Nor any vassal’s tongue can tell How,--when the spying Day is sped And sleeps with the safe dead; When Gruach loosens her long hair Midnight-black on her shoulders bare, And sinks to the comfort of despair; At the witches’ hour, when the shadows swell As the swinging cressets flare, And the small swart crickets harp and harp On the tune remembered, torturing-sharp, And the sobbing owlets wake,-- The diamond in the dark Draws, draws her, like the spark In the head of a deadly snake. Then will she sit, and dully stare On the cold diamond’s serpent-glare; Her lip is fallen, she does not stir, Her life is sucked into the gem; It is as though the Powers malign Had made with mystery in the mine A thing to be like the soul of her: It was a jest to them! All the light upgathered they That might have been a sunshine day, Broadcast blessing and heavenly boon, Peace of even and power of noon; Seized the rays with a spell unknown, Forced them into a core of fire Like the glede of a covetous desire, Shut them fast in the heart of a stone. And hard, and harder than the sword, They made the crystal, fiery-cored; On steel that oft had steel withstood Might it grave the word it would. A gem of beauty and of bale, A prisoned force in narrow pale, Evil-perfect, pure of good! --So will she sit, till naked Morn Peers at the world with visage white Like a sleeper roused in fright, Aghast and most forlorn. What of the end? since end must be. She knows a skilled artificer, And he shall set in a dagger’s haft The thing that is like the soul of her. When first she thought thereon, she laughed, And then she shuddered fearfully. Ah, what if Heaven no end will grant, Resolved in any heats of wrath, To that which for its symbol hath The unsubduable adamant? Ah, what if like a falling jewel The soul whose light was mocking-cruel, Through gulfs of loss unplummeted Should fall, and fall, forevermore, Fire of torment at its core? Oh, horrible and leaden dread! The grace of God blot out our sins! --The women knock at the chamber door, The queen starts up, the day begins. “AS THE CROW FLIES” Buccaneer with blackest sails, Steering home by compass true, Now that all the rich West pales From its ingot-hue! Would that compass in thy breast Thou couldst lend, for guiding me Where my Hope hath made her nest-- In how far a tree! Swerving not, nor stooping low, To that dear, that distant mark Could I undiverted go, What were coming dark? --Careless of the twilight ground, O’er the wood and o’er the stream Still he sails, with hollow sound Strange, as in a dream! THE WAYFARERS I