The Blindness Of Orion

So blind Orion, groping for the morn With eyes uplift whereon forever hung Infinite burden and suspense of night, Had clomb the long and mountain-ending vast, Led by the Cyclops. Many a dim ravine Where serried pines were silent ere the dawn And many a slope or terrace of the snow, Pure as Pentelic marble for the tread Of roseal-footed light, lay far behind Still drowned in stagnant purples. Toiling up Even to the very threshold of the heavens, They heard the ascending eagles hail the sun Round the forsaken throne of Phosphorus, Until the morning's levin-colored ray Lightened upon the Cyclops, and he paused, And over him ethereal glory drave To rouse the dreaming colors in the cloud, To give the sea its immemorial green And strike the towering cities into gold Along the low horizon. Then, at last, On dark Orion groping for the suns, From out the sole, the Appollonian source, Returning vision flowed, and he had power And privilege once more upon the light, And might receive its seven ministers, Even with gathering rays of stars remote, And take the tithe of beauty proffered still By terrene shapes and images—by forms Of flowers and statues and of women dancing; Of sapling laurels, ancient olives gnarled; The noontide shapes of headlands and of clouds; The meres that curve in darkening amaranth Amid the sunset range; and seas and rivers Straight-tided or with currents serpentine Dividing variously their protean shores.