on wreathed horns
When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam
Bursting its bubbles, from the hissing snow
Whirled her nude form on Hyperion's gaze,
Naked and fresh as Indian Ocean shell
Dashed landward from its bed of sucking sponge
And branching corals by the changed monsoon.
Wind-rocked she swung her white feet on the sea,
And music raved down the slant western winds;
With swollen jowls the Tritons puffed the conch,
Where, breasting with cold bosoms the green waves,
That laughed in ripples at Love's misty feet,
Oceanids with dimple-dented palms
Smote sidewise the pale bubbles of the foam,
Which wove a silver iris 'round her form.
Where dolphins tumbling stained the garish arch
Nereides sang, braiding their wet locks,
Or flung them streaming on the broken foam,
Till evetide showed her loveliest of stars--
Lost passion-flower of the sinking sun--
In the cool sheen of shadowy waters deep,
That moaned wild sea-songs at the Sirens' caves;
Then in a hollow pearl, o'er moon-white waves,
The creatures of the ocean danced their queen,
Till Cytherea like a rosy mist
Beneath the star rose blushing from the deep.
On the pearled sands of a moon-glassing sea
Beneath the moon, narcissus-like, they met,
She naked as a star and crowned with stars,
Child of the airy foam and queen of love.

PERSEPHONE.

O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves!
O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee
Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge!
He bare her to the horrid gulfs below,
And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades,
Queen of the fiery flood and mournful realms
Of grating iron and the clank of chains.

On blossomed plains in far Trinacria
A maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair
Seemed gleaming rays of midnight 'mid the stars,
Rays slowly bright'ning 'neath a mellow moon,
She 'mid the flowers with the Oceanids
Sought Echo's passion, loved Narcissus pale,
'Ghast staring in the mirror of a lake,
Whose smoothness brake his image, flickering seen,
E'en with the fast tears of his dewy eyes.
A shape there rose with iron wain and steeds
'Mid sallow fume of sulphur and pale fires;
Its countenance meager, and its eyes e'en such
As the wild, ghastly sulphur. In its arms,
Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel
The muscles