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Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn’d.

      It was a den where no insulting light

      Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans

      They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar

      Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,

      Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.

      Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem’d

      Ever as if just rising from a sleep,

      Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns;

      And thus in thousand hugest phantasies

      Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe.

      Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon,

      Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge

      Stubborn’d with iron. All were not assembled:

      Some chain’d in torture, and some wandering.

      Coeus, and Gyges, and Briareüs,

      Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion,

      With many more, the brawniest in assault,

      Were pent in regions of laborious breath;

      Dungeon’d in opaque element, to keep

      Their clenched teeth still clench’d, and all their limbs

      Lock’d up like veins of metal, crampt and screw’d;

      Without a motion, save of their big hearts

      Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls’d

      With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.

      Mnemosyne was straying in the world;

      Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered;

      And many else were free to roam abroad,

      But for the main, here found they covert drear.

      Scarce images of life, one here, one there,

      Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque

      Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,

      When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,

      In dull November, and their chancel vault,

      The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.

      Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave

      Or word, or look, or action of despair.

      Creüs was one; his ponderous iron mace

      Lay by him, and a shatter’d rib of rock

      Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined.

      Iäpetus another; in his grasp,

      A serpent’s plashy neck; its barbed tongue

      Squeez’d from the gorge, and all its uncurl’d length

      Dead; and because the creature could not spit

      Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove.

      Next Cottus: prone he lay, chin uppermost,

      As though in pain; for still upon the flint

      He ground severe his skull, with open mouth

      And eyes at horrid working. Nearest him

      Asia, born of most enormous Caf,

      Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs,

      Though feminine, than any of her sons:

      More thought than woe was in her dusky face,

      For she was prophesying of her glory;

      And in her wide imagination stood

      Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes,

      By Oxus or in Ganges’ sacred isles.

      Even as Hope upon her anchor leans,

      So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk

      Shed from the broadest of her elephants.

      Above her, on a crag’s uneasy shelve,

      Upon his elbow rais’d, all prostrate else,

      Shadow’d Enceladus; once tame and mild

      As grazing ox unworried in the meads;

      Now tiger-passion’d, lion-thoughted, wroth,

      He meditated, plotted, and even now

      Was hurling mountains in that second war,

      Not long delay’d, that scar’d the younger Gods

      To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird.

      Not far hence Atlas; and beside him prone

      Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour’d close

      Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap

      Sobb’d Clymene among her tangled hair.

      In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet

      Of Ops the queen all clouded round from sight;

      No shape distinguishable, more than when

      Thick night confounds the pine-tops with the clouds:

      And many else whose names may not be told.

      For when the Muse’s wings are air-ward spread,

      Who shall delay her flight? And she must chaunt

      Of Saturn, and his guide, who now had climb’d

      With damp and slippery footing from a depth

      More horrid still. Above a sombre cliff

      Their heads appear’d, and up their stature grew

      Till on the level height their steps found ease:

      Then Thea spread abroad her trembling arms

      Upon the precincts of this nest of pain,

      And sidelong fix’d her eye on Saturn’s face:

      There saw she direst strife; the supreme God

      At war with all the frailty of grief,

      Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge,

      Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair.

      Against these plagues he strove in vain; for Fate

      Had pour’d a mortal oil upon his head,

      A disanointing poison: so that Thea,

      Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass

      First onwards in, among the fallen tribe.

      As with us mortal men, the laden heart

      Is persecuted more, and fever’d more,

      When it is nighing to the mournful house

      Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise;

      So Saturn, as he walk’d into the midst,

      Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest,

      But that he met Enceladus’s eye,

      Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once

      Came like an inspiration; and he shouted,

      “Titans, behold your God!” at which some groan’d;

      Some started on their feet; some also shouted;

      Some wept, some wail’d, all bow’d with reverence;

      And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil,

      Show’d her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan,

      Her eyebrows thin and jet, and hollow eyes.

      There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines

      When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise

      Among immortals when a God gives sign,

      With hushing finger, how he means to load

      His

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