Against her corner, humped and aged,
     Arachne wrinkled, past enraged,
     Beyond disgust or hope in guile. 
     Ridiculously volatile
     He seemed to her last spark of mind;
     And that in pallid ash declined
     Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt,
     Wherein throughout her frame she felt
     That he, the light wind’s libertine,
     Without a scoff, without a grin,
     And mannered like the courtly few,
     Who merely danced when light winds blew,
     Impervious to beak and claws,
     Tradition’s ruinous Whitebeard was;
     Of whom, as actors in old scenes,
     Had grannam weavers warned their weans,
     With word, that less than feather-weight,
     He smote the web like bolt of Fate.

     This muted drama, hour by hour,
     I watched amid a world in flower,
     Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid
     Their gray-blue o’er the grass’s blade,
     And still along the garden-run
     The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. 
     Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance
     Her visitor performed a dance;
     She puckered thinner; he the same
     As when on that light wind he came.

     Next day was told what deeds of night
     Were done; the web had vanished quite;
     With it the strange opposing pair;
     And listless waved on vacant air,
     For her adieu to heart’s content,
     A solitary filament.

     A reading of life—­the vital choice

     I

     Or shall we run with Artemis
     Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? 
     Both are mighty;
     Both give bliss;
     Each can torture if divided;
     Each claims worship undivided,
     In her wake would have us wallow.

     II

     Youth must offer on bent knees
     Homage unto one or other;
     Earth, the mother,
     This decrees;
     And unto the pallid Scyther
     Either points us shun we either
     Shun or too devoutly follow.

     A reading of life—­with the huntress

     Through the water-eye of night,
     Midway between eve and dawn,
     See the chase, the rout, the flight
     In deep forest; oread, faun,
     Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;
     Ravenous all the line for speed. 
     See yon wavy sparkle beck
     Sign of the Virgin Lady’s lead. 
     Down her course a serpent star
     Coils and shatters at her heels;
     Peals the horn exulting, peals
     Plaintive, is it near or far. 
     Huntress, arrowy to pursue,
     In and out of woody glen,
     Under cliffs that tear the blue,
     Over torrent, over fen,
     She and forest, where she skims
     Feathery, darken and relume: 
     Those are her white-lightning limbs
     Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. 
     Mountains hear her and