They see the Indian Drifting, knife in hand, His frail boat moored to A floating isle thick-matted With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants, And the dark cucumber. He reaps and stows them, Drifting--drifting; round him, Round his green harvest-plot, Flow the cool lake-waves, The mountains ring them. They see the Scythian On the wide steppe, unharnessing His wheeled house at noon. He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal,-- Mares’ milk, and bread Baked on the embers. All around, The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starred With saffron and the yellow hollyhock And flag-leaved iris-flowers. Sitting in his cart He makes his meal; before him, for long miles, Alive with bright green lizards, And the springing bustard-fowl, The track, a straight black line, Furrows the rich soil; here and there Clusters of lonely mounds Topped with rough-hewn, Gray, rain-bleared statues, overpeer The sunny waste. They see the ferry On the broad, clay-laden Lone Chorasmian stream; thereon, With snort and strain, Two horses, strongly swimming, tow The ferry-boat, with woven ropes To either bow Firm-harnessed by the mane; a chief, With shout and shaken spear, Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern The cowering merchants in long robes Sit pale beside their wealth Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops, Of gold and ivory, Of turquoise-earth, and amethyst, Jasper and chalcedony, And milk-barred onyx-stones. The loaded boat swings groaning In the yellow eddies; The gods behold them. They see the heroes Sitting in the dark ship On the foamless, long-heaving, Violet sea, At sunset nearing The Happy Islands. These things, Ulysses, The wise bards also Behold, and sing. But oh, what labor! O prince, what pain! They too can see Tiresias; but the gods, Who gave them vision, Added this law: That they should bear too His groping blindness, His dark foreboding, His scorned white hairs; Bear Hera’s anger Through a life lengthened To seven ages. They see the centaurs On Pelion: then they feel, They too, the maddening wine Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain They feel the biting spears Of the grim Lapithæ, and Theseus, drive, Drive crashing through their bones; they feel, High on a jutting rock in the red stream, Alcmena’s dreadful son Ply his bow. Such a price The gods exact for song: To become what we sing.