_O, like some tragic gesture of great souls In agony, those awful columns towered Against the clouds, that city of ash and slag Assumed the grandeur of some direr Thebes Arising to the death-chant of those gods, A dreadful Order climbing from the dark Of Chaos and Corruption, threatening to take Heaven with its vast slow storm. I slept, and dreamed. And like the slow beats of some Titan heart Buried 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!
Thus, like a wind, went by a thousand years.
Anhungered, yet no comrade of the wolf, And cold, but with no power upon the sun, A master of this world that mastered him!
Thus, like a cloud, went by a thousand years.
_Who_ chained this other giant in his heart That heaved and burned like Etna? Heavily He bent his brows and wondered and was dumb.
And, like one wave, a thousand years went by.
He raised his matted head and scanned the stars. He stood erect! He lifted his uncouth arms! With inarticulate sounds his uncouth lips Wrestled and strove--_I am full-fed, and yet I 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 dawn Out of the rolling swine-troughs of the sea? Can I drink oceans, lie beneath the mountains, And nuzzle their heavy boulders like a cub Sucking 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 lioness Drew 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 cry Swept through the night. Against his swarthy knees She rubbed the red wet velvet of her ears With 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._