the vales; Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately; Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable, The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the firmament.  For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon- fire, And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day’s apparition forth.  Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering:  Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate hours:  Lo, the ravish’d beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the chariot- wheels:  Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets!  Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo, Torrid brilliancies thro’ the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate them, Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth’s frame crackling busily.  He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe, Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft:  Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him.  Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under their paws.  White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind:  Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await the ultimate shock.  To the bolt he launched, ‘Strike dead, thou,’ uttered Zeus, very terrible; ’Perish folly, else ‘tis man’s fate’; and the bolt flew unerringly.  Then the kindler stooped; from the torch-car down the measureless altitudes Leaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised not a cry.  Like the flower on the river’s surface when expanding it vanishes, Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched:  and so fell he precipitate, Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness yet ere it comes:  So he showered above them, shadowed o’er the blue archipelagoes, O’er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the isles; So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth.

Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters shivering weep, By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria, Where he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to the tremulous Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cyclamen.

     Seed-time

     I

     Flowers of the willow-herb are wool;
     Flowers of the briar berries red;
     Speeding their seed as the breeze may rule,
     Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread. 
     Flowers of the clematis drip in beard,
     Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed;
     Chaplets in air, flies foliage seared;
     Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed.

     II

     Where were skies of the mantle stained
     Orange and scarlet, a coat of frieze
     Travels from North till day has waned,
     Tattered, soaked in the ditch’s dyes;
     Tumbles the rook under grey or slate;
     Else enfolding us, damps to the bone;
     Narrows the world to my neighbour’s gate;
     Paints me Life as a wheezy crone.