artistic instinct
and made wonderful for us, and human and full of high interest. The
ancient world seems to have come to life again for our pleasure.

Of a work so large and so coherent, completed with no less perfection
than it is conceived, it is difficult by mere quotation to give any
adequate idea. This, however, may serve as an example of its narrative
power. The passage describes the visit of Thiodolf to the Wood-Sun:

The moonlight lay in a great flood on the grass without, and the dew
was falling in the coldest hour of the night, and the earth smelled
sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound
to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant
meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a
white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild
cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment now silent. Thiodolf
turned toward the wood, and walked steadily through the scattered
hazel-trees, and thereby into the thick of the beech-trees, whose
boles grew smooth and silver-grey, high and close-set: and so on and
on he went as one going by a well-known path, though there was no
path, till all the moonlight was quenched under the close roof of the
beech-leaves, though yet for all the darkness, no man could go there
and not feel that the roof was green above him. Still he went on in
despite of the darkness, till at last there was a glimmer before him,
that grew greater till he came unto a small wood-lawn whereon the
turf grew again, though the grass was but thin, because little
sunlight got to it, so close and thick were the tall trees round
about it. . . . Nought looked Thiodolf either at the heavens above,
or the trees, as he strode from off the husk-strewn floor of the
beech wood on to the scanty grass of the lawn, but his eyes looked
straight before him at that which was amidmost of the lawn: and
little wonder was that; for there on a stone chair sat a woman
exceeding fair, clad in glittering raiment, her hair lying as pale in
the moonlight on the grey stone as the barley acres in the August
night before the reaping-hook goes in amongst them. She sat there as
though she were awaiting some one, and he made no stop nor stay, but
went straight up to her, and took her in his arms, and kissed her
mouth and her eyes, and sh