Collected Works (Vol. III)

122 RODIN IN RIME NABUCHADNOSOR. SENSELESS the eyes: the brow bereft of sense. Hunger is on the throne of pride; and naught Fills the gray battlefield of ancient thought, The market places of intelligence, Save need and greed ; whose royal words incense The jealous God of Israel is distraught. No jewels in the casket nobly wrought. The shrine is grand; the god is ravished thence. On clawing hands and hardened knees the King Exists, no more; is it a little thing? King Demos, hear my parable! We pass, We poets, see you grovel at our feet, Despise our love, and tender flesh, and wheat, Clamour for lust, and carrion, and grass. MORT D’ADONIS. ADONIS dies. (Imagination hears The hoarse harsh breathing of the ill-nurtured boar) Venus bends low, half mother and half whore, Whole murderess of boy’s budhood. Fall, black fears ! Ay! through her widowed, her unwedded tears, The foolish filial appeal, ‘‘ Restore, | O Father Zeus, this tender life once more !”’ Falls the baulked hope of half a million years. She in her gloom and ignorance will go Forlorn to Paphos, wrapt in urgent woe, Her hair funereal swathing her fallen form, Its wind-swept horror holding him ; his white Torn body blushing through tempestuous night. So breaks the life in hell, the year in storm. BALZAC, GIANT, with iron secrecies ennighted, Cloaked, Balzac stands and sees. Immense disdain, Egyptian silence, mastery of pain, Gargantuan laughter, shake or still the ignited Stature of the Master, vivid. Far, affrighted, The stunned air shudders on the skin. In vain The Master of ‘‘ La Comédie Humaine ”’ Shadows the deep-set eyes, genius-lighted. Epithalamia, birth-songs, epitaphs, Are written in the mystery of his lips. Sad wisdom, scornful shame, grand agony In the coffin-folds of the cloak, scarred mountains, lie, And pity hides 7’ th’ heart. grips The essential manhood. Balzac stands, and laughs. Grim knowledge LE CYCLOPS SURPREND ACIS ET GALATHEE. COILED in the hollow of the rock they kiss, Rolled in one sphere of rapture; looks intense With love, and Jaughter shapen of innocence ! They cling, and close, and overhang the abyss. But over them! What monster, then, is this Crouched for his spring, gross muscles nude and tense, Bulged eyeballs ready for the rape, immense In hate, the imminent spectre? He it is, The Cyclops. Ay! thought Zeus, and what of that ? Were it not well for love, in red rough maw Swift crunched, to expiate my eldest law? Better, far better thus. True love lies flat, A weary plain beyond the single peak. I then will pity them. I will not speak.