Orpheus

Throw out of gear all Nature’s enginery For such a grain of tinsel dust as I, Reluctant to be mangled in the wheel— Looks other meanness so contemptibly? Yet I persist. Thou knowest, O most High Zeus, When Hera to thine Io did refuse Peace, and the gadfly bit like barbéd steel Those limbs with dews of love once lying loose, When thy vast body boarded her, wrapped round Her senses with a mist of being profound, A flame-like penetration, serpentine, Twining and leaping without end or bound, Inevitable as the grasp of Fate :— Thou, reft of her by envy of thy mate Didst shake the heaven with bellowings undivine, And rooted stars from their primeval state. Not without law, sayest thou? Almighty Zeus, Am I not also mothered of a Muse? Let there be law! untimely to release This soul untinctured of the Stygian dews, Unsprinkled of Lethean lotus-drops! Life grows so steadily, so sudden stops— (Surely no part in Nature’s moving peace !) Thus, when the young, like tempest-stricken crops 126