So at last With one accord the muses rose and looked With eyes significant upon Apollo, Who angered by the Satyr’s swollen pride And monstrous failure, had become a will Of resolute retribution. But the muses, Because they feel for those who trying lose, Even as a mother for her crippled son Whom the sound-footed distance in the race, Hastened away lest they behold the thing That came to pass. And flinging far the flute Marsyas shrieked and sank upon the earth. Whereat Apollo seized his wretched form And lifting him up, with strips of laurel bark Bound the poor Satyr to a rugged oak And flayed him alive, and took the Satyr’s skin And hung it in a cave, and turned his blood To water, whence the river Marsyas That from the cave flows onward to this day. WORLDS BACK OF WORLDS This was the world: It was a house With a cool hallway end to end Where buckets, pans and dippers hung, And coats that in the breezes swung; And eaves in which ’twas good to browse On books stored in a musty box. Along the walks were lilac boughs, And by the windows hollyhocks. And there were fields down to the hills Which marked the earth’s far boundary; A church-spire at the roadway’s bend, And barns and cribs and twinkling mills, And neighbor friends like Mrs. Gray, And endless days of dream and play. It was a world so guarded, safe, So cherished by a God-watched sky Seeing the summers come and pass, A world so quiet it appeared Like to the mimic world ensphered By witchery of the old field glass Which from an uncle’s drawer I took Upon the distant hills to look. You know not then that worlds not dead Lie back of you and bide their chance To seize your world of ignorance: There was an opening in the ceiling Above the kitchen where the man Sat humming to himself at night Amid the enshadowed candle-light, And played on his accordion Happy, unconscious and alone. There full of mischief would I lie And watch him through the ceiling’s hole, And laugh for thought of elfish tricks, Of whispering words or dropping sticks To fright his well contented soul. Sometimes I think there is an eye Which is not God’s that spies upon us; That other worlds may lie about us Our fathers or our mothers lived, Where Forces lurk and laugh and wait. Here then was my world’s fair estate-- For so I knew it--could it be Disturbed or wrecked? I never thought That change or loss could come to me, With God above the church’s spire....