Page:Dublin University Review vol 1 pt 1.pdf/174

138 Thence have I come winging;

I there had been keeping

A mouse from his sleeping,

With shouting and singing.

Enchantress. How sped thy quest? This prelude we'll not hear it.

I' faith thou ever wast a wordy spirit!

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.

[The points to a cleft in a rock. 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.

[Turns to go. tries to prevent her. Before I am too weak, fierce mortal, let me fly,

And crouch in some far stillness of the isle, and die. [Goes.

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,