Part 1 — A Morality, or the Twelve Forces of Nature Enchained

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!