Cumber our garden-paths with fallen leaves Or ever autumn come, when nourished Earth But grows more fecund at its fertile touch, And germinates with new luxuriance? Let us not waste this night, but seek a means To freedom for thee. Merow stays with me Waiting until their vigilance be dulled, And rusted by slow time; till idleness Become a hunger after wanton sports; Till I have lured them into vain delights Of banqueting, and music, and the chase After such game, or fierce or amorous, As their lust shows them, perilously keen. But, meanwhile, I shall send to Fredegonde Two counsellors of subtile wit, to weave Light snares about her so she feel them not, Till, multiplied, they hold as fast as steel.’ “So planned we in the shadowy dim aisles, In confidence of time, as if it brought Ever expected gifts and no defeat: And ere another morn I fled, alone, By unfrequented ways: and many years Passed ere I looked on Gregory again.” No motion made the priest as Brunhild paused; His eyes avoided hers. She was as one Towering over the departed years, The sea of years her memory like a shell Held echoes of, and reminiscent sounds. And above all her insults and disgrace, The burden of her age, the bitter wrongs, She rose into a calm, majestic realm, That eagles might inhabit, with her mind Intent upon the spectacle of life, Yet heedless of her fate; no shame could touch The soul that breathed in so serene an air, Superior to mortal accidents. But the priest felt that effluence from her Shed a strange glory round the humid cell And fill him with a fearful sense of fate: The blind, remorseless progress of the world. Sombre and threatening, her figure cut Prow-like, and loomed through huge, tempestuous night, Toward a doom obscure and imminent. She spoke again in slow and weary words: “Merow remained with Gregory; but time Brought no release for his imprisoned feet Or the wild soul pent in that cloistral peace Among the gilt and painted images Of the dead saints, the effigies of stone, The prisoned light, the windless, silent air That came not fresh from out the heart of dawn, But hung upon him heavily as death, Damp with its charnels; and the solemn chants Filled him with longing for the loud-voiced larks, And he was eager for my lips again. “Ah, God! what ruin lurked within his love. He fled by night from that safe harbourage, On foot, into the woods, and careless roamed Through unknown ways, and couched with herds of deer In brakes and bowery hollows, that the sound Of their swift flight when wolves drew close at night, Warned and awakened him; or he would creep At evening to some lone sequestered farm, Hid in a fold of hills, and win his food, His place beside the fire, with merry songs