Ix

Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled: Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack: The fishing-boat heavenward sailed, Bent abeam, with a whitened track, Surprised, fast hauling the net, As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook. She said: Is it night? O not yet! With a travail of thoughts in her look. The mountain heaved up to its peak: Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl; Of bird or of branch rose the shriek. Night? but never so fell a scowl Wore night, nor the sky since then When ocean ran swallowing shore, And the Gods looked down for men. Broke tempest with that stern roar Never yet, save when black on the whirl Rode wrath of a sovereign Power. Then the youth and the shuddering girl, Dim as shades in the angry shower, Joined hands and descended a maze Of the paths that were racing alive Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways, Incessant, with sound of a hive. The height was a fountain-urn Pouring streams, and the whole solid height Leaped, chasing at every turn The pair in one spirit of flight To the folding pineforest. Yet here, Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt, The stillness bred spectral fear Of the awfulness ranging without, And imminent. Downward they fled, From under the haunted roof, To the valley aquake with the tread Of an iron-resounding hoof, As of legions of thunderful horse Broken loose and in line tramping hard. For the rage of a hungry force Roamed blind of its mark over sward: They saw it rush dense in the cloak Of its travelling swathe of steam; All the vale through a thin thread-smoke Was thrown back to distance extreme: And dull the full breast of it blinked, Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er, Diminished, in strangeness distinct, Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar: An Enna of fields beyond sun, Out of light, in a lurid web; And the traversing fury spun Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb; As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn, Retire, and in ravenous greed, Inveterate, swell its return. Up and down, as if wringing from speed Sights that made the unsighted appear, Delude and dissolve, on it scoured. Lo, a sea upon land held career Through the plain of the vale half-devoured. Callistes of home and escape Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech. She gazed at the Void of shape, She put her white hand to his reach, Saying: Now have we looked on the Three. And divided from day, from night, From air that is breath, stood she, Like the vale, out of light.