Desire presented her [false] glass; and then
The spirit dwelling there

Was spellbound 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,

Had not then silent Fear

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!
Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast,
Wild bird for that weak nest.

Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought,
And from the very wound of tender thought
Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes
Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies,
Surmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow.

Then Hope approached, she who can borrow,
For poor Today, from rich Tomorrow;
And Fear withdrew, as night when day
Descends upon the orient ray.

And after long and vain endurance

The poor Heart woke to her assurance.

At one birth these four were born
With the world's forgotten morn,
And from Pleasure still they hold
All it circles, as of old.

When, as summer lures the swallow,
Pleasure lures the Heart to follow
(Oh weak Heart of little wit!)
The fair hand that wounded it,

Seeking like a panting hare
Refuge in the lynx's lair,—
Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear,
Ever will be near.

XVI.

PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.

Herald of Eternity. It is the day when all the Sons

of God

Wait in the roofless senate-house whose floor

Is chaos and the immoveable abyss

Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline.

The shadow of God, and delegate

Of that before whose breath the universe
Is as a print of dew.

Hierarchs and kings,

Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past
Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit
Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom

Of mortal thought, which, like an exhalation
Steaming from earth, conceals the . . of heaven
Which gave it birth, . . assemble here
Before your Father's throne. The swift decree
Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation

Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall

annul

The fairest of those wandering isles that gem

The sapphire space of interstellar air,—

That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped

Less in the beauty of its tender light

Than in an atmosphere of living spirit
Which interpenetrating all the

.. it rolls from realm to realm

And age to age, and in its ebb and flow

Impels the generations

To their appointed place,

Whilst the high Arbiter

Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time

Sends his decrees veiled in eternal

Within the circuit of this pendent orb

There lies an antique region, on which fell

The dews of thought, in the world's golden dawn,
Earliest and most benign; and from it sprung
Temples and cities and immortal forms,

And harmonies of wisdom and of song,

And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And when the sun of its dominion failed,

And when the winter of its glory came,

The winds that stripped it bare blew-on, and swept

That dew into the utmost wildernesses

In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed
The unmaternal bosom of the North.

Haste, Sons of God, .. for ye beheld,

Reluctant or consenting or astonished,

The stern decrees go forth which heaped on Greece

Ruin and degradation and despair.

A fourth now waits. Assemble, Sons of God,

To speed or to prevent or to suspend

(If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld) The unaccomplished destiny.

CHORUS.

The curtain of the universe

Is rent and shattered,

The splendour-wingèd worlds disperse
Like wild doves scattered.

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

Light and music are radiated,

And, in their pavilioned chariots led

By living wings, high overhead

The giant Powers move,

Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill.

A chaos of light and motion

Upon that glassy ocean.

Christ.

The senate of the Gods is met,
Each in his rank and station set;
There is silence in the spaces-
Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet,
Start from their places!

Almighty Father!

Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny

There are two fountains in which spirits weep
When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named ;
And with their bitter dew two Destinies
Filled each their irrevocable urns. The third,
Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added
Chaos and death, and slow oblivion's lymph,
And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain

The Aurora of the nations. By this brow

Whose pores wept tears of blood; by these wide wounds; By this imperial crown of agony;

By infamy and solitude and death

(For this I underwent); and by the pain

Of pity for those who would . . for me
The unremembered joy of a revenge

(For this I felt); by Plato's sacred light,
Of which my spirit was a burning morrow;
By Greece, and all she cannot cease to be,
Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,
Stars of all night-her harmonies and forms,
Echoes and shadows of what Love adores
In thee; I do compel thee, send forth Fate,
Thy irrevocable child! Let her descend,
A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed]

In tempest of the omnipotence of God
Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues; from Tyranny which arms
Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies

To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed,

Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm

Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens

The solid heart of enterprise; from all

By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits VOL. III.

II

Are stars beneath the dawn

She shall arise

Victorious as the world arose from chaos !
And, as the heavens and the earth arrayed
Their presence in the beauty and the light
Of thy first smile, O Father; as they gather
The spirit of thy love, which paves for them
Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere
Shall be one living spirit; so shall Greece-

Satan. Be as all things beneath the empyrean,

Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,

Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns

Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed

Which pierces thee, whose throne a chair of scorn?

For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor

The innumerable worlds of golden light

Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou wouldst redeem from me? Know'st thou not them my portion?

Which our great Father then did arbitrate
When he assigned to his competing sons
Each his apportioned realm?

Thou Destiny,

Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence
Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task,
Speed, spare not to accomplish! and be mine

Thy trophies, whether Greece again become
The fountain in the desert whence the earth

Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength

To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death

To swallow all delight, all life, all hope.

Go, thou vicegerent of my will, no less

Than of the Father's. But, lest thou shouldst faint,
The winged hounds famine and pestilence
Shall wait on thee; the hundred-forkèd snake
Insatiate superstition still shall .

The earth behind thy steps; and war shall hover
Above, and fraud shall gape below, and change
Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings,
Convulsing and consuming. And I add
Three phials of the tears whcih demons weep