Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/63

Their unknown curse and all the strength
  Of the wild thirsts and lusts they know,
The sharp joys sating them at length,
  The new and greater lusts that grow?

But who of mortals shall rehearse
  How fair and dreadfully they stand,
Each marked with an eternal curse,
  Alien from every kin and land?

—Along the bright and blasted heights
  Loudly their cloven footsteps ring!
Full on their fronts the lightning smites,
  And falls like some dazed baffled thing.

Now through the mountain clouds they break.
  With many a crest high-antlered, reared
Athwart the storm: now they outshake
  Fierce locks or manes, glossy and weird,

That sweep with sharp perpetual sound
  The arid heights where the snows drift,
And drag the slain pines to the ground,
  And all into the whirlwind lift