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By Root 15850 0

the hunter accomplishes his purpose, is given in a dozen lines of verse, with far more perspicuity than ordinary writers could give it in as many pages of prose. In this species of narration Mr. Horne is approached only by Moore in his “Alciphron.” In the latter portions of our extract, observe the vivid picturesqueness of the description.

Four days remain. Fresh trees he felled and wove

More barriers and fences; inaccessible

To fiercest charge of droves, and to o’erleap

Impossible. These walls he so arranged

That to a common centre each should force

The flight of those pursued; and from that centre

Diverged three outlets. One, the wide expanse

Which from the rocks and inland forests led;

One was the clear-skied windy gap above

A precipice; the third, a long ravine

Which through steep slopes, down to the seashore ran

Winding, and then direct into the sea.

Two days remain. Orion, in each hand

Waving a torch, his course at night began,

Through wildest haunts and lairs of savage beasts.

With long-drawn howl, before him trooped the wolves —

The panthers, terror-stricken, and the bears

With wonder and gruff rage; from desolate crags,

Leering hyenas, griffin, hippogrif,

Skulked, or sprang madly, as the tossing brands

Flashed through the midnight nooks and hollows cold,

Sudden as fire from flint; o’er crashing thickets,

With crouched head and curled fangs dashed the wild boar,

Gnashing forth on with reckless impulses,

While the clear-purposed fox crept closely down

Into the underwood, to let the storm,

Whate’er its cause, pass over. Through dark fens,

Marshes, green rushy swamps, and margins reedy,

Orion held his way — and rolling shapes

Of serpent and of dragon moved before him

With high-reared crests, swan-like yet terrible,

And often looking back with gem-like eyes.

All night Orion urged his rapid course

In the vex’d rear of the swift-droving din,

And when the dawn had peered, the monsters all

Were hemmed in barriers. These he now o’erheaped

With fuel through the day, and when again

Night darkened, and the sea a gulf-like voice

Sent forth, the barriers at all points he fired,

Mid prayers to HephÆstos and his Ocean-Sire. ­

Soon as the flames had eaten out a gap

In the great barrier fronting the ravine

That ran down to the sea, Orion grasped

Two blazing boughs; one high in air he raised,

The other, with its roaring foliage trailed

Behind him as he sped. Onward the droves

Of frantic creatures with one impulse rolled

Before this night-devouring thing of flames,

With multitudinous voice and downward sweep

Into the sea, which now first knew a tide,

And, ere they made one effort to regain

The shore, had caught them in its flowing arms,

And bore them past all hope. The living mass,

Dark heaving o’er the waves resistlessly,

At length, in distance, seemed a circle small,

Midst which one creature in the centre rose,

Conspicuous in the long, red quivering gleams

That from the dying brands streamed o’er the waves.

It was the oldest dragon of the fens,

Whose forky flag-wings and horn-crested head

O’er crags and marshes regal sway had held;

And now he rose up like an embodied curse,

From all the doomed, fast sinking — some just sunk —

Looked landward o’er the sea, and flapped his vans,

Until Poseidon drew them swirling down.

Poseidon (Neptune) is Orion’s father, and lends him his aid. The first line italized is an example of sound made echo to sense. The rest we have merely emphasized as peculiarly imaginative.

At page 9, Orion thus describes a palace built by him for Hephæstos (Vulcan.)

But, ere a shadow-hunter I became —

A dreamer of strange dreams by day and night —

For him I built a palace underground,

Of iron, black and rough as his own hands.

Deep in the groaning disemboweled earth,

The tower-broad pillars and huge stanchions,

And slant supporting wedges I set up,

Aided by the Cyclops who obeyed my voice,

Which through the metal fabric rang and pealed

In orders echoing far, like thunder-dreams.

With arches, galleries and domes all carved —

So that great