Thence have I come winging;
I there had been keeping
A mouse from his sleeping,
With shouting and singing.
The Voice. A wriggling thing on the white lake moved,
As the canker-worm on a milk-white rose;
And down I came as a falcon swoops
When his sinewy wings together close.
I lit by the thing, 'twas a shepherd-boy,
Who, swimming, sought the island lone;
Within his clenchéd teeth a sword.
I heard the deathful monotone,
The water-serpent sings his heart
Before a death. O'er wave and bank
I cried the words you bid me cry.
The shepherd raised his arms and sank,
His rueful spirit fluttered by.
Naschina [aside]. I must bestir myself. Both dead for me!
Both dead!—No time to think.
[Aloud.]I am she,
That shepherdess; arise, and bring to me,
In silence, that famed flower of wizardry,
For I am mightier now by far than thee,
And faded now is all thy wondrous art.
Naschina. I see within a cloven rock dispart
A scarlet bloom. Why raisest thou, pale one,
Oh famous dying minion of the sun,
Thy flickering hand? What mean the lights that rise
As light of triumph in thy goblin eyes—
In thy wan face?
Enchantress. Hear thou, O daughter of the days,
Behold the loving loveless flower of lone ways,
Well nigh immortal in this charméd clime,
Thou shalt outlive thine amorous happy time,
And dead as are the lovers of old rime
Shall be the hunter-lover of thy youth.
Yet ever more, through all thy days of ruth,
Shall grow thy beauty and thy dreamless truth,
As an hurt leopard fills with ceaseless moan,
And aimless wanderings the woodlands lone,
Thy soul shall be, though pitiless and bright
It is, yet shall it fail thee day and night
Beneath the burthen of the infinite,
In those far years, O daughter of the days.
And when thou hast these things for many ages felt,
The red squirrel shall rear her young where thou hast dwelt—
Ah, woe is me! I go from sun and shade,
And the joy of the streams where long-limbed herons wade;
And never any more the wide-eyed bands
Of the pied panther-kittens from my hands
Shall feed. I shall not in the evenings hear
Again the woodland laughter, and the clear
Wild cries, grown sweet with lulls and lingerings long.
I fade, and shall not see the mornings wake,
A-fluttering the painted populace of lake
And sedgy stream, and in each babbling brake
And hollow lulling the young winds with song.
I dream!—I cannot die!—No! no!
I hurl away these all unfaery fears.
Have I not seen a thousand seasons ebb and flow
The tide of stars? Have I not seen a thousand years
The summers fling their scents? Ah, subtile and slow,
The warmth of life is chilling, and the shadows grow
More dark beneath the poplars, where yon owl
Lies torn and rotting. The fierce kestrel birds
Slew thee, poor sibyl: comrades thou and I;
For, ah, our lives were but two starry words
Shouted a moment 'tween the earth and sky.
Oh death is horrible! and foul, foul, foul!
Naschina. I know not of the things you speak. But what
Of him on yonder brazen-gated spot,
By thee spell-bound?
Enchantress.Thou shalt know more:
Meeting long hence the phantom herdsman, king
Of the dread woods; along their russet floor
His sleuth-hounds follow every faery thing.
Before I am too weak, fierce mortal, let me fly,
And crouch in some far stillness of the isle, and die.
Voices [sing]. A man has a hope for heaven,
But soulless a faery dies,
As a leaf that is old, and withered, and cold,
When the wintry vapours rise.
Soon shall our wings be stilled,
And our laughter over and done:
So let us dance where the yellow lance
Of the barley shoots in the sun.
So let us dance on the fringéd waves,
And shout at the wisest owls
In their downy caps, and startle the naps
Of the dreaming water-fowls,
