sweet and low,
_In other worlds I loved you, long ago!_
And he, too, knew his love could never die,
Because his queen was throned beyond the sky.

Yet In sweet mortal eyes he met her now
And kissed Etain beneath the hawthorn bough,
And dared to dream his infinite dream was true
On earth and reign with Etain, dream he knew
Why leaves were green and sides were fresh and blue;
Yea, dream he knew, as children dream they know
They knew all this a million years ago,
And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend
And heard a voice whispering in their flow
And calling through the silent sunset-glow
_Love that hath no beginning hath no end._

Ah, could they see in the Valley of Gloom
That clove the cliffs behind the City;
Ah, could they hear in the forest of Doom
The peril that neared without pause or pity?
Behind the veils of ivy and vine,
Wild musk-roses and white woodbine,
In glens that were wan as with moonlit tears
And rosy with ghosts of eglantine
And pale as with lilies of long-past years,
Ah, could they see, could they hear, could they know
Behind that beautiful outward show,
Behind the pomp and glory of life
That seething old anarchic strife?
For there in many a dim blue glade
Where the rank red poppies burned,
And if perchance some dreamer strayed
He nevermore returned,
Cold incarnate memories
Of earth's retributory throes,
Deadly desires and agonies
Dark as the worm that never dies,
In the outer night arose,
And waited under those wonderful skies
With Hydra heads and mocking eyes
That winked upon the waning West
From out the gloom of the oak-forest,
Till all the wild profound of wood
That o'er the haunted valley slept
Glowed with eyes like pools of blood
As, lusting after a hideous food,
Through the haggard vistas crept
Without a cry, without a hiss,
The serpent broods of the abyss.
Ancestral folds in darkness furled
Since the beginnings of the world.
Ring upon awful ring uprose
That obscure heritage of foes,
The exceeding bitter heritage
Which still a jealous God bestows
From inappellable age to age,
The ghostly worms that softly move
Through every grey old corse of love
And creep across the coffined years
To batten on our blood and tears;
And there were