Saturn

    Now were the Titans gathered round their king,
    In a waste region slipping tow'rd the verge
    Of drear extremities that clasp the world -
    A land half-moulded by the hasty gods,
    And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars,
    Grotesque, misfeatured, blackly gnarled with stone;
    Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep
    Conterminate, of Chaos. Here they stood,
    Old Saturn midmost, like a central peak
    Among the lesser hills that guard its base.
    Defeat, that gloamed within each countenance
    Like the first tinge of death, upon a sun
    Gathering like some dusk vapor, found them cold,
    Clumsy of limb, and halting as with weight
    Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments.
    A wind cried round them like a trumpet-voice
    Of phantom hosts - hurried, importunate,
    And intermittent with a tightening fear.
    Far off the sunset leapt, and the hard clouds,
    Molten among the peaks, seemed furnaces
    In which to make the fetters of the world.

    Seared by the lightning of the younger gods,
    They saw, beyond the grim and crouching hills,
    Those levins thrust like spears into the heart
    Of swollen clouds, or tearing through the sky
    Like severing swords. Then, as the Titans watched,
    The night rose like a black, enormous mist
    Around them, wherein naught was visible
    Save the sharp levin leaping in the north;
    And no sound came, except of seas remote,
    That seemed like Chaos ravening past the verge
    Of all the world, fed with the crumbling coasts
    Of Matter.

                    Till the moon, discovering
    That harsh swart wilderness of sand and stone
    Tissued and twisted in chaotic weld,
    Lit with illusory fire each Titan's form,
    They sate in silence, mute as stranded orbs -
    The wrack of Time, upcast on ruinous coasts,
    And in the slow withdrawal of the tide
    Safe for awhile. Small solace did they take
    From that frore radiance glistering on the dull
    Black desert gripped in iron silences,
    Like a false triumph o'er contestless fates,
    Or a mirage of life in wastes of Death.
    Yet were they moved to speak, and Saturn's voice
    Seeming the soul of that tremendous land
    Set free in sound, startled the haughty stars.

    "O Titans, gods, sustainers of the world,
    Is this the end? Must Earth go down to Chaos,
    Lacking our strength, beneath the unpracticed sway
    Of godlings vain, precipitate with youth,
    Who think, unrecking of disastrous chance,
    To bind their will as reins upon the sun,
    Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens?
    Must we behold, with eyes of impotence
    That universal wrack, even though it whelm
    These our usurpers in impartial doom
    Beneath the shards and fragments of the world?
    Were it not preferable to return,
    And meeting them in fight unswervable,
    Drag down the earth, ourselves, and these our foes,
    One sacrifice unto the gods of Chaos?
    Why should we stay, and live the tragedy
    Of power that survives its use?"

                            Now spake
    Enceladus, when that the echoings
    Of Saturn's voice had fled remote, and seemed
    Dead thunders caught and flung from star to star;
    "Wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the nightward gulf,
    Like to a stone a curious child might cast
    To test the fall of some dark precipice?
    Patience and caution should we take as mail,
    Not rashness for a weapon - too keen sword
    That cuts the strainèd knot of destiny,
    Ne'er to be tied again. Were it not best
    To watch the slow procedure of the days,
    That we may grasp a time more opportune,
    When desperation is not all our strength,
    Nor the foe newly filled with victory?
    Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm
    For thee, not for the gods of nothingness."

    He ceased, and after him no lesser god
    Gave voice upon the shaken silences,
    None venturing to risk comparison,
    Inevitable then, of eloquence
    With his; but silence like the ambiguousness
    Of signal and of lesser stars o'ercast
    And merged in one confusion by the moon,
    Possessed that multitude, till Saturn rose.
    Around his form the light intensified,
    And strengthened with addition wild and strange,
    Investing him as with a phantom robe,
    And gathering like a crown about his brow.
    His sword, whereon the shadows lay like rust
    He took, and dipping it within the moon,
    Made clean its length of blade, and from it cast
    Swift flickerings at the stars. And then his voice
    Came like a torrent, and from out his eyes
    Streamed wilder power that mingled with the sound.

            *        *        *        *        *

    And his resurgent power, in glance and word,
    Poured through the Titans' souls, and was become
    The fountains of their own, and at his flame
    Their fires were lit once more, whose restlessness
    Leapt and aspired against the steadfast stars.
    And now they turned, majestic with resolve,
    Where, red upon the forefront of the north,
    Arcturus was a beacon to the winds.
    And with the flickering winds, that lightly struck
    The desert dust, then sprang again in air,
    They passed athwart the foreland of the north.

    Against their march they saw the shrunken waste,
    A rivelled region like a world grown old
    Whose sterile breast knew not the lips of Life
    In all its epoch; or a world that was
    The nurse of infant Death, ere he became
    Too large, too strong for its restraining arms,
    And towered athwart the suns.

                    And there they crossed
    Metallic slopes that rang like monstrous shields,
    But gave not to their tread, and clanging plains
    Like body-mail of greater, vaster gods.
    Where hills made gibbous shadows in the moon,
    They heard the eldritch laughters of the wind,
    Seeming the mirth of death; and 'neath their gaze
    Gaunt valleys deepened like an old despair.
    Yet strode they on, through the moon's fantasies,
    Bold with resolve, across a land like doubt.

    And now they passed among huge mountain-bulks,
    Themselves like peaks detached, and moving slow
    'Mid fettered brethren, adding weight and gloom
    To that mute conclave great against the stars.
    Emerging thence, the Titans marched where still
    Their own portentous shadows went before
    Like night that fled but shrunk not, dusking all
    That desert way.

                And thus they came where Sleep,
    The sleep of weary victory, had seized
    The younger gods as captives, borne beyond
    All flight of mounting battle-ecstasies
    In that high triumph of forgetfulness.
    And on that sleep the striding Titans broke,
    Vague and immense at first like forming dreams
    To those disturbèd gods, in mist of drowse
    Purblind and doubtful yet, though soon they knew
    Their erst-defeated foes, and rising stood
    In silent ranks expectant, that appeared
    To move, with shaking of astonished fires
    That bristled forth, or were displayed like plumes
    Late folded close, now trembling terribly,
    Pending between the desert and the stars.
    Then, sudden as the waking from a dream,
    The battle leapt, where striving shapes of gods
    Moved brightly through the whirled and stricken air,
    Sweeping it to a froth of fire; and all
    That ancient, deep-established desert rocked,
    Shaken as by an onset of the gulfs
    Of gathered and impatient Chaos, while,
    Above the place where central battle burned
    The stars drew back in fright or dazzlement,
    Paling to more secluded distances.
    Lo, where the moon had wrought illusive dreams
    That clothed the wild in doubt and fantasy,
    Hiding its hideousness with bright mirage,
    Or deepening it with gulfs and glooms of Hell,
    Mightier confusion, chaos absolute
    Upon the imperilled sky and trembling world,
    Now made a certainty within itself,
    The one thing sure in shaken sky or world.
    Maelstroms of battle caught in storms of fire,
    Torn and involved by weaponry of gods -
    Crescented blades that met with rounds of shields;
    Grappling of shapes, seen through the riven blaze
    An instant, then once more obscure, and known
    Only by giant heavings of that war
    Of furious gods and roused elements,
    Divided, leagued, contending evermore
    Along the desert - these, augmentative
    Round one thick center, stunned the faltering night.

    So huge that chaos, complicate within
    With movements of gigantic legionry,
    Antagonistic streams, impetuous-hurled
    Where Jove and Saturn thunder-crested, led
    In fight unswervable - so wide the strife
    Of differing impulse, that Decision found
    No foothold, till that first confusion should
    In ordered conflict re-arrange, and stand
    With its true forces known. This seemed remote,
    With that wide struggle pending terribly,
    As if all-various, colored Time had made
    A truce with white Eternity, and both
    Stood watching from afar.

                    Through drifts of haze
    The broadening moon, made ominous with red,
    Glared from the westering night. And now that war
    Built for itself, far up, a cope of cloud,
    And drew it down, far off, upon all sides,
    Impervious to the moon and sworded stars.
    And by their own wild light the gods fought on
    'Neath that stupendous concave like a sky
    Filled and illumed with glare of bursting suns.
    And cast by their own light, upon that sky
    The gods' own shadows moved like shapen gloom,
    Phantasmagoric, changed and amplified,
    A shifting frieze that flickered dreadfully
    In spectral battle indecisive. Then,
    Swift, as it had begun, the contest turned,
    And on the heaving Titans' massive front
    It seemed that all the motion and the strength
    Self-thwarting and confounded, of that strife,
    Was flung in centered impact terrible,
    With rush of all that fire, tempestuous-blown
    As if before some wind of further space,
    Striking the earth. Lo, all the Titans' flame
    Bent back upon themselves, and they were hurled
    In vaster disarray, with vanguard piled
    On rear and center. Saturn could not stem
    The loosened torrents of long-pent defeat;
    He, with his host, was but as drift thereon,
    Borne wildly down the whelmed and reeling world.

    Hurling like slanted rain, the lurid levin
    Fell o'er that flight of Titans, and behind,
    In striding menace, all-victorious Jove
    Loomed like some craggy cloud with thunders crowned
    And footed with the winds. In that defeat,
    With Jove's pursuit involved and manifold,
    Few found escape unscathed, and some went down
    Like senile suns that grapple with the dark,
    And reel in flame tremendous, and are still.

    Ebbing, the battle left those elder gods
    Upcast once more on coasts of black defeat -
    Gripped in despair, a vaster Tartarus.
    The victor gods, their storms and thunders spent,
    Went dwindling northward like embattled clouds,
    And where the lingering haze of fight dissolved,
    The pallor of the dawn began to spread
    On darkness purple like the pain of Death.
    Ringed with that desolation, Saturn stood
    Mute, and the Titans answered unto him
    With brother silence. Motionless, they seemed
    Some peristyle or range of columns great,
    Alone enduring of a fallen fane
    In deserts of some vaster world whence Life
    And Faith have vanished long, that vaguely slips
    To an immemoried end. And twilight slow
    Crept round those lofty shapes august, and seemed
    Such as might be the faltering ghostly noon
    Of mightier suns that totter down to death.

    Then turned they, passing from that dismal place
    Blasted anew with battle, ere the swift
    Striding of light athwart stupendous chasms
    And wasteful plains, should overtake them there,
    Bowed with too heavy a burden of defeat.
    Slowly they turned, and passed upon the west
    Where, like a weariness immovable
    In menace huge, the plain its monstrous bulk,
    The peaks its hydra heads, the whole world crouched
    Against their march with the diminished stars.