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I Moneta, left supreme

       ‘Sole priestess of this desolation.’

       I had no words to answer, for my tongue,

       Useless, could find about its roofed home

       No syllable of a fit majesty

       To make rejoinder to Moneta’s mourn.

       There was a silence, while the altar’s blaze

       Was fainting for sweet food: I look’d thereon,

       And on the paved floor, where nigh were piled

       Faggots of cinnamon, and many heaps

       Of other crisped spice wood then again

       I look’d upon the altar, and its horns

       Whiten’d with ashes, and its lang’rous flame,

       And then upon the offerings again;

       And so by turns till sad Moneta cried,

       ‘The sacrifice is done, but not the less

       ‘Will I be kind to thee for thy good will.

       ‘My power, which to me is still a curse,

       ‘Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes

       ‘Still swooning vivid through my globed brain

       ‘With an electral changing misery

       ‘Thou shalt with those dull mortal eyes behold,

       ‘Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not.’

       As near as an immortal’s sphered words

       Could to a mother’s soften, were these last:

       And yet I had a terror of her robes,

       And chiefly of the veils, that from her brow

       Hung pale, and curtain’d her in mysteries

       That made my heart too small to hold its blood.

       This saw that Goddess, and with sacred hand

       Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face,

       Not pin’d by human sorrows, but bright blanch’d

       By an immortal sickness which kills not;

       It works a constant change, which happy death

       Can put no end to; deathwards progressing

       To no death was that visage; it had pass’d

       The lily and the snow; and beyond these

       I must not think now, though I saw that face

       But for her eyes I should have fled away.

       They held me back, with a benignant light

       Soft mitigated by divinest lids

       Half closed, and visionless entire they seem’d

       Of all external things; they saw me not,

       But in blank splendour beam’d like the mild moon,

       Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not

       What eyes are upward cast. As I had found

       A grain of gold upon a mountain side,

       And twing’d with avarice strain’d out my eyes

       To search its sullen entrails rich with ore,

       So at the view of sad Moneta’s brow

       I ach’d to see what things the hollow brain

       Behind enwombed: what high tragedy

       In the dark secret chambers of her skull

       Was acting, that could give so dread a stress

       To her cold lips, and fill with such a light

       Her planetary eyes, and touch her voice

       With such a sorrow ‘Shade of Memory!’

       Cried I, with act adorant at her feet,

       ‘By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,

       ‘By this last temple, by the golden age,

       ‘By great Apollo, thy dear Foster Child,

       ‘And by thyself, forlorn divinity,

       ‘The pale Omega of a withered race,

       ‘Let me behold, according as thou saidst,

       ‘What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!’

       No sooner had this conjuration pass’d

       My devout lips, than side by side we stood

       (Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine)

       Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,

       Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,

       Far from the fiery noon and eve’s one star.

       Onward I look’d beneath the gloomy boughs,

       And saw, what first I thought an image huge,

       Like to the image pedestal’d so high

       In Saturn’s temple. Then Moneta’s voice

       Came brief upon mine ear ‘So Saturn sat

       When he had lost his realms ‘ whereon there grew

       A power within me of enormous ken

       To see as a god sees, and take the depth

       Of things as nimbly as the outward eye

       Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme

       At those few words hung vast before my mind,

       With half unravel’d web. I set myself

       Upon an eagle’s watch, that I might see,

       And seeing ne’er forget. No stir of life

       Was in this shrouded vale, not so much air

       As in the zoning of a summer’s day

       Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass,

       But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest.

       A stream went voiceless by, still deaden’d more

       By reason of the fallen divinity

       Spreading more shade; the Naiad ‘mid her reeds

       Press’d her cold finger closer to her lips.

       Along the margin sand large footmarks went

       No farther than to where old Saturn’s feet

       Had rested, and there slept, how long a sleep!

       Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground

       His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,

       Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were clos’d,

       While his bow’d head seem’d listening to the Earth,

       His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

      It seem’d no force could wake him from his place;

       But there came one who with a kindred hand

       Touch’d his wide shoulders after bending low

       With reverence, though to one who knew it not.

       Then came the griev’d voice of Mnemosyne,

       And griev’d I hearken’d. ‘That divinity

       ‘Whom thou saw’st step from yon forlornest wood,

       ‘And with slow pace approach our fallen King,

       ‘Is Thea, softest natur’d of our brood.’

       I mark’d the Goddess in fair statuary

       Surpassing wan Moneta by the head,

       And in her sorrow nearer woman’s tears.

       There was a listening fear in her regard,

       As

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