Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes! 
     Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes! 
     Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,
     Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;
     A desolating fire to blind the sight
     With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;
     The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;
     Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
     Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. 
     Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,
     And tumbled down the cave.  But rather look —
     Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,
     Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,
     Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! 
     Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,
     And shatter earth’s delirious holiday,
     Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,
     Resolving to composure on its throbs. 
     But see her in the Seasons through that year;
     That one glad year and the fair opening month. 
     Had never our Great Mother such sweet face! 
     War with her, gentle war with her, each day
     Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,
     On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength
     Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,
     From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
     Her ready secret:  the abounding life
     Returned for valiant labour:  she and they
     Defeated and victorious turn by turn;
     By loss enriched, by overthrow restored. 
     Exchange of powers of this conflict came;
     Defacement none, nor ever squandered force. 
     Is battle nature’s mandate, here it reigned,
     As music unto the hand that smote the strings;
     And she the rosier from their showery brows,
     They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast. 
     Back to the primal rational of those
     Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp
     Stability in hatred of the insane,
     Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce
     The mortal mind’s concept of earth’s divorced
     Above; those beautiful, those masterful,
     Those lawless.  High they sit, and if descend,
     Descend to reap, not sowing.  Is it just? 
     Earth in her happy children asked that word,
     Whereto within their breast was her reply. 
     Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,
     Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;
     Yet they (’twas the Great Mother’s voice inspired
     The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,
     Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,
     To meet the certain fate of earth’s divorced,
     And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,
     Up to the farthest bourne:  immortal still,
     Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled
     The Tyranny.  This her voice within them told,
     When softly the Great