His robe drawn over
His old sightless head,
Revolving inly
The doom of Thebes.
They see the centaurs
In the upper glens
Of Pelion, in the streams
Where red-berried ashes fringe
The clear-brown shallow pools,
With streaming flanks, and heads
Reared proudly, snuffing
The mountain wind.
They see the Indian
Drifting, knife in hand,
His frail boat moored to
A floating isle thick-matted
With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants,
And the dark cucumber.
He reaps and stows them,
Drifting—drifting; round him,
Round his green harvest-plot,
Flow the cool lake-waves,
The mountains ring them.
They see the Scythian
On the wide steppe, unharnessing
His wheeled house at noon.
He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal,—
Mares' milk, and bread
Baked on the embers. All around,
The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starred
With saffron and the yellow hollyhock
