e went on
board and continued down the Yann. And the captain and I spoke little,
for we were thinking of our parting, which should be for long, and we
watched instead the splendour of the westering sun. For the sun was a
ruddy gold, but a faint mist cloaked the jungle, lying low, and into
it poured the smoke of the little jungle cities; and the smoke of
them met together in the mist and joined into one haze, which became
purple, and was lit by the sun, as the thoughts of men become hallowed
by some great and sacred thing. Sometimes one column from a lonely
house would rise up higher than the cities' smoke, and gleam by itself
in the sun.

And now as the sun's last rays were nearly level, we saw the sight
that I had come to see; for from two mountains that stood on either
shore two cliffs of pink marble came out into the river, all glowing
in the light of the low sun, and they were quite smooth and of
mountainous altitude, and they nearly met, and Yann went tumbling
between them and found the sea.

And this was Bar-Wul-Yann, the gate of Yann, and in the distance
through that barrier's gap I saw the azure indescribable sea, where
little fishing-boats went gleaming by.

And the sun set, and the brief twilight came, and the exultation of
the glory of Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the pink cliffs glowed,
the fairest marvel that the eye beheld--and this in a land of wonders.
And soon the twilight gave place to the coming out of stars, and the
colours of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling away. And the sight of those
cliffs was to me as some chord of music that a master's hand had
launched from the violin, and which carries to Heaven or Faery the
tremulous spirits of men.

And now by the shore they anchored and went no further, for they were
sailors of the river and not of the sea, and knew the Yann but not the
tides beyond.

And the time was come when the captain and I must part, he to go back
again to his fair Belzoond in sight of the distant peaks of the Hian
Min, and I to find my way by strange means back to those hazy fields
that all poets know, wherein stand small mysterious cottages through
whose windows, looking westwards, you may see the fields of men, and
looking eastwards see glittering elfin mountains, tipped with snow,
going range on range into the region of Myth, and beyond it into the
kingdom of Fantasy, which pertain to the Lands of Dream.

Long we regarded one another, knowing that we should meet no more,