The Daughter Of Merlin

*

An Arthurian Miscellany
For the mountains' hoarse greetings came hollow

From stormy wind-chasms and caves;

And I heard their wild cataracts wallow;

Like monsters, the white of their waves:

And that shadow said, "Lo! You must follow!

And our path is o'er myriads of graves."

Then I felt that the black earth was porous

And rotten with dust and with bones;

And I knew that the ground that now bore us

Was cadaverous with death as with stones;

And I saw burning eyes, heard sonorous

And dolorous sighings and groans.

But the night of the tempest and thunder,

The might of the terrible skies,

And the fire of Hell, that,--coiled under

The hollow Earth,--smoulders and sighs,

And the laughter of stars and their wonder,

Mingled and mixed in her eyes.

And we clomb--and the moon, old and sterile,

Clomb with us o'er torrent and scar:

And I yearned for her oceans of beryl,

Wan mountains and cities of spar:

"'Tis not well," then she said; "you're in peril

Of falling and failing your star."

And we clomb--through a murmur of pinions,

And rattle of talons and plumes;

And a sense as of darkest dominions,

Deep, lost, of the dead and their tombs,

Swam round us, with all of their minions

Of dreads and of dreams and of dooms.

And we clomb--till we stood at the portal

Of the uttermost point of the peak;

And she led, with a step more than mortal,

On, upward, where glimmered a streak,

A star, a presence immortal,

A planet, whose light was still weak.

And we clomb--till the limbo of spirits

Of lusts and of sorrows below

Swung nebular; and we were near its

Starred summit, its glory of glow.

And we entered its light and could hear its

White music of silence and snow.