To watch across the stricken chords In vain,-in vain! The years divide: From under-lands of Memory,— THE DEATH OF PROCRIS A VERSION SUGGESTED BY THE SO-NAMED PICTURE OF PIERO DI COSIMO, IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY PROCRIS the nymph had wedded Cephalus : He, till the spring had warmed to slowwinged days Heavy with June, untired and amorous, Named her his love; but now, in unknown ways, His heart was gone; and evermore his gaze Turned from her own, and ever farther rangea His woodland war; while she, in dull amaze, Beholding with the hours her husband changed, Sighed for his lost caress, by some hard god estranged. So, on a day, she rose and found him not. glade; Then, with weak hands, she knotted up the braid 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, Thinking, "I yet may chance unseen to see his face." 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 caked of 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 In truth, that small exploring band had been, Had sent inland;-whom then the islet-Queen,- To shapes of loathly swine, imbruted and undone |