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Alfred Austin - Sisyphus
Work rating: Low

Midway his upward unavailing course
 Sate Sisyphus, his back against his load,
 Halting a moment from that task of doom.
 Adown his swollen cheeks ran streams of sweat
 Dripping from thick—drenched locks; and watery beads
 Gathered and stood on his stupendous limbs.
 The sinews of his arm, like gnarled knots
 On hollow bark of legendary oak,
 Credentials of incalculable years,
 Bulged up, and in his horny hands outspread
 Upon his wrinkled knees, the arching veins
  Glittered like tempered steel. His stertorous breath
 Moaned like to bellows in cyclopean forge,
 Wherewith in smithy subterranean
 Against the Gods rebellious demigods
 Fashion their molten ineffectual bolts.

 But when, asudden, swift on angry flash,
 Rumbled imperious thunder overhead,
 At the commanding mandate, Sisyphus,
 Bulkily rising, straightened limbs relaxed,
 And turned him yet again unto his task,
 Mumbling the while habitual lament.

 ``Why was I chosen for this hateful task,
 Fantastically futile, which the Gods
 Lay on their victim, for their own disport?
 Rather a thousand times upon the wheel
 Would I, Ixion—like, be racked, or lift
 The tantalising gourd—cup to my lips.
 I was no wickeder than they, and I
 Founded Ephyra in a stony land,
 Raised monolithic temples to the Gods,
 And made the name of Corinth glorious from
 Peloponnesus unto Attica.
 Was it a crime to be Ulysses` sire
 By sportive Anticlea ere she wed
 Laertes, bringing him a Royal heir?
 Yearning for whom, when Circe and her lures
 From Ithaca withheld his bark, she died.
 If such to me imputed be a crime,
 Then all the Gods are bestial criminals,
 Lustful, adulterous, meretricious Gods.
 What more was my offence? Was it because
 I from the clustered sister—Pleiades
 Lured Merope to earth to share my love,
  Not an ephemeral, but strong—nuptialled love?
 Whereat the Gods, envying a mortal`s joy,
 Darkened her light in Heaven, and vengefully
 In me infused her immortality,
 That I might strain for ever at the task
 Of aiding upward downward—destined world.

 ``If mortals were but once by doom allowed
 To limit their ambition, and abide
 On some material or majestic height!
 But onward, upward, ever are they urged
 By the half—God within their blood to pass
 Beyond the flaming barriers of the world,
 Where the inexorable sentries stand
 To drive them back, and me, unwilling drudge,
 Forced downward by the weight I upward rolled.
 When to the very pinnacle of Art,
  Majestically lovely, for restrained,
 Hellenic minds from barbarous gropings towered,
 The beast in mortals sensuously craved
 For craft more carnal, Goddesses undraped
 In marble, to such use recalcitrant,
 Satyrs and fauns, licentious comedy,
 Provocative of laughter or of lust,
 Dethroning the Ideal for the Real.
 When the stern Roman on the world imposed
 By forceful dominance the Reign of Law,
 Then did the East with tribute undermine
 The male—won Empire, and barbarian hordes
 Rent the Imperial marble from its limbs,
And revelled in the wreck of its decline.

``O, but now! now! now!
 Heavier the load, weightier than ever yet,
  For men, infatuated, now conceive,
 Eliminating Spirit, they will find
 In matter immaterialised the germ,
 Fountain, and origin of all that moves.
 But behind Fate there is another Fate,
 And yet another, undiscoverable.
 Yet Man, again illusioned, presses on,
 Fondling the fancy he will shortly pierce
 Unto the generating source of things,
 The Atom atomless: whereat the Gods
 Shake with ironic laughter, since themselves
 Know it not, neither do they seek to know,
 Aware, above them there are other Gods,
 May—be one sole impenetrable God,
 Never created, never dying, One
 With the unbounded Universe, Himself
 The soul and substance of Eternity.
  That is my one last hope, that He will free
 My body from this pagan servitude,
 And with omnipotent mercifulness merge
 My Being into His!``
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