Into eternal night."

So rang the song of the Oceanides,
Of the beautiful compassionate mermaids,
Until louder waves overpowered it.
Behind the clouds retired the moon,
The night yawned,
And I sat long thereafter in the darkness and wept.

VI. THE GODS OF GREECE.

Full-blooming moon, in thy radiance,
Like flowing gold shines the sea.
With daylight clearness, yet twilight enchantment,
Thy beams lie over the wide, level beach.
And in the pure, blue starless heavens,
Float the white clouds,
Like colossal images of gods
Of gleaming marble.

No more again! those are no clouds!
They are themselves--the gods of Hellas,
Who erst so joyously governed the world,
But now, supplanted and dead,
Yonder, like monstrous ghosts, must fare,
Through the midnight skies.

Amazed and strangely dazzled, I contemplate
The ethereal Pantheon.
The solemnly mute, awfully agitated,
Gigantic forms.
There is Chronos yonder, the king of heaven;
Snow-white are the curls of his head,
The world-renowned Olympus-shaking curls.
He holds in his hand the quenched lightning,
In his face dwell misfortune and grief;
But even yet the olden pride.
Those were better days, oh Zeus,
When thou didst celestially divert thyself
With youths and nymphs and hecatombs.
But the gods themselves, reign not forever;
The young supplant the old,
As thou thyself, thy hoary father,
And thy Titan-uncle didst supplant
Jupiter-Parricida!
Thee also, I recognize, haughty Juno;
Despite all thy jealous care,
Another has wrested thy sceptre from thee,
And thou art no longer Queen of Heaven.

And thy great eyes are blank,
And thy lily arms are powerless,
And nevermore may thy vengeance smite
The divinely-quickened Virgin,
And the miracle-performing son of God.
Thee also I recognize, Pallas Athena!
With thy shield and thy wisdom, could'st thou not avert
The ruin of the gods?
Also thee I recognize, thee also, Aphrodite!
Once the golden, now the silvern!