Just as at first some colt, wild-eyed, with quivering nostril,
Plunges in fear of the curb, and the fluttering robes of the rider;
Soon, grown bold by despair, submits to the will of his master,
Tamer and tamer each hour, and at last, in the pride of obedience,
Answers the heel with a curvet, and arches his neck to be fondled,
Cowed by the need that maid grew tame; while the hero indignant
Tore at the fetters which held her:  the brass, too cunningly tempered,
Held to the rock by the nails, deep wedged:  till the boy, red with anger,
Drew from his ivory thigh, keen flashing, a falchion of diamond—­
‘Now let the work of the smith try strength with the arms of Immortals!’
Dazzling it fell; and the blade, as the vine-hook shears off the vine-bough,
Carved through the strength of the brass, till her arms fell soft on his
shoulder. 
Once she essayed to escape:  but the ring of the water was round her,
Round her the ring of his arms; and despairing she sank on his bosom. 
Then, like a fawn when startled, she looked with a shriek to the seaward. 
   ’Touch me not, wretch that I am!  For accursed, a shame and a hissing,
Guiltless, accurst no less, I await the revenge of the sea-gods. 
Yonder it comes!  Ah go!  Let me perish unseen, if I perish! 
Spare me the shame of thine eyes, when merciless fangs must tear me
Piecemeal!  Enough to endure by myself in the light of the sunshine
Guiltless, the death of a kid!’
   But the boy still lingered around her,
Loth, like a boy, to forego her, and waken the cliffs with his laughter. 
’Yon is the foe, then?  A beast of the sea?  I had deemed him immortal. 
Titan, or Proteus’ self, or Nereus, foeman of sailors: 
Yet would I fight with them all, but Poseidon, shaker of mountains,
Uncle of mine, whom I fear, as is fit; for he haunts on Olympus,
Holding the third of the world; and the gods all rise at his coming. 
Unto none else will I yield, god-helped:  how then to a monster,
Child of the earth and of night, unreasoning, shapeless, accursed?’
   ‘Art thou, too, then a god?’
      ‘No god I,’ smiling he answered;
’Mortal as thou, yet divine:  but mortal the herds of the ocean,
Equal to men in that only, and less in all else; for they nourish
Blindly the life of the lips, untaught by the gods, without wisdom: 
Shame if I fled before such!’
   In her heart new life was enkindled,
Worship and trust, fair parents of love:  but she answered him sighing. 
   ’Beautiful, why wilt thou die?  Is the light of the sun, then, so
worthless,
Worthless to sport with thy fellows in flowery glades of the forest,
Under the broad green oaks, where never again shall I wander,
Tossing the ball with my maidens, or wreathing the altar in garlands,
Careless, with dances and songs, till the glens rang loud to our laughter. 
Too full of death the sad earth is already: