THE forest leaves dropped manna on the ground,
Pure amber trailed from ev’ry twining bough,
From flow’r to flow’r the comfortable sound
Of bees would echo mauvely, whilst the plough
Would print his dull design
On undulating hill
And from the rifted rocks
Clear honey would distil.
The heifer overfed on spicy herbs
And so his breath was perfume on the air.
The frisking antelope, unwilling, curbs
Abnormal appetite; he wanders there
With mouth all rosy-stained
From cropping purple meads,
As any parrot’s bill
Or pomegranate seeds.
And, as a multitude of dancing stars,
Bright, pearly dew shone tremulous in grass
Of bladed scimitars that threatened wars
On any prying mortal that would pass.
For only folk with hooves,
The Centaurs’ company,
Had leave to sojourn here—
The Titans’ empery.
The mountains lost their foreheads in the clouds;
The saffron-wingèd manticor of day,
As constellations glimmered from their shrouds,
Had taken sudden fear and flown away.
On fallen blossoms stretched
Beneath ten mango groves
One Titan slept and snored
With nostrils wide as stoves.
Caparisoned in trappings massy gold,
Six Titanesses, heaped on mammoths, ride,
That grunt beneath their weight until they scold
And lacerate each fibrous, knotted hide.
The mountains tremble now,
And cedars spin like tops,
The satyrs hide in caves
Until the thudding stops.
Theia dismounted from her mammoth first,
Adjusting pince-nez, angrily she cried:
“May nephew Zeus, ignoble and accurst,
In anguish die with will unsatisfied!”
The Titans moved their limbs—
Reverberant for miles.
The moonlight chequered lawns
Seemed sprayed with dimpled smiles.
Immediate attack upon the gods
Was counselled now, for Kronos’ fevered ire
Was kindled iron-white; the fiercest rods
Could not avenge indignities so dire.
All chaos now released—
The giants hundred-armed
Shall take them prisoners
Frustrated and alarmed.
The octopus, the dolphin and the whale
Bewildered, seek the bottom of the sea,
Where coral tree-tops clatter in the gale
And frighten mermaids sipping at their tea.
For even here, where peace
And periwinkles dwell,
Those bursts of gas and steam
Jar shrill as booths in hell.
The Titans, when they cough, engender squalls;
Their energy is not consumed by age.
They’d like to stretch their arms and shake St. Paul’s,
But they’re entrapped as mice within a cage.
And none to pity these,
Now bound in sorry plight,
Who played piquet with stars
And shuffled them at night!