behind him from crag to crag:
Well he remembered that sweet throat leading,
Wild with terror he raced and strained,
On thro' the darkness, thorn-swept, bleeding:
Ever they gained and gained!

XVII

Death, like a darkling huntsman holloed--
Swift, Actaeon!--desire and shame
Leading the pack of the passions followed.
Red jaws frothing with white-hot flame,
Volleying out of the glen, they leapt up,
Snapped and fell short of the foam-flecked thighs ...
Inch by terrible inch they crept up,
Shadows with blood-shot eyes.

XVIII

Still with his great heart bursting asunder
Still thro' the night he struggled and bled;
Suddenly round him the pack's low thunder
Surged, the hounds that his own hand fed
Fastened in his throat, with red jaws drinking
Deep!--for a moment his antlered pride
Soared o'er their passionate seas, then, sinking,
Fell for the fangs to divide.

XIX

_Light of beauty, O, perfect in whiteness,
Softly suffused thro' the years' dark veils,
Kindling them all as they pass by her brightness,
Filling our hearts with her old-world tales,
She, the unchanging, shepherds their changes,
Bids them mingle and form and flow,
Flowers and flocks and the great hill-ranges
Follow her cry and go._

XX

Still, in the violets, lazily dreaming
Young Diana, the huntress, lies:
One white side thro' the violets gleaming
Heaves and sinks with her golden sighs;
One white breast like a diamond crownet
Couched in a velvet casket glows,
One white arm, tho' the violets drown it,
Thrills their purple with rose.

LUCIFER'S FEAST

(A EUROPEAN NIGHTMARE.)

To celebrate the ascent of man, one gorgeous night
Lucifer gave a feast.
Its world-bewildering light
Danced in Belshazzar's tomb, and the old kings dead and gone
Felt their dust creep to jewels in crumbling Babylon.

Two nations were His guests--the top and flower of Time,
The fore-front of an age which now had learned to climb
The slopes where Newton knelt, the heights that Shakespeare trod,
The mountains whence Beethoven rolled the voice of God.

Lucifer's feasting-lamps were like the morning stars,
But at the board-head shone the blood-red lamp of Mars.

League upon glittering league,