University of Virginia Library

The east began to brighten; sweetly grave,
Its grey diffusion rippled like a wave
The dark expectant clouds above the hill,
And severed light from darkness: rising still,
A secret influence moved upon the dark,
A lucid chasm the interval did mark
Between the hill-top fringëd with its trees
And the dark vast above: the bitter breeze
Wrung some sad tears from those soft clouds that hung
Above that chasm, for there they would have clung,
But could not live within the spreading ray,
Which preyed upon them as they moved away.
All else was darkness down the steep hill-side,
All through the valley to the shore beside
Writhing Latona's hermitage of grief:
Scarce one wild gleam could give the sea relief,
Or make the harsh foam whiten on the shore:
But in a little while, as more and more
The dawning grew, her weary eye could see
How in the night the grey clouds stonily
Had built the vault of heaven; the shaggy slope
Was rolled in forest; and the rays did grope,
Passing o'er midway trees with sleepy heads
And crowning them with fire, amid the beds
Of the wide valley, where cold Night was laid
Deep-drenched with weeping mists that still obeyed
Her fainter wand; but soon all spectral pale
They tossed convulsed, and more and more did fail,
And 'gan to vanish wreathedly away
With hectic hues, wild shapes, and rolling play,
In one dim scene with radiance involved;
And now the splendour all the air dissolved,
The morning overspread the moaning sea.

It was a dawn as sacred as might be
Before some change in nature's ministers,
While shuddered on their seats the ancient peers
Of day and night; a dawn to hail the birth
Of some new wonder in the heavens and earth;
A solemn gathering of older things
Ere transformation; waving of wide wings
Of eyas gods; expectance, doubt, suspense,
Eager surprise, the thrilling of the sense
Of nature's multitudes of all the powers
That rule her awful courts through all her hours.
And lo, where mighty Neptune rises, he
Of dark-green locks, seen on the foamy sea,
Holding his trident and the iron reins
That curb his wallowing steeds through ocean's plains,
'Tis he who roams the isles; he, who did root
The floating island for Latona's foot:
Now he is gone: and lo, where Iris now
Binds her light fillet upon Typhon's brow,
And vanishes; see Niobe's dear tears
Drop like the rain, and like the gleam appears
Aglaia's smile: all these and many more
Move, like a crowd around an open door,
Coming and going with an eager gaze
About the wonder which its course delays:
It shall delay no more; the accomplishment
Shall give them all to rapture and content;
And in the clouds all-hidden Artemis
Her brother of the golden bow shall kiss.

There lay Latona 'neath the bending tree,
The Eremite of patience, constantly
The watcher of the daybreak, who had seen
Nine morns of travail, lying so between
The reckless sea and shaggy mountain shore:
As many months its load her body bore,
So many days she felt the pang severe;
So that her father in the nether sphere
Of Tartarus, 'neath the all-receiving host,
Hades, had rent with yells the brazen coast,
Labouring with rage to know her torment; he
Cœus the Titan; thus convulsively
The central deep was troubled at the birth.

But gentle forms there were upon the earth,
Watching the mother; these her sisters mighty,
Dione, Rhea, Themis, Amphitrite,
Who stood around with comforts; yet they four
A look of melancholy foresight wore,
For they were come from Titan husbands pent
Beneath the light in endless 'prisonment,
And who had uttered groaning prophecies,
That now a new usurper should arise
To keep their old dominion in suspense,
And more confine their pallid influence;
Another, from that fated kindred come,
Which gave its life by pitifullest doom
To its displacers: much remorseful blame
Had those grave goddesses before they came,
Because they ever did descend to love
The cruel brotherhood of younger Jove.
And yet not willingly, not willingly
Had they for love foregone their sovereignty,
Not willingly betrayed the older race;
But so was it to be; the old gave place,
Though great and beautiful they were, to new,
Greater, more beautiful; it must ensue
In the world's progress; and the old must yield
And settle them in peace, though many a field
Of Titan battle be remembered still,
And many a groan at present wrong and ill
Shall echo through the caverns of the spheres,
Calling the vacant peace of olden years.
Ah, woe is me, Dione thought, that e'er
The wanton Cytherea I did bear:
Ah, woe is me, thought Themis, that I bore
The sharp and pinching Fates, and many more
That prey upon the empire old and large:
Ah me, thought Rhea, for I am the marge
From whom the new destruction did begin;
I was the nurse of all that cruel kin,
I rescued them, and for my recompense
They hurled old Saturn from his eminence.
And Amphitrite thought of Neptune's scorn
When first from her rough Triton was new-born,
And drove his mother from the sunny waves
To harbour with old Nereus in his caves.

And now, Latona, that new dynasty
Through thy long travail shall completed be;
Full grandeur shall Olympus soon have won
Joined by the golden aspect of thy son:
All-lone Latona, safe art thou beneath
The Delian palm-tree from the poisonous breath
Of dragon Python by fierce Juno sent
To drive thee through the homeless continent:
And Iris hath the gentle soother brought,
Who waits on birth, whom, full of evil thought,
The cruel Juno kept so long away.
Now shall the hour of birth no more delay,
The birth of him who from his very birth
Was the uniter of the heavens and earth.

The birth-hour came, and her the birth-pang took;
And soon the goddess with a mortal look
Beheld her son; and soon the goddesses
With shrilly cries pressed round her nursing knees,
Beholding him; yet wonder changed to awe
E'en in those heaven-born, whereas they saw
The wondrous light about each baby limb.
Anon in vestures delicate and trim
They wrap him; but, behold, the swaddling bands
Held not his swelling heart, with mighty hands
He rends them off, and rising to his feet
Stands forth full-grown in deity complete.
His dreadful arrows rattled at his side,
His lyre was in his hands; with royal stride
He left them, passing to the continent,
Or soaring skyward with divine ascent,
And joined Olympus; from his very birth
The great uniter of the heaven and earth.

For he shall be the golden king of day,
And he o'er Lycia and Mœonia
And all the isles shall rule; and wander far
With golden hymns among the tribes that are
Most wretched without poetry and song.

And many a cavern shall he hold among
The widely severed nations, where shall spring,
Like founts of gloom, the shadows following
The shapes of shafts and columned walls that spread
Into the gathered roof high overhead:
Where Jove's decrees from out the fragrant fires
The vehement prophet, whom the god inspires,
Shall utter; but none else shall enter there,
None with wrapped mouth and stealthy footstep dare
To pry within, lest madness him consume,
And he die shrieking in the hollow gloom,
Intoxicate with pain; for deity
So quickly vengeful shall none other be.

And he shall sing of beauty wondrously,
That all fair things may learn how fair they be:
And very truth in his deep eye shall pierce,
For he shall know the boundless universe.

And he shall bend his golden arrows keen
Against offence; for by the gods is seen,
And grasped with mighty spiritual hands,
And slain, that evil thing which ever stands
Abstract, impalpable to mortal sense,
Known by its bitterness, and named offence,
Ill, pain, woe, blame, grief, hate, doubt, dread, death, shame:
Ah, we have named it by such other name,
But naming heals not: 'tis a phantom dart,
A ghostly hand that grasps the very heart,
An ice-wind that congeals the very life:
And we avail not in unequal strife;
But the immortal gods with hands of might
Dash the fell phantom from their halls of light;
And they through him shall aid with gentleness
The wretched race that ever toils to dress
The hollow earth which swallows them at last:
They shall come down upon the broad sea-blast,
Or in the mantling mist, with pity sweet:
Because of him the gods with men shall meet,
And Jove through him to earth shall kinder be.

Thus joyed the earth in that nativity,
Thus heaven received him, from his hour of birth
The great uniter of the heaven and earth.