t sup the minute's worth
With draught so quick and keen that each
Moment gives more than we could reach
In all our term of three-score years,
Whereof full score we give to fears
Of losing them, and other score
Dreaming how fill the twenty more.
Now is the hour, Bride of the Night!
The chariot turns, the great steeds fight
The rocky entry; flies the dust
Behind the wheels at each fierce thrust
Of giant shoulder, at each lunge
Of giant haunch. Down, down they plunge
Into the dark, with rioting mane,
And the earth's door shuts-to again.
Now fly, ye Oreads, strain your arms,
Let eyes and hair voice your alarms--
Hair blown back, mouths astretch for fear,
Strained eyeballs--cry that Mother dear
Her daughter's rape; fly like the gale
That down the valleys drives the hail
In scurrying sheets, and lays the corn
Flat, which when man of woman born
Seeth, he bows him to the grass,
Whispering in hush, _The Oreads pass_.
(In shock he knows ye, and in mirth,
Since he is kindred of that earth
Which bore ye in her secret stress,
Images of her loveliness,
To her dear paramour the Wind.)
Follow me now that car behind.

II

O ye that know the fairy throng,
And heed their secret under-song;
In flower or leaf's still ecstasy
Of birth and bud their passion see,
In wind or calm, in driving rain
Or frozen snow discern them strain
To utter and to be; who lie
At dawn in dewy brakes to spy
The rapture of their flying feet--
Follow me now those coursers fleet,
Sucked in their wake, down ruining
Through channelled night, where only sing
The shrill gusts streaming through the hair
Of them who sway and bend them there,
And peer in vain with shielded eyes
To rend the dark. Clinging it lies,
Thick as wet gossamer that shrouds
October brushwoods, or low clouds
That from the mountain tops roll down
Into the lowland vales, to drown
Men's voices and to choke their breath
And make a silence like to death.
But this was hot and dry; it came
And smote them, like the gush of flame
Fanned in a smithy, that outpours
And floods with fire the open doors.
Downward their course was, swift as flight
Of meteor flaring through the night,
Steady and dreadful, with no sound
Of wheels or hoofs upon the g