When the Pleiads rose no more Rowed the heroes to the shore, Much in fear of winter gales, And they furled the wing-like sails, Carrying up the corded bales From the hollow, oaken Argo Till they lightened her of cargo. Then they beached her for the winter Where nor rocks nor waves could splinter There the heroes made their camp By the whispering seashore damp, But the mighty Heracles, Tired of looking at the seas, Rose and left those sounding beaches For the upland's wind-swept reaches. In a little beechwood gray Hylas fed his flock that day, Playing all alone but gayly Where he fed his lambkins daily, Singing to a five-stringed psalter By a little woodland altar, Where a shepherd's fire of oak Made a ribbon scarf of smoke, Curling highly, thinly, bluely, From the faggots cut but newly. Moving with a god-like ease, Through the gray boles of the trees, Hylas first spied Heracles, Looming vast as huge Orion, Tawny in his skin of lion; While through interspace of leaves, Through the network autumn weaves, Fell bronze sunshine and bronze leaves On the lion skin with its paws, Dangling, fringed with crescent claws. Softly all the flock were bleating As he gave the lad good greeting, Rubbing down with leaves his club, Mighty as a chariot hub-- Hylas stood with golden locks, Glowing mid the lichened rocks, Laughing in the silver beeches, White as milk and tanned like peaches. Then the hero loved the lad, For his beauty made him glad, And he took him on his knees; Tender was huge Heracles, Telling him of strange journeys To the far Hesperides, Crossing oceans in a bowl, Till he won him heart and soul. So these two were friends forever, Never seen apart, together Were they all that winter weather. And the hero taught the youth How to shoot and tell the truth, How to drive a furrow straight, Plowing, plowing, very early When the frosty grass was curly-- Taught him how to play the lyre, Till each wire, and wire, and wire Sang together like a choir; And at night young Hylas crept In the lion skin where he slept Where the lowing oxen team Stood beneath the smoke-browned beam, Slept beside the hero clypt By the giant, downy lipped. _Centuries have fled away Since the hero came that day To the little beechwood gray Where young Hylas was at play; But I shall, as poets may, Wreathe these roses for his head, For his beauty is not dead. And a voice has sung to me Like a memory of the sea, Sung this ancient threnody, Like an autumn melody: "Alas! Alas! for thee, Hylas, Alas!"_ II.