AND many there were hurt by that strong boy, His name, they said, was Pleasure, And near him stood, glorious beyond measure, Four Ladies who possess all empery In earth and air and sea; Nothing that lives from their award is free. And they the regents are 'Of the four elements that frame the heart, By force or circumstance or sleight Desire presented her [false] glass, and then 10 Was spell-bound to embrace what seemed so fair Within that magic mirror, And dazed by that bright error, It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger, And death, and penitence, and danger, Touched with her palsying spear, So that as if a frozen torrent The blood was curdled in its current; It dared not speak, even in look or motion, But chained within itself its proud devotion. Between Desire and Fear thou wert A wretched thing, poor heart! 20 Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast, 30 Wild bird for that weak nest. Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought, Then Hope approached, she who can borrow And after long and vain endurance The poor heart woke to her assurance. -At one birth these four were born When, as summer lures the swallow, The fair hand that wounded it, Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear, 40 50 PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.' HERALD OF ETERNITY. It is the day when all the sons of God 1 Dr. Garnett, who first deciphered and published this priceless fragment, called it a Prologue to Helias; and it has become well known under that name. Matter connected with Hellas occurs among that in which no such connexion is clearly distin Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline * * * The shadow of God, and delegate Of that before whose breath the universe Hierarchs and kings Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation heaven Which gave it birth, assemble here of Before your Father's throne; the swift decree Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem That green and azure sphere, that earth in- Less in the beauty of its tender light it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow 20 guishable; and it might perhaps have been better to entitle the piece differently. Probably more of it is related to the scheme for a lyrical drama based on the Book of Job (see Memoir, vol. i. p. xliv) than to Hellas.-ED. 1 Compare Hellas line 771 (vol. iv. p. 74) Space, and the isles of life or light that gem Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Within the circuit of this pendant orb 30 There lies an antique region, on which fell And when the sun of its dominion failed, The winds that stripped it bare blew on and That dew into the utmost wildernesses 40 In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed for ye beheld, Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God, If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, 50 X CHORUS. The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-wingèd worlds disperse Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine. 60 flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread; And through thunder and darkness dread And in their pavilioned chariots led The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. 70 The senate of the Gods is met, CHRIST. * There are two fountains in which spirits weep 80 Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph, * * * * |