Thereby was wrought the mighty tameless Boar With foaming jaws; real seemed the pictured thing, As by Aleides' giant strength the brute Was to Eurystheus living borne on high. There fashioned was the fleetfoot stag which laid The vineyards waste of hapless husbandmen. The Hero's hands held fast its golden horns, The while it snorted breath of ravening fire. Thereon were seen the fierce Stymphalian Birds, Some arrow-smitten dying in the dust, Some through the grey air darting in swift flight. At this, at that one--hot in haste he seemed-- Hercules sped the arrows of his wrath. Augeias' monstrous stable there was wrought With cunning craft on that invincible targe; And Hercules was turning through the same The deep flow of Alpheius' stream divine, While wondering Nymphs looked down on every hand Upon that mighty work. Elsewhere portrayed Was the Fire-breathing Bull: the Hero's grip On his strong horns wrenched round the massive neck: The straining muscles on his arm stood out: The huge beast seemed to bellow. Next thereto Wrought on the shield was one in beauty arrayed As of a Goddess, even Hippolyta. The hero by the hair was dragging her From her swift steed, with fierce resolve to wrest With his strong hands the Girdle Marvellous From the Amazon Queen, while quailing shrank away The Maids of War. There in the Thracian land Were Diomedes' grim man-eating steeds: These at their gruesome mangers had he slain, And dead they lay with their fiend-hearted lord. There lay the bulk of giant Geryon Dead mid his kine. His gory heads were cast In dust, dashed down by that resistless club. Before him slain lay that most murderous hound Orthros, in furious might like Cerberus His brother-hound: a herdman lay thereby, Eurytion, all bedabbled with his blood. There were the Golden Apples wrought, that gleamed In the Hesperides' garden undefiled: All round the fearful Serpent's dead coils lay, And shrank the Maids aghast from Zeus' bold son. And there, a dread sight even for Gods to see, Was Cerberus, whom the Loathly Worm had borne To Typho in a craggy cavern's gloom Close on the borders of Eternal Night, A hideous monster, warder of the Gate Of Hades, Home of Wailing, jailer-hound Of dead folk in the shadowy Gulf of Doom. But lightly Zeus' son with his crashing blows Tamed him, and haled him from the cataract flood Of Styx, with heavy-drooping head, and dragged The Dog sore loth to the strange upper air All dauntlessly. And there, at the world's end, Were Caucasus' long glens, where Hercules, Rending Prometheus' chains, and hurling them This way and that with fragments of the rock Whereinto they were riveted, set free The mighty Titan. Arrow-smitten lay The Eagle of the Torment therebeside.