Nor understands? Nay, thou shalt bless and pray,
Pray, for the pure heart, purged by prayer, divines
And seeth when the bolder eyes are blind.
Worship and wonder, these befit a man
At every hour ; and mayhap will the gods
Yet work a miracle for knees that bend
And hands that supplicate."
Then all they knew
A sudden sense of awe, and bowed their heads
Beneath the stripling s gaze: Admetus fell,
Crushed by that gentle touch, and cried aloud :
" Pardon and pity ! I am hard beset."
There waited at the doorway of the king
One grim and ghastly, shadowy, horrible,
Bearing the likeness of a king himself,
Erect as one who serveth not, upon
His head a crown, within his fleshless hands
A sceptre, monstrous, winged, intolerable.
To him a stranger coming neath the trees,
Which slid down flakes of light, now on his hair,
Close-curled, now on his bared and brawny chest,
Now on his flexile, vine-like veined limbs,
With iron network of strong muscle thewed,
And godlike brows and proud mouth unrelaxed.
