the chasm take     The noise of many trumpets, lest the hunt     Should die across the dim Aonian hills,     Nor break through thunder and the surf-white cave     That hems about the old-eyed Ogyges     And bars the sea-wind, rain-wind, and the sea!     Much fierce delight hath old-eyed Ogyges     (A hairless shadow in a lions skin)     In tumult, and the gleam of flying spears,     And wild beasts vexed to death; for, sayeth he,     Here lying broken, do I count the days     For every trouble; being like the tree     The many-wintered father of the trunks     On yonder ridges: wherefore it is well     To feel the dead blood kindling in my veins     At sound of boar or battle; yea to find     A sudden stir, like life, about my feet,     And tingling pulses through this frame of mine     What time the cold clear dayspring, like a bird     Afar off, settles on the frost-bound peaks,     And all the deep blue gorges, darkening down,     Are filled with men and dogs and furious dust!     So in the time whereof thou weetest well     The melancholy morning of the World     He mopes or mumbles, sleeps or shouts for glee,     And shakes his sides a cavern-hutted King!     But when the ouzel in the gaps at eve     Doth pipe her dreary ditty to the surge     All tumbling in the soft green level light,     He sits as quiet as a thick-mossed rock,     And dreameth in his cold old savage way     Of gliding barges on the wine-dark waves,     And glowing shapes, and sweeter things than sleep,     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     For Love distraught for dear Loves 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 Egyptian 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,     Hed do it kneeling like a slave for thee!     If he could find a dream to comfort thee,     Hed 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,     Could shed his life like rain about thy feet,     Hed count it sweetness past all sweets of love     To die by thee his lifes 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.     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!