Enceladus

In the Black Country, from a little window,Before I slept, across the haggard wastesOf dust and ashes, I saw Titanic shaftsLike shadowy columns of wan-hope ariseTo waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreathsOf smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.Then, as night deepened, the blast-furnaces,Red smears upon the sulphurous blackness, turnedAll that sad region to a City of Dis,Where naked, sweating giants all night longBowed their strong necks, melted flesh, blood and bone,To brim the dry ducts of the gods of gloomWith terrible rivers, branches of living gold.

O, like some tragic gesture of great soulsIn agony, those awful columns toweredAgainst the clouds, that city of ash and slagAssumed the grandeur of some direr ThebesArising to the death-chant of those gods,A dreadful Order climbing from the darkOf Chaos and Corruption, threatening to takeHeaven with its vast slow storm.I slept, and dreamed.And like the slow beats of some Titan heartBuried beneath immeasurable woes,The forging-hammers thudded through the dream:

Huge on a fallen tree,Lost in the darkness of primeval woods,Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,The naked giant, brooded all alone.Born of the lower earth, he knew not how,Born of the mire and clay, he knew not when,Brought forth in darkness, and he knew not why!

Anhungered, yet no comrade of the wolf,And cold, but with no power upon the sun,A master of this world that mastered him!

Who chained this other giant in his heartThat heaved and burned like Etna? HeavilyHe bent his brows and wondered and was dumb.

He raised his matted head and scanned the stars.He stood erect! He lifted his uncouth arms!With inarticulate sounds his uncouth lipsWrestled and strove--I am full-fed, and yetI hunger!Who set this fiercer famine in my maw?

Can I eat moons, gorge on the Milky Way,Swill sunsets down, or sup the wash of the dawnOut of the rolling swine-troughs of the sea?Can I drink oceans, lie beneath the mountains,And nuzzle their heavy boulders like a cubSucking the dark teats of the tigress? Who,Who set this deeper hunger in my heart?And the dark forest echoed--Who? Ah, who?

"I hunger!"And the night-wind answered him,"Hunt, then, for food."

"I hunger!"And the sleek gorged lionessDrew nigh him, dripping freshly from the kill,Redder her lolling tongue, whiter her fangs,And gazed with ignorant eyes of golden flame.

"I hunger!"Like a breaking sea his crySwept through the night. Against his swarthy kneesShe rubbed the red wet velvet of her earsWith mellow thunders of unweeting bliss,Purring--Ah, seek, and you shall find.Ah, seek, and you shall slaughter, gorge, ah seek,Seek, seek, you shall feed full, ah seek, ah seek.

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,Bewildered like a desert-pilgrim, sawA rosy City, opening in the clouds,The hunger-born mirage of his own heart,Far, far above the world, a home of gods,Where One, a goddess, veiled in the sleek wavesOf her deep hair, yet glimmering golden through,Lifted, with radiant arms, ambrosial foodFor hunger such as this! Up the dark hills,He rushed, a thunder-cloud,Urged by the famine of his heart. He stoodHigh on the topmost crags, he hailed the godsIn thunder, and the clouds re-echoed it!

He hailed the gods!And like a sea of thunder round their thronesWashing, a midnight sea, his earth-born voiceBesieged the halls of heaven! He hailed the gods!They laughed, he heard them laugh!With echo and re-echo, far and wide,A golden sea of mockery, they laughed!

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,Laid hold upon the rosy Gates of Heaven,And shook them with gigantic sooty hands,Asking he knew not what, but not for alms;And the Gates, opened as in jest;And, like a sooty jest, he stumbled in.

Round him the gods, the young and scornful gods,Clustered and laughed to mark the ravaged face,The brutal brows, the deep and dog-like eyes,The blunt black nails, and back with burdens bowed.And, when they laughed, he snarled with uncouth lipsAnd made them laugh again."Whence comest thou?"He could not speak!How should he speak whose heart within him heavedAnd burned like Etna? Through his mouth there cameA sound of ice-bergs in a frozen seaOf tears, a sullen region of black iceRending and breaking, very far away.They laughed!He stared at them, bewildered, and they laughedAgain, "Whence comest thou?"

He could not speak!But through his mouth a moan of midnight woods,Where wild beasts lay in wait to slaughter and gorge,A moan of forest-caverns where the wolfBrought forth her litter, a moan of the wild earthIn travail with strange shapes of mire and clay,Creatures of clay, clay images of the gods,That hungered like the gods, the most high gods,But found no food, and perished like the beasts.

And the gods laughed,--Art thou, then, such a god? And, like a leafUnfolding in dark woods, in his deep brainA sudden memory woke; and like an apeHe nodded, and all heaven with laughter rocked,While Artemis cried out with scornful lips,--Perchance He is the Maker of you all!

Then, piteously outstretching calloused hands,He sank upon his knees, his huge gnarled knees,And echoed, falteringly, with slow harsh tongue,--Perchance, perchance, the Maker of you all.

They wept with laughter! And Aphrodite, she,With keener mockery than white ArtemisWho smiled aloof, drew nigh him unabashedIn all her blinding beauty. Carelessly,As o'er the brute brows of a stallèd oxAcross that sooty muzzle and brawny breast,Contemptuously, she swept her golden hairIn one deep wave, a many-millioned scourgeIntolerable and beautiful as fire;Then turned and left him, reeling, gasping, dumb,While heaven re-echoed and re-echoed, See,Perchance, perchance, the Maker of us all!

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,Rose to his feet, and with one terrible cry"I hunger," rushed upon the scornful godsAnd strove to seize and hold them with his hands,And still the laughter deepened as they rolledTheir clouds around them, baffling him. But once,Once with a shout, in his gigantic armsHe crushed a slippery splendour on his breastAnd felt on his harsh skin the cool smooth peaksOf Aphrodite's bosom. One black handSlid down the naked snow of her long sideAnd bruised it where he held her. Then, like snowVanishing in a furnace, out of his armsThe splendour suddenly melted, and a rollOf thunder split the dream, and headlong downHe fell, from heaven to earth; while, overheadThe young and scornful gods--he heard them laugh!--Toppled the crags down after him. He laySupine. They plucked up Etna by the rootsAnd buried him beneath it. His broad breastHeaved, like that other giant in his heart,And through the crater burst his fiery breath,But could not burst his bonds. And so he layBreathing in agony thrice a thousand years.

Then came a Voice, he knew not whence, "Arise,Enceladus!" And from his heart a cragFell, and one arm was free, and one thought free,And suddenly he awoke, and stood upright,Shaking the mountains from him like a dream;And the tremendous light and awful truthSmote, like the dawn, upon his blinded eyes,That out of his first wonder at the world,Out of his own heart's deep humility,And simple worship, he had fashioned godsOf cloud, and heaven out of a hollow shell.And groping now no more in the empty spaceOutward, but inward in his own deep heart,He suddenly felt the secret gates of heavenOpen, and from the infinite heavens of hopeInward, a voice, from the innermost courts of Love,Rang--Thou shall have none other gods but Me.

Enceladus, the foul Enceladus,When the clear light out of that inward heavenWhose gates are only inward in the soul,Showed him that one true Kingdom, said,"I will stretchMy hands out once again. And, as the GodThat made me is the Heart within my heart,So shall my heart be to this dust and earthA god and a creator. I will striveWith mountains, fires and seas, wrestle and strive,Fashion and make, and that which I have madeIn anguish I shall love as God loves me."

In the Black Country, from a little window,Waking at dawn, I saw those giant Shafts--O great dark word out of our elder speech,Long since the poor man's kingly heritage--The Shapings, the dim Sceptres of Creation,The Shafts like columns of wan-hope ariseTo waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreathsOf smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.Then, as the dawn crimsoned, the sordid clouds,The puddling furnaces, the mounds of slag,The cinders, and the sand-beds and the rowsOf wretched roofs, assumed a majestyBeyond all majesties of earth or air;Beauty beyond all beauty, as of a childIn rags, upraised thro' the still gold of heaven,With wasted arms and hungering eyes, to bringThe armoured seraphim down upon their kneesAnd teach eternal God humility;The solemn beauty of the unfulfilledMoving towards fulfilment on a heightBeyond all heights; the dreadful beauty of hope;The naked wrestler struggling from the rockUnder the sculptor's chisel; the rough massOf clay more glorious for the poor blind faceAnd bosom that half emerge into the light,More glorious and august, even in defeat,Than that too cold dominion God foresworeTo bear this passionate universal load,This Calvary of Creation, with mankind.