Unknown in nature. This they knew:
That life begets with fair increase

Beyond the flesh, if life be true.
Just reason based on valiant blood,

The instinct bred afield would match
To pipe thereof a swelling flood,

Were men of Earth made wise in watch.
Though now the numbers count as drops

An urn might bear, they father Time.
She shapes anew her dusty crops;

Her quick in their own likeness climb.
Of their own force do they create;

They climb to light, in her their root.
Your brutish cry at muffled fate

She smites with pangs of worse than brute.
She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears

A Mother whom no cry can melt;
But read her past desires and fears,

The letters on her breast are spelt.
A slayer, yea, as when she pressed

Her savage to the slaughter-heaps,
To sacrifice she prompts her best:

She reaps them as the sower reaps.
But read her thought to speed the race,

And stars rush forth of blackest night:
You chill not at a cold embrace

To come, nor dread a dubious might.
Her double visage, double voice,

In oneness rise to quench the doubt.
This breath, her gift, has only choice

Of service, breathe we in or out.
Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand

Led our wild steps from slimy rock
To yonder sweeps of gardenland,

We breathe but to be sword or block.
The sighting brain her good decree

Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith,
By reason hourly fed, that she,

To some the clod, to some the wraith,
Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream.

Flame, stream, are we, in mid career
From torrent source, delirious dream,

To heaven-reflecting currents clear.
And why the sons of Strength have been

Her cherished offspring ever; how
The Spirit served by her is seen

Through Law; perusing love will show.
Love born of knowledge, love that gains

Vitality as Earth it mates,
The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,

The Life, the Death, illuminates.
For love we Earth, then serve we all;

Her mystic secret then is ours:
We fall, or view our treasures fall,

Unclouded, as beholds her flowers
Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,

Enrobed in morning's mounted fire,
When lowly, with a broken neck,

The crocus lays her cheek to mire.
THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER

I
Demeter devastated our good land,

In blackness for her daughter snatched below.
Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand,

Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw
The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray.

Now whether night advancing, whether day,
Scarce did the baldness show:

The hand of man was a defeated hand.
II

Necessity, the primal goad to growth,
Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one;

Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth;
Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun,

Or why men drew the breath to carry pain.
High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain,

Idly the flax-wheel spun
Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.

III
Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags,

Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees
Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags;

Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees,
More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled.

Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world,
Careless to lure or please.

A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.
IV

No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw,
Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom,

In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw,
Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom,

And whose pale place of habitation mute,
She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit

Anciently, gaped for bloom:
Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw.

V
The wrathful Queen descended on a vale,

That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved.
Iambe, maiden of the merry tale,

Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved.
It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn.

Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone.
More than for her who grieved,

She could for this waste home have piped the wail.
VI

Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet
To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld

A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet,
And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled,

Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round.
Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground

Rocky in spikes rebelled
Against the hand here slack as rotted net.

VII
The valley people up the ashen scoop

She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win
Her Mistress in compassion of yon group

So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin,
For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe,

White as in chalk outlining little O,
Dumb, from a falling chin;

Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.
VIII

Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when
Dark underwaters the recesses choke;

With cluck and upper quiver of a hen
In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak.

Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount
Bountiful of old days, heard them recount

This and that cruel stroke:
Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.

IX
A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned

Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold
An earth in awe before the claps resound

And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled,
The barren Nourisher unmelted shed

Death from the looks that wandered with the dead
Out of the realms of gold,

In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.
X

Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised
The cattle-call above the moan of prayer;

And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed,
Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare:

The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view
Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through

Shoots the swift foamspit: bare
They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.

XI
Howbeit the season of the dancing blood,

Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse:
Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood.

Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse,
Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked.

Neighing within, at either's flank they licked;
Played on a moment's force

At courtship, withering to the crazy nod.
XII

The nod was that we gather for consent;
And mournfully amid the group a dame,

Interpreting the thing in nature meant,
Her hands held out like bearers of the flame,

And nodded for the negative sideways.
Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays

From the Great Mother came:
Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.

XIII
She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none

Like thunder of the song of heart: her face,
The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun,

And peal on peal across the hills held chase.
She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire;

Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire
Full of the marrowy race.

Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton.
XIV

The valley people huddled, broke, afraid,
Assured, and takinglightning in the veins,

They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed,
Unwitting happiness till golden rains

Of tears in laughter, laughterweeping, smote
Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat

Pouring to heal their pains:
And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.

XV
Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts

Inspire the valley people, still on seas,
Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts,

With rapture in their wonderment; but these,
Low homage being rendered, ran to plough,

Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow
Calves at the teats they tease:

Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.
XVI

Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red,
The tree of water and the tree of wood:

And soon among the branches overhead
Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food.

O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth.

• instinct [´instiŋkt] n.本能；直觉；天资 (初中英语单词)
• savage [´sævidʒ] a.野蛮的 n.蛮人 (初中英语单词)
• breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
• stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
• chilly [´tʃili] a.凉飕飕的 (初中英语单词)
• maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
• throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
• laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
• valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
• mistress [´mistris] n.女主人；情妇；女能手 (初中英语单词)
• warmth [wɔ:mθ] n.温暖；热情；激动 (初中英语单词)
• quiver [´kwivə] v.抖动 n.颤动(声) (初中英语单词)
• barren [´bærən] a.贫瘠的；不生育的 (初中英语单词)
• ashore [ə´ʃɔ:] ad.向岸上 (初中英语单词)
• goddess [´gɔdis] n.女神 (初中英语单词)
• thunder [´θʌndə] n.雷 vi.打雷 vt.吼出 (初中英语单词)
• dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
• lightning [´laitniŋ] n.闪电 a.突然的 (初中英语单词)
• stress [stres] n.强调；压力 vt.强调 (初中英语单词)
• likeness [´laiknis] n.相似；肖像；外表 (高中英语单词)
• quench [kwentʃ] v.熄灭；平息；压制 (高中英语单词)
• torrent [´tɔrənt] n.奔流，激流，洪流；迸发 (高中英语单词)
• famine [´fæmin] n.饥荒 (高中英语单词)
• negative [´negətiv] a.否定的 n.否定词 (高中英语单词)
• rapture [´ræptʃə] n.着迷；全神贯注 (高中英语单词)
• homage [´hɔmidʒ] n.敬意，尊敬 (高中英语单词)
• valiant [´væliənt] a.勇敢的，英勇的 (英语四级单词)
• frosty [´frɔsti] a.霜冻的；冷淡的 (英语四级单词)
• blackness [´blæknis] n.黑色；阴险 (英语四级单词)
• wherefore [´weəfɔ:] ad.为什么；因此 (英语四级单词)
• habitation [,hæbi´teiʃən] n.居住；住所 (英语四级单词)
• hopelessly [´həuplisli] ad.无希望地，绝望地 (英语四级单词)
• compassion [kəm´pæʃən] n.同情；怜悯 (英语四级单词)
• dubious [´dju:biəs] a.怀疑的；可疑的 (英语六级单词)
• visage [´vizidʒ] n.面容，面貌 (英语六级单词)
• mystic [´mistik] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (英语六级单词)
• richness [´ritʃnis] n.富饶；富裕；华美 (英语六级单词)
• deluge [´delju:dʒ] n.大洪水 vt.泛滥 (英语六级单词)
• courtship [´kɔ:tʃip] n.求爱(时期) (英语六级单词)
• taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
• weeping [´wi:piŋ] a.&n.哭泣(的) (英语六级单词)