Through the wave like a boar of the wilds
     From the hunters and hounds disengaged,
     And a name shouted hoarsely:  his child’s. 
     Horror melted in anguish to hear. 
     Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path
     Of the terrible Charioteer,
     With the foam and torn features of wrath,
     Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;
     And the steeds clove it, rushing at land
     Like the teeth of the famished at meat. 
     Then he swept out his hand.

     XI

     This, no more, doth Callistes recall: 
     He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,
     On the maiden the chariot fall,
     As a thundercloud swings on the moon. 
     Forth, free of the deluge, one cry
     From the vanishing gallop rose clear: 
     And:  Skiegeneia! the sky
     Rang; Skiegeneia! the sphere. 
     And she left him therewith, to rejoice,
     Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,
     The life of their day in her voice,
     Left her life in her name.

     XII

     Now the valley in ruin of fields
     And fair meadowland, showing at eve
     Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields
     After battle, bade men believe
     That no other than wrathfullest God
     Had been loose on her beautiful breast,
     Where the flowery grass was clod,
     Wheat and vine as a trailing nest. 
     The valley, discreet in grief,
     Disclosed but the open truth,
     And Enna had hope of the sheaf: 
     There was none for the desolate youth
     Devoted to mourn and to crave. 
     Of the secret he had divined
     Of his friend of a day would he rave: 
     How for light of our earth she pined: 
     For the olive, the vine and the wheat,
     Burning through with inherited fire: 
     And when Mother went Mother to meet,
     She was prompted by simple desire
     In the day-destined car to have place
     At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,
     And be drawn to the dear earth’s face. 
     She was fire for the blue and the green
     Of our earth, dark fire; athirst
     As a seed of her bosom for dawn,
     White air that had robed and nursed
     Her mother.  Now was she gone
     With the Silent, the God without tear,
     Like a bud peeping out of its sheath
     To be sundered and stamped with the sere. 
     And Callistes to her beneath,
     As she to our beams, extinct,
     Strained arms:  he was shade of her shade. 
     In division so were they linked. 
     But the song which had betrayed
     Her flight to the cavernous ear
     For its own keenly wakeful:  that song
     Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer
     Of the husbandman’s heart made strong
     Through droughts and deluging rains
     With his faith in the Great Mother’s love: 
     O the joy of the breath