Page:The Colonnades a Poem.pdf/22

Now this remembering, by this world I swear
Whose gritty fibre ground my heel as yet,
"Man pays no obolus to enter life,
And none should pay for exit." Hereupon
Cried Charon, "Lo, he cometh!"—At the words,
So stout a labor took the pregnant world,
And such a racket went around the skies,
As Thor's old maul, that bangs the welkin's rim,
Had tried its temper on the jowl of Death,—
Or Vulcan's sledge, new handled to the age,
Had junked the handbolts old, Power's precepts once,
To slug the new columbiads of Jove.
A burst of fire that turned the night to pitch
Quaffed off the Phlegethon in single gulp,
And the smoke rolled away. Then wide around
Toward mine own fields I saw the cheery glow
Of lambent heavens in mellow, far concave,
Where Night imperial in her large state gems
Weltered the royal purple o'er the world;
But forward, lol a tunnel dark and huge
Was all the flickering heaven for leagues and leagues.
Then Charon slowly, and with head deferred,
As if mankind grew nearer to the gods:
"Say on, fair mortal—tell thy mission here."
My answer met him: I must cross and back.
I am a rover whose deep-water keel
Frets on the shallows of the babbling stream,—
Or bird misprisoned from his nature's bent,
Whose fierce ambition cocks at such a pitch
He should outfly the loftiest thoughted lark
That sings his native heavens, or break his neck.