The Warriors' heads, with their tangled elf-locks, still peer out of the drifting sand—the twisted bodies in their sea armour, lie half surrounded by the green waters; but the log hut, and Atven have vanished into the misty shadows of the past. They, and the good old priest, have drifted away to Shadow-Land.
Only the sea talks of them still; and croons them a lullaby, as soft as the centuries-old song, it sang over the cradle of the enchanted Stone-maiden.
The Grass of Parnassus.
On the banks of a clear stream in one of the far away Greek islands, grew a small flowering plant, with delicate stem and transparent white flower, called "Grass of Parnassus."
Every day it saw its own face, reflected in the running water, and every day it made the same complaint—
"This place is beautiful, the soft earth wraps me round, the branches bend over me, but I can never be happy, for I have never seen a River-God!"
The fish swimming close to the shore had talked to the Grass, of the mysterious race who lived in the shallows of the river, higher up, where it broadened into a lake; and played on their rude pipes as they rested in the flickering gloom of the water-weeds and rushes.