‘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