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“O life, O death! O mysteries of Fate
Which stun the brain and palsy action!
Eat,
Old father, cheerfully, and thank the gods
That hunger saves us from the vast inane!”

The Centaur smiled and laid aside his lyre.
A little while he stood with dreamy eyes
And folded arms; then tossed his cloudy hair
Backward and faced the heavens with tranquil front:—

“Insatiable, we know not what we would,
We would not what we know! The best of life
Is action—not the dream of action, thought.
Old father, thou art right. A golden time
Was that blithe morning of a merry world,
When newly felled the pines of Pelion swam
Into the radiant East; and glad in strength
The flower of Minyan Heroes swept the blue
With those stout firs I sent them from the heights.
For rowing joyously with laugh and song
By flowery isles and green-embowered shores,
They saw the eternal snows of Caucasus
Flushed with the rose of morning—saw the blue
Clear beauty of the glacier ice, the pines
Shining with tinted snow; and lo! the while
An eagle, black against the glow of dawn
Sailed in great circles round the glittering peak,
They heard Prometheus groan. But Herakles
Smote off those cankering bonds of bronze and ice,
And loosed the patient human-hearted god.
And when the Heroes landed in the East
And won the Fleece, my Jason brought aboard
The beautiful dark woman of his love,
His bane and after-sorrow. All the sea
Danced, garlanded with white and azure flowers,
For pleasure of their coming, as they swept,
With great oars flashing, homeward; all the sea
Lightened and laughed around my swimming trees,
And floating upward through the blossomy foam,
Smiled sweet wild faces; and the rovers saw
On that, but never any other day,
The strange white beauty of the ocean-girls
Caverned in glassy hollows of the waves.

But leaning over Argo's gladdened pines,
Peleus, my daughter's child, with throbbing brows
Watched the bright girls whose wheels in spinning make
The everlasting murmur of the sea;
And as he watched, beheld one sweetest face
Set in bright hair and crowned with ocean flowers—
One sweetest face with dewy lustrous eyes
And features rosy with desire of love;
And as the clear wave shoaled above her, saw
Bosom and limbs more fair than mortal maid's
But shaped and coloured like a mortal maid's,
And more than any maid's desirable.

In after-time when all that golden quest
Was ended, and the pines of Argo bleached
On Corinth strand, that loveliest of the sea,
Grown weary of the unweariable deep,
Lay curled in slumber in the Sepian cave.
Athwart the violet twilight Hesperus
Shone large and golden; full and golden rose
The moon above the fleecy folds of sleep;
But Peleus, stealing through the myrtle grove,
A goddess won that night to be his bride.

All Thessaly was one flowered holiday
When they were wedded. Toil flung cap in air,
Set idle hands akimbo, and moved his feet
To sprightly measures of the bridal pipes.
Thy glittering house, Pharsalus, was rejoiced
To hold so many cities for thy guests,—
For Phthia trooped from Tempe to thy feast,
Larissa left her far-off shining walls,
Rich presents Cranon brought thee in her lap,
Yea, Scyros, leaping from her bowery rocks,
Came to thee rowing gladly from the sea.

I, too, descending from mine ancient cave,
Bore sylvan gifts—great garlands full of scent
And gracious colour, wrought of all the flowers
That grow in warm low fields or make a fire
In rocky nooks, or haunting murmurous streams
Draw honey from the waters. These I bore,
And pleasant boughs from many a goodly tree;
And all the palace laughed when they were hung.

But one there came to that far-rumoured feast,
Unasked, a wrathful guest, and marred the feast;
For casting on the board a golden fruit
To who was fairest, with a bitter laugh
She stalked away: but, flushed with jealous strife,
The heavenly queens who graced my grandson's board
Contended for the golden husk in vain,
And so departed with resentful brows
And sullen eyes, and left an empty house,
And all that gorgeous bridal closed in gloom!”

A sound of voices as the Centaur spoke—
Clear youthful voices singing all together—
Came floating upward to the snowy peak;
And ever as the voices paused, the rocks
Sent back the closing cadence of the song.

“These by my lads!” said Chiron with a smile,
“The beautiful children trusted to my love
By kings of many cities. Home they come
With quarry from the chase. My merry boys!
The mountain loves to hear them!”

And the song
Came floating through the pinewood to the peak:—