thy
mysteries
Celebration had from me, me the most splendidly privileged!
Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewildering;
Not again hear thy half-murmurs--I am lost!--never, never more.
I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of
flame!
Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, Cypria!'

Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the Thunderer
Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car
superimpending
Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over 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 m