Much I should have wished to stay and hear the hymn with which they greet
the night, that is answered by the wolves on the heights of Mloon, but it
was now time to raise the anchor again that the captain might return from
Bar-Wul-Yann upon the landward tide. So we went on board and continued
down the Yann. And the captain and I spoke little, for we were thinking of
our parting, which should be for long, and we watched instead the
splendour of the westerning sun. For the sun was a ruddy gold, but a faint
mist cloaked the jungle, lying low, and into it poured the smoke of the
little jungle cities, and the smoke of them met together in the mist and
joined into one haze, which became purple, and was lit by the sun, as the
thoughts of men become hallowed by some great and sacred thing. Some times
one column from a lonely house would rise up higher than the cities'
smoke, and gleam by itself in the sun.
And now as the sun's last rays were nearly level, we saw the sight that I
had come to see, for from two mountains that stood on either shore two
cliffs of pink marble came out into the river, all glowing in the light of
the low sun, and they were quite smooth and of mountainous altitude, and
they nearly met, and Yann went tumbling between them and found the sea.
And this was Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann, and in the distance through
that barrier's gap I saw the azure indescribable sea, where little
fishing-boats went gleaming by.
And the sun set, and the brief twilight came, and the exultation of the
glory of Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the pink cliffs glowed, the
fairest marvel that the eye beheld--and this in a land of wonders. And
soon the twilight gave place to the coming out of stars, and the colours
of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling away. And the sight of those cliffs was to
me as some chord of music that a master's hand had launched from the
violin, and which carries to Heaven or Faëry the tremulous spirits of men.
And now by the shore they anchored and went no further, for they were
sailors of the river and not of the sea, and knew the Yann but not the
tides beyond.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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