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XIX.

PROTEUS.

1.

INTO the living elements of things

I, Proteus, mingle, seeking strange disguise :

I track the Sun-god on an eagle's wings,

Or look at horror thro' a murderer's eyes,

In shape of hornëd beast my shadow glides

Among broad-leaved flowers that blow 'neath Afric

tides.

2.

A wind of ancient prophecy swept down,
And wither'd up my glory-where I lay

On Paris' bosom, in the Trojan town :

Troy vanish'd; and I wander'd far away,Till, lying on a Virgin's breast, I gazed

Thro' infant's eyes, and saw, as in a dream,

The great god Pan, whom I had raised and praised,
Float, huge, unsinew'd, down a mighty stream,
With leaves and lilies heaped about his head
And a weird music hemming him around,
While, dropping from his nerveless fingers dead,
A brazen sceptre plunged with hollow sound:
A trackless Ocean wrinkling far away

Open'd its darkness for the unking'd day:
Moreover, as he floateth on, at rest,

With lips that flutter'd still and seem'd to speak, An Eagle, swooping down upon his breast,

Picked his blank eyeballs out with golden beak.

3.

Thro' wondrous change on change

Haunted for ever by a hollow tune

Made ere the birth of Sun or Stars or Moon

I, Proteus, range.

Nay, evermore I grow

4.

Darker, with deeper power to see and know.-
For in the end, I, Proteus, shall cast

All wondrous shapes aside but one alone,

And stand (while roundabout me in the Vast
The Earth, Sun, Stars, and Moon, burn out at last)

A Skeleton, that kneels before a Throne.

EPILOGUE.

TO MARY ON EARTH.

66

Simplex munditiis!"

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