28
Orion.
[Book I.
While with white fingers midst his chestnut locks,
In her speech pausing, gently would she hang
Violets, as white as her own hands, and sprigs
Of Cretan dittany, whose nodding spikes
Flushed deeper pink beneath the sacred touch,—
But with a penetrating influence
And front austere, as suiting best the Queen
Of maiden immortality. His soul
Strove hard to ascend and leave the earth behind;
And by the Goddess' guidance every hour
Had its fixed duties. Husbandry of fields
She taught those giant hands, and how to raise
The sweetest herbs and roots, which now his food
Became; nor taste and culture of the vine
Permitted, nor of slaughtered kine the flesh,
Nor forest boar, nor other thing that owns
An animal life. Lastly, she taught his mind
To reason on itself, far as the bounds
Of sense external furnish images
And types in attestation of each phase
Of man's internal sphere—large orbit space
For varied lights—and also shewed the way
Rightly his complex knowledge to employ,
And from their shadows trace substantial things,
In her speech pausing, gently would she hang
Violets, as white as her own hands, and sprigs
Of Cretan dittany, whose nodding spikes
Flushed deeper pink beneath the sacred touch,—
But with a penetrating influence
And front austere, as suiting best the Queen
Of maiden immortality. His soul
Strove hard to ascend and leave the earth behind;
And by the Goddess' guidance every hour
Had its fixed duties. Husbandry of fields
She taught those giant hands, and how to raise
The sweetest herbs and roots, which now his food
Became; nor taste and culture of the vine
Permitted, nor of slaughtered kine the flesh,
Nor forest boar, nor other thing that owns
An animal life. Lastly, she taught his mind
To reason on itself, far as the bounds
Of sense external furnish images
And types in attestation of each phase
Of man's internal sphere—large orbit space
For varied lights—and also shewed the way
Rightly his complex knowledge to employ,
And from their shadows trace substantial things,
