of them.

_Gast_.
Ay, truly;
For look how from their wondrous bodies comes
Increase: who knoweth where such power ends?
They are in league with the great Motherhood
Who brings the seasons forth in the open world;
And if to them She hands, unseen by us,
Their marvellous bringing forth of children, what
Spirit of Her great dreadful mountain-spell,
Wherein the rocks have purpose against us,
Sealed up in watchful quiet stone, may not
Pass on to their dark minds, that seem so mild,
Yet are so strange; or what charm'd word from out
Her forests whispering endless dangerous things,
Wherefrom our hunters often have run crazed
To hear the trees devising for their souls;
What secret share of Her earth's monstrous power
May She not also grant to women's lives?
Yea, wise is our fear of women; but we fight
For more than fear; we give them liking too.
Who but the women can deliver us
From this continual siege of the wolves' hunger?
High above comfort, on the shrugging backs
Of downland, where the winds parch our skins, and frost
Kneads through our flesh until his fingers clamp
The aching bones, our scanty families
Hold out against the ravin of the wolves,
Fended by earthwork, fighting them with flint.
But if we keep the favour of our women,
They will breed sons to us so many and strong
We shall have numbers that will make us dare
Invade the weather-shelter'd woods, and build
Villages where now only wolves are denn'd;
Yea, to the beasts shall the man-folk become
Malice that haunts their ways, even as now
Our leaguer'd tribes must lurk and crouch afraid
Of wolfish malice always baying near.
And fires, stackt hugely high with timber, shall
With nightlong blaze make friendly the dark and cold,
Cheer our bodies, and roast great feasts of flesh,--
Ah, to burn trunks of trees, not bracken and ling!
This is what women are to me,--a fear
Lest the earth-hidden Awe, who unseen gives
The childing to their flesh, should make their minds
As darkly able as their wombs, with power
To think sorceries over us; and hope
That with their breeding they will dispossess
The beasts of the good lowlands, until man,
No longer fled to the hills, inhabit all
The comfort of the earth.

_Brys_.
These are mine too,
But as great rivers own the brook's young speed.
For in my soul, the women do not dwell
A torch going through darkness, with a troop
Of shadows gesturing after; but as the sun
Upon his height of golden blaze at noon,
With