"Drink," said the lady, sad and slow-- "_World's love_ behoveth thee to know." He looked to her commanding so; Her brow was troubled, but her eye Struck clear to his soul. For all reply He drank the water suddenly,-- Then, with a deathly sickness, passed Beside the fourth pool and the last, Where weights of shadow were downcast From yew and alder and rank trails Of nightshade clasping the trunk-scales And flung across the intervals From yew to yew: who dares to stoop Where those dank branches overdroop, Into his heart the chill strikes up, He hears a silent gliding coil, The snakes strain hard against the soil, His foot slips in their slimy oil, And toads seem crawling on his hand, And clinging bats but dimly scanned Full in his face their wings expand. A paleness took the poet's cheek: "Must I drink _here_?" he seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek: "Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be;" (And this time she spake cheerfully) "Behoves thee know _World's cruelty_." He bowed his forehead till his mouth Curved in the wave, and drank unloth As if from rivers of the south; His lips sobbed through the water rank, His heart paused in him while he drank, His brain beat heart-like, rose and sank, And he swooned backward to a dream Wherein he lay 'twixt gloom and gleam, With Death and Life at each extreme: And spiritual thunders, born of soul Not cloud, did leap from mystic pole And o'er him roll and counter-roll, Crushing their echoes reboant With their own wheels. Did Heaven so grant His spirit a sign of covenant? At last came silence. A slow kiss Did crown his forehead after this; His eyelids flew back for the bliss-- The lady stood beside his head, Smiling a thought, with hair dispread; The moonshine seemed dishevellèd In her sleek tresses manifold Like Danaë's in the rain of old That dripped with melancholy gold: But SHE was holy, pale and high As one who saw an ecstasy Beyond a foretold agony. "Rise up!" said she with voice where song Eddied through speech, "rise up; be strong: And learn how right avenges wrong." The poet rose up on his feet: He stood before an altar set For sacrament with vessels meet And mystic altar-lights which shine As if their flames were crystalline Carved flames that would not shrink or pine. The altar filled the central place Of a great church, and toward its face Long aisles did shoot and interlace, And from it a continuous mist Of incense (round the edges kissed By a yellow light of amethyst) Wound upward slowly and throbbingly, Cloud within cloud, right silverly, Cloud above cloud, victoriously,-- Broke full against the archèd roof And thence refracting eddied off And floated through the marble woof Of many a fine-wrought architrave, Then, poising its white masses brave, Swept solemnly down aisle and nave