Hialti.
THE lass is late about; where is she now?
The outside door opens and, as the rain drives in, Blanid enters carrying two pails of water by a yoke. Her short-sleeved, frayed, hempen smock is dripping-wet; an old cart-strap is buckled about her middle; her ankles are bare, but her feet are covered by shapeless brogues; her matted hair is cut short, and she has an iron collar about her neck. She sets down her pails, and with difficulty shuts and bolts the door against the wind. Then she carries her pails into the outhouse; as she moves about within she is heard to sing to a tired, monotonous tune.
Blanid.
The bird in my heart's a-calling through a far-fled, tear-grey sea
To the soft slow hills that cherish dim waters weary for me,
Where the folk of rath and dun trail homeward silently
In the mist of the early night-fall that drips from their hair like rain.
The bird in my heart's a-flutter, for the bitter wind of the sea
Shivers with thyme and woodbine as my body with memory;
I feel their perfumes ooze in my ears like melody—
The scent of the mead at the harping I shall not hear again.
The bird in my heart's a-sinking to a hushed vale hid in the sea,
Where the moonlit dew o'er dead fighters is stirred by the feet of the Shee,
Who are lovely and old as the earth but younger than I can be
Who have known the forgetting of dying to a life one lonely pain ...
She returns from the outhouse.
Thorgerd.
Come here; give me your shoes; quickly, I say.
Why must you go shod softly? Give me your shoes.
She takes them and puts them on the fire.
Is there some joy so deep within you still
That I have missed it though 'tis bright for singing?
It shall not be so long; sing while you can.
Blanid.
No joy ever sank deep enough for singing;
Trouble and all the sorrowful ways of men
Must stir the sad unrest that ends in song.
Joy seeks but peace and silence and still thought;
But those who cannot weep must sing for ease,
And in the sound forget the thought that smote it.
Thorgerd.
I am made glad, hearing your misery;
Yet all the shapeless, creeping, shivering sounds
You wail about the house will make me share it.
Your songs of faëry and nameless kings
And things that never happened long ago
And an unknown, impossible, shadowy land
Are useless as the starlight after moonset
That will not light men homeward from the fair—
Nay, useless as its melting down thin water:
If you must sing, sing truth to gut-strong tunes
Of Gunnar or of Freya or Andvari,
Vineland the Good and the old Western sea.
Blanid.
Things need not happen that they may be true;
Although impossible, they may be true—
The things that matter happen in the heart.
All earthly truth is true but for a time,
Whilst ages may be altered by one dream—
The things that matter happen in the heart ...
Thorgerd.
Useless as starlight or the aimless wind.
Blanid.
The wind is all the souls of those sad dead
Who will not stay in Heaven for love of earth;
Hither and thither they surge to find the gate
They see and know not on its new, strange side,
For they have learned too much to be let back.
Ah, some have learned too much before they die.
As she crosses the house at the back Hialti turns and, catching her hands in his, draws her toward him.
Hialti.
Is it too hard, the thought of that lost vale?
Blanid.
It is too hard, because I must so love it
That were I free I should go there no more,
Lest I should hate it. I must always suffer,
I only suffer this way rather than that—
'Tis the eternal suffering of love
Must search me somehow with love's pitilessness
To make me know all souls; what matter how?
O, I am but a troubled dream of God's,
And even His will can alter not His dreams;
Yea, He is dreaming me a little while—
I must be dreamed out to the hardest end,
Returning then to be unknown in Him;
I shall be Him again when He awakes.
Ah, God, awake, and so forget me soon.