Back streams the wave on the ever running river: Life, life is changed and the laws of it o'ertrod. Man shall be the slave, the affrighted, the low-liver! Man hath forgotten God. And woman, yea, woman, shall be terrible in story: The tales too, meseemeth, shall be other than of yore. For a fear there is that cometh out of Woman and a glory, And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no more! The old bards shall cease, and their memory that lingers Of frail brides and faithless, shall be shrivelled as with fire. For they loved us not, nor knew us: and our lips were dumb, our fingers Could wake not the secret of the lyre. Else, else, O God the Singer, I had sung amid their rages A long tale of Man and his deeds for good and ill. But the old World knoweth--'tis the speech of all his ages-- Man's wrong and ours: he knoweth and is still. _Some Women._ Forth from thy father's home Thou camest, O heart of fire, To the Dark Blue Rocks, to the clashing foam, To the seas of thy desire: Till the Dark Blue Bar was crossed; And, lo, by an alien river Standing, thy lover lost, Void-armed for ever, Forth yet again, O lowest Of landless women, a ranger Of desolate ways, thou goest, From the walls of the stranger. _Others._ And the great Oath waxeth weak; And Ruth, as a thing outstriven, Is fled, fled, from the shores of the Greek, Away on the winds of heaven. Dark is the house afar, Where an old king called thee daughter; All that was once thy star In stormy water, Dark: and, lo, in the nearer House that was sworn to love thee, Another, queenlier, dearer, Is thronèd above thee. _Enter from the right_ JASON. JASON.