Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/324

 Then said Bisesa, stretching out her hands, As one in darkness fearing Devils:—"Help! "O Priests, I am a woman very weak. "And who am I to know the will of Gods? "Taman hath called me—whither shall I go?" The Chief in War, the Man of Sixty Spears, Howled in his torment, fettered by the Priests, But dared not come to her to drag her forth, And dared not lift his spear against the Priests. Then all men wept.

There was a Priest of Kysh Bent with a hundred winters, hairless, blind, And taloned as the great Snow-Eagle is. His seat was nearest to the altar-fires, And he was counted dumb among the Priests. But, whether Kysh decreed, or from Taman The impotent tongue found utterance we know As little as the bats beneath the eaves. He cried so that they heard who stood without:— "To the Unlighted Shrine!" and crept aside Into the shadow of his fallen God And whimpered, and Bisesa went her way.

That night, the slow mists of the evening dropped, Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, and rose Above the roofs, and by the Unlighted Shrine Lay as the slimy water of the troughs When murrain thins the cattle of Er-Heb: And through the mist men heard the Red Horse feed.

In Armod's house they burned Bisesa's dower, And killed her black bull Tor, and broke her wheel, And loosed her hair, as for the marriage-feast, With cries more loud than mourning for the dead.