IV

     No smile Demeter cast:  the gloom she saw,
     Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom,
     In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw,
     Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom,
     And whose pale place of habitation mute,
     She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit
     Anciently, gaped for bloom: 
     Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl’s claw.

     V

     The wrathful Queen descended on a vale,
     That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved. 
     Iambe, maiden of the merry tale,
     Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved. 
     It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn. 
     Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone. 
     More than for her who grieved,
     She could for this waste home have piped the wail.

     VI

     Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet
     To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld
     A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet,
     And seed like infant’s teeth, that never swelled,
     Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round. 
     Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground
     Rocky in spikes rebelled
     Against the hand here slack as rotted net.

     VII

     The valley people up the ashen scoop
     She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win
     Her Mistress in compassion of yon group
     So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin,
     For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe,
     White as in chalk outlining little O,
     Dumb, from a falling chin;
     Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.

     VIII

     Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when
     Dark underwaters the recesses choke;
     With cluck and upper quiver of a hen
     In grasp, past peeking:  cry before the croak. 
     Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount
     Bountiful of old days, heard them recount
     This and that cruel stroke: 
     Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.

     IX

     A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned
     Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold
     An earth in awe before the claps resound
     And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled,
     The barren Nourisher unmelted shed
     Death from the looks that wandered with the dead
     Out of the realms of gold,
     In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.

     X

     Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised
     The cattle-call above the moan of prayer;
     And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed,
     Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare: 
     The wrecks of horse and mare:  such ribs as view
     Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through
     Shoots the swift foamspit:  bare
     They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.