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HYPERION

A FRAGMENT

BOOK I,

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,

Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,

Not so much life as on 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 deadened more

By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her

reeds

Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large footmarks went,

No further than to where his feet had stray'd,

And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground

His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,

Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;

While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning 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.

She was a Goddess of the infant world;
By her in stature the tall Amazon
Had stood a pigmy's height: she would

have ta'en

Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,

Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,

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Of admonitions to the winds and seas, Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,

And all those acts which Deity supreme Doth ease its heart of love in.-Iam gone Away from my own bosom: I have left My strong identity, my real self, Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit

Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!

Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round

Upon all space space starr'd, and lorn of light;

Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;

Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.— Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if

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"This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,

O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;

I know the covert, for thence came I hither."

Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went

With backward footing through the shade a space :

He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way

Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist

Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest.

Meanwhile in other realms big tears

were shed,

More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,

Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of

scribe:

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