ENCELADUS

In the Black Country, from a little window,

Before I slept, across the haggard wastes

Of dust and ashes, I saw Titanic shafts

Like shadowy columns of wan-hope arise

To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths

Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.

Then, as night deepened, the blast-furnaces,

Red smears upon the sulphurous blackness, turned

All that sad region to a City of Dis,

Where naked, sweating giants all night long

Bowed their strong necks, melted flesh, blood and bone,

To brim the dry ducts of the gods of gloom

With terrible rivers, branches of living gold.

O, like some tragic gesture of great souls

In agony, those awful columns towered

Against the clouds, that city of ash and slag

Assumed the grandeur of some direr Thebes

Arising to the death-chant of those gods,

A dreadful Order climbing from the dark

Of Chaos and Corruption, threatening to take

Heaven with its vast slow storm.

I slept, and dreamed.

And like the slow beats of some Titan heart

Buried beneath immeasurable woes,

The forging-hammers thudded through the dream:

Huge on a fallen tree,

Lost in the darkness of primeval woods,

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

The naked giant, brooded all alone.

Born of the lower earth, he knew not how,

Born of the mire and clay, he knew not when,

Brought forth in darkness, and he knew not why!

Thus, like a wind, went by a thousand years.

Anhungered, yet no comrade of the wolf,

And cold, but with no power upon the sun,

A master of this world that mastered him!

Thus, like a cloud, went by a thousand years.

Who chained this other giant in his heart

That heaved and burned like Etna? Heavily

He bent his brows and wondered and was dumb.

And, like one wave, a thousand years went by.

He raised his matted head and scanned the stars.

He stood erect! He lifted his uncouth arms!

With inarticulate sounds his uncouth lips

Wrestled and strove — I am full-fed, and yet

I hunger!

Who set this fiercer famine in my maw?

Can I eat moons, gorge on the Milky Way,

Swill sunsets down, or sup the wash of the dawn

Out of the rolling swine-troughs of the sea?

Can I drink oceans, lie beneath the mountains,

And nuzzle their heavy boulders like a cub

Sucking the dark teats of the tigress? Who,

Who set this deeper hunger in my heart?

And the dark forest echoed — Who? Ah, who?

“I hunger!”

And the night-wind answered him,

“Hunt, then, for food.”

“I hunger!”

And the sleek gorged lioness

Drew nigh him, dripping freshly from the kill,

Redder her lolling tongue, whiter her fangs,

And gazed with ignorant eyes of golden flame.

“I hunger!”

Like a breaking sea his cry

Swept through the night. Against his swarthy knees

She rubbed the red wet velvet of her ears

With mellow thunders of unweeting bliss,

Purring — Ah, seek, and you shall find.

Ah, seek, and you shall slaughter, gorge, ah seek,

Seek, seek, you shall feed full, ah seek, ah seek.

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

Bewildered like a desert-pilgrim, saw

A rosy City, opening in the clouds,

The hunger-born mirage of his own heart,

Far, far above the world, a home of gods,

Where One, a goddess, veiled in the sleek waves

Of her deep hair, yet glimmering golden through,

Lifted, with radiant arms, ambrosial food

For hunger such as this! Up the dark hills,

He rushed, a thunder-cloud,

Urged by the famine of his heart. He stood

High on the topmost crags, he hailed the gods

In thunder, and the clouds re-echoed it!

He hailed the gods!

And like a sea of thunder round their thrones

Washing, a midnight sea, his earth-born voice

Besieged the halls of heaven! He hailed the gods!

They laughed, he heard them laugh!

With echo and re-echo, far and wide,

A golden sea of mockery, they laughed!

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

Laid hold upon the rosy Gates of Heaven,

And shook them with gigantic sooty hands,

Asking he knew not what, but not for alms;

And the Gates, opened as in jest;

And, like a sooty jest, he stumbled in.

Round him the gods, the young and scornful gods,

Clustered and laughed to mark the ravaged face,

The brutal brows, the deep and dog-like eyes,

The blunt black nails, and back with burdens bowed.

And, when they laughed, he snarled with uncouth lips

And made them laugh again.

“Whence comest thou?”

He could not speak!

How should he speak whose heart within him heaved

And burned like Etna? Through his mouth there came

A sound of ice-bergs in a frozen sea

Of tears, a sullen region of black ice

Rending and breaking, very far away.

They laughed!

He stared at them, bewildered, and they laughed

Again, “Whence comest thou?”

He could not speak!

But through his mouth a moan of midnight woods,

Where wild beasts lay in wait to slaughter and gorge,

A moan of forest-caverns where the wolf

Brought forth her litter, a moan of the wild earth

In travail with strange shapes of mire and clay,

Creatures of clay, clay images of the gods,

That hungered like the gods, the most high gods,

But found no food, and perished like the beasts.

And the gods laughed,—

Art thou, then, such a god? And, like a leaf

Unfolding in dark woods, in his deep brain

A sudden memory woke; and like an ape

He nodded, and all heaven with laughter rocked,

While Artemis cried out with scornful lips,—

Perchance He is the Maker of you all!

Then, piteously outstretching calloused hands,

He sank upon his knees, his huge gnarled knees,

And echoed, falteringly, with slow harsh tongue,—

Perchance, perchance, the Maker of you all.

They wept with laughter! And Aphrodite, she,

With keener mockery than white Artemis

Who smiled aloof, drew nigh him unabashed

In all her blinding beauty. Carelessly,

As o'er the brute brows of a stallèd ox

Across that sooty muzzle and brawny breast,

Contemptuously, she swept her golden hair

In one deep wave, a many-millioned scourge

Intolerable and beautiful as fire;

Then turned and left him, reeling, gasping, dumb,

While heaven re-echoed and re-echoed, See,

Perchance, perchance, the Maker of us all!

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

Rose to his feet, and with one terrible cry

“I hunger,” rushed upon the scornful gods

And strove to seize and hold them with his hands,

And still the laughter deepened as they rolled

Their clouds around them, baffling him. But once,

Once with a shout, in his gigantic arms

He crushed a slippery splendour on his breast

And felt on his harsh skin the cool smooth peaks

Of Aphrodite's bosom. One black hand

Slid down the naked snow of her long side

And bruised it where he held her. Then, like snow

Vanishing in a furnace, out of his arms

The splendour suddenly melted, and a roll

Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down

He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead

The young and scornful gods — he heard them laugh!—

Toppled the crags down after him. He lay

Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots

And buried him beneath it. His broad breast

Heaved, like that other giant in his heart,

And through the crater burst his fiery breath,

But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay

Breathing in agony thrice a thousand years.

Then came a Voice, he knew not whence, “Arise,

Enceladus!” And from his heart a crag

Fell, and one arm was free, and one thought free,

And suddenly he awoke, and stood upright,

Shaking the mountains from him like a dream;

And the tremendous light and awful truth

Smote, like the dawn, upon his blinded eyes,

That out of his first wonder at the world,

Out of his own heart's deep humility,

And simple worship, he had fashioned gods

Of cloud, and heaven out of a hollow shell.

And groping now no more in the empty space

Outward, but inward in his own deep heart,

He suddenly felt the secret gates of heaven

Open, and from the infinite heavens of hope

Inward, a voice, from the innermost courts of Love,

Rang — Thou shall have none other gods but Me.

Enceladus, the foul Enceladus,

When the clear light out of that inward heaven

Whose gates are only inward in the soul,

Showed him that one true Kingdom, said,

“I will stretch

My hands out once again. And, as the God

That made me is the Heart within my heart,

So shall my heart be to this dust and earth

A god and a creator. I will strive

With mountains, fires and seas, wrestle and strive,

Fashion and make, and that which I have made

In anguish I shall love as God loves me.”

In the Black Country, from a little window,

Waking at dawn, I saw those giant Shafts

— O great dark word out of our elder speech,

Long since the poor man's kingly heritage —

The Shapings, the dim Sceptres of Creation,

The Shafts like columns of wan-hope arise

To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths

Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.

Then, as the dawn crimsoned, the sordid clouds,

The puddling furnaces, the mounds of slag,

The cinders, and the sand-beds and the rows

Of wretched roofs, assumed a majesty

Beyond all majesties of earth or air;

Beauty beyond all beauty, as of a child

In rags, upraised thro’ the still gold of heaven,

With wasted arms and hungering eyes, to bring

The armoured seraphim down upon their knees

And teach eternal God humility;

The solemn beauty of the unfulfilled

Moving towards fulfilment on a height

Beyond all heights; the dreadful beauty of hope;

The naked wrestler struggling from the rock

Under the sculptor's chisel; the rough mass

Of clay more glorious for the poor blind face

And bosom that half emerge into the light,

More glorious and august, even in defeat,

Than that too cold dominion God foreswore

To bear this passionate universal load,

This Calvary of Creation, with mankind.