A Faun, sly-eyed, with furred and pointed ears, Who leaps upon her, as upon a dove A great hawk pinions from the skies above. Diana sees, and on her wooded hills Stays her fair band, the stag-hounds' clamor stills-- A senseless statue of cold, weeping stone Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone. The stag-hounds bay; again they urge the chase, While the astonished Faun's bewildered face Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering, He bends above the sculpture of a spring. And so we sailed; and many a morn of balm Led on the hours of sunny song and calm: And it was life, to her and me, and love, With the fair myths below, our God above, To sail in golden sunsets and emerge In golden morns upon a fretless surge. But, ah! alas! the stars, that pierce the blue, Shine not for ever; clouds must gather, too. I knew not how it came, but in a while I found myself cast on a desert isle, Alone with sorrow; wan with doubt and dread; The seas in wrath and thunder overhead; Deep down in coral caves the one I love-- No myths below; no God, it seemed, above. LOKÉ AND SIGYN A daughter of Winter, Skade, a giantess, One twisting serpent hung above his head, So that its blistering venom, roping down, Beat on his upturned face and tortured him. Him had the gods of Asgard, Odin and Thor, Weary of all his wiles and evil ways, Followed, and after many stormy moons, Within the land of giants overcome, In Jotunheim, and dragged beneath the world, Into a cave the earthquake's hands had built, A cavern vast and terrible as that, They tell of Hel's, whose ceiling is of snakes, That hang, a torrent torture, yawning slime, In whose slow stream eternal anguish wades. And for his crimes they chained him to a rock, His lips still sneering and his eyes all scorn, And left him with the serpent over him, And, gathering round him from their larvæ lairs, Monsters, huge-warted, eyed with wells of fire. But Sigyn, Loké's wife, stole in to him, And sate herself beside his writhen limbs, And held a cup of gold against the mouth Of ceaseless poison dripping in the gloom. Was it her voice lamenting? or the sound Of far abysmal waters falling, falling Down tortured labyrinths of hollow rock? Or was't the Strömkarl? he whose hoary harp Is heard remote; who, syllabling strange runes, Sits gray behind the crashing cataract, Within a grotto dim with mist and foam; His long thin beard, white as the flying spray, Slow-swinging in the wind and keeping time To his wild harp's notes, murmuring, whispering Beneath the talons of his hands of foam.