Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/264

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together,

Wrapt all his creatures round and about,

Fixed with fetters, so that they fail ever

To find any road to wrest themselves free.

And yet every creature courses along,

Onward bending, bound for its goal,

Seeking the kind that the King of angels,

The Father at first, firmly appointed.

So now all things are thitherward moving,

The spacious creation, save certain angels,

Save man also. Many, too many

Dwellers in the world war with their nature!

Though you a she-lion should meet in the land,

A pleasant creature wondrously tame,

Loving her master with lively affection,

And yet every day dreading him also,

If it befall that savour of blood

She ever tastes, truly none needs

Ever to hope that she will hold fast

To her tameness after; well do I think,

New as it is, no more she will heed it,

But her wild wont will soon remember,

The way of her fathers. Fierce she begins

To rend her fetters, to roar and growl,

And first she bites, before all others,

Her own house-master, and hastily thereafter

Each single man that she may meet

Naught she leaves that owns life,

Nor beast nor man, mangling all she finds.

Thus too the wood-birds, wondrous gentle,