Canto II
I humanize my sayings to thine ear,
Making comparisons of earthly things;
Or thou mightst better listen to the wind,
Whose language is to thee a barren noise,
Though it blows legend-laden thro’ the trees.
In melancholy realms big tears are shed,
More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,
Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe.
The Titans fierce, self-hid or prison-bound,
Groan for the old allegiance once more,
Listening in their doom for Saturn’s voice.
But one of the whole eagle- brood still keeps
His sovereignty, and rule, and majesty:
Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire
Still sits, still snuffs the incense teeming up
From Man to the Sun’s God—yet insecure,
For as upon the earth dire prodigies
Fright and perplex, so also shudders he;
Not at dog’s howl or gloom-bird’s hated screech,
Or the familiar visiting of one
Upon the first toll of his passing bell,
Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp;
But horrors, portioned to a giant nerve,
Make great Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
Bastion’d with pyramids of shining gold,
And touch’d with shade of bronzed obelisks,
Glares a blood-red thro’ all the thousand courts,
Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries;
And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds
Flash angerly; when he would taste the wreaths
Of incense breathed aloft from sacred hills
Instead of sweets, his ample palate takes
Savour of poisonous brass and metals sick;
Wherefore when harbour’d in the sleepy West,
After the full completion of fair day,
For rest divine upon exalted couch,
And slumber in the arms of melody,
He paces through the pleasant hours of ease,
With strides colossal, from hall to hall,
While far within each aisle and deep recess
His winged minions in close clusters stand
Amazed, and full of fear; like anxious men
Who on a wide plain gather in sad troops,
When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.
Even now where Saturn, roused from icy trance,
Goes step for step with Thea from yon woods,
Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,
Is sloping to the threshold of the West.
Thither we tend.” Now in clear light I stood,
Relieved from the dusk vale. Mnemosyne
Was sitting on a square-edged polish’d stone,
That in its lucid depth reflected pure
Her priestess’ garments. My quick eyes ran on
From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,
Through bow’rs of fragrant and enwreathed light,
And diamond-paned lustrous long arcades.
Anon rush’d by the bright Hyperion;
His flaming robes stream’d out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar as if of earthly fire,
That scared away the meek ethereal hours,
And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared.
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