 | A Lost Epic and Other Poems |  |
Through all the golden cities, the unholy;
Through regions of broad rivers winding slowly;
To savage mountain-gorge and far-off strand
Strange rumours spread, how forth of every land,
From under every star and cloud, there came
Innumerable creatures—wild and tame,
Known and unnamable; hordes, flocks, flights, swarms;
An endless pageant of bewildering forms
And wondrous colours; monstrous and minute;
Grotesque, ferocious, lovely; beast and brute,
Bird, reptile, insect, mollusc; life in fur
And life in feather, leather, horny bur,
And shell, and hair, and scales.
Through regions of broad rivers winding slowly;
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Strange rumours spread, how forth of every land,
From under every star and cloud, there came
Innumerable creatures—wild and tame,
Known and unnamable; hordes, flocks, flights, swarms;
An endless pageant of bewildering forms
And wondrous colours; monstrous and minute;
Grotesque, ferocious, lovely; beast and brute,
Bird, reptile, insect, mollusc; life in fur
And life in feather, leather, horny bur,
And shell, and hair, and scales.
For many days
Their myriad-marching clouded distant ways
With dust, and filled the land with hoarse wild sound.
Men marvelled; but of all not one was found
To read the portent or to heed the sign.
Their myriad-marching clouded distant ways
With dust, and filled the land with hoarse wild sound.
Men marvelled; but of all not one was found
To read the portent or to heed the sign.
| A Lost Epic and Other Poems | |