Of her brown hair, and o'er her shoulders cast Her crimson weed; with faltering fingers made Her golden girdle's clasp to join, and past Down to the trackless wood, full pale and overcast. And all day long her slight spear devious flew, And harmless swerved her arrows from their aim, For ever, as the ivory bow she drew, Before her ran the still unwounded game. Then, at the last, a hunter's cry there came, And, lo, a hart that panted with the chase; Thereat her cheek was lightened as with flame, And swift she gat her to a leafy place, Thinking, "I yet may chance unsee face." to see his Leaping he went, this hunter Cephalus, Bent in his hand his cornel bow he bare, Supple he was, round-limbed and vigorous, Fleet as his dogs, a lean Laconian pair. He, when he spied the brown of Procris' hair Move in the covert, deeming that apart Some fawn lay hidden, loosed an arrow there ; Nor cared to turn and seek the speeded dart, Bounding above the fern, fast following up the hart. But Procris lay among the white wind-flowers, Shot in the throat. From out the little wound The slow blood drained, as drops in autumn showers Drip from the leaves upon the sodden ground. None saw her die but Lelaps, the swift hound, That watched her dumbly with a wistful fear, Till, at the dawn, the hornèd woodmen found And bore her gently on a sylvan bier, To lie beside the sea, with many an uncouth tear. THE PRAYER OF THE SWINE TO CIRCE HUDDLING they came, with shag sides mire, With hoofs fresh sullied from the troughs o'erturned, With wrinkling snouts,-yet eyes in which desire Of some strange thing unutterably burned, Unquenchable; and still where'er She turned They rose about her, striving each o'er each, With restless, fierce impórtuning that yearned Through those brute masks some piteous tale to teach, Yet lacked the words thereto, denied the power of speech. For these Eurylochus alone escaping— Had sent inland;-whom then the islet-Queen,- To shapes of loathly swine, imbruted and undone But "the men's minds remained," and these for ever Made hungry suppliance through the fire-red eyes; Still searching aye, with impotent endeavour, A saving hope, or if they might surprise What hope is ours-what hope! To find no mercy After much war, and many travails done?— Ah, kinder far than thy fell philtres, Circe, The ravening Cyclops and the Læstrigon! And O, thrice cursed be Laertes' son, By whom, at last, we watch the days decline With no fair ending of the quest begun, Condemned in sties to weary and to pine, And with men's hearts to beat through this foul front of swine! For us not now,—for us, alas! no more By low-browed banks and reedy river places, Or steering shoreward, in the upland spaces Have sight of curling smoke and fair-skinned foreign faces. Alas for us!-for whom the columned houses We left afore-time, cheerless must abide; Cheerless the hearth where now no guest carouses,— No minstrel raises song at eventide; And O, more cheerless than aught else beside, The wistful hearts with heavy longing full;— The wife that watched us on the waning tide,The sire whose eyes with weariness are dull,The mother whose slow tears fall on the carded wool. If swine we be,-if we indeed be swine, Leave us not thus with sick men's hearts to bleed!— To waste long days in yearning, dumb distress, And memory of things gone, and utter hopelessness ! Leave us at least, if not the things we were, |