Broke little trains of stones which jounced a while
And clattered down into the brook beneath.
The stone struck chill. The cleft wound in and down.
How long he was descending, he knew not.
But in his blood-grief and extreme fatigue
He slowly knew that he had heard the sound
Of falling water for some small time past,
A wayward, windblown, rushing, chuckling sound,
An intermittent music, bubbling up.
And then he heard, within the water's voice
A melody more fluent and more strange,
A silver chant that wove its liquid length
Along the hurrying channel of the stream
And wound with that to twist one rope of sound,
Silver and stony. They went on and down
Steady and hearkening, and on either hand
The wet walls narrowed. Then, around a bend
There came an opening, and both horse and man
Stockstill, with humming ear and dazzled eye
Stared at a mystery.
A kind of hollowed chamber in the hill
Sheltered a still and secret pool, beneath
A frowning crag, whose rim was cleft to form
A lip for falling water, white with air
Like streaming needles of a shattered glass
Tossed as it turned, then smoothly combing down
Like one unending tress of silver-white
Holding its form beneath the basin's rim
By virtue of its force and of the air
Caught in its hurtling substance, spreading out
Like pale and solid livid ice beneath
The black and moss-green dappling of the pool.
A rounded rock stood low among the curl
Of dim-discernèd weeds, whose fronds were stirred
By many little springs that bubbled up
And seeped through coiling strands and stirred the plane
Of the dark water into dimpling life.
This rock was covered with a vivid pelt
Of emerald mosses, maidenhairs and mints
Dabbling dark crowns and sharply-scented stems
Amongst the water's peaks and freshenings.
The pensile foliage tumbled down the crag
To join the pennywort and tormentil
That wound below and wove a living mat
Dark green, but sparked with gold and amethyst.
And on the rock a lady sat and sang.
Sang to herself most clear and quietly
A small clear golden voice that seemed to run
Without the need to breathe or pause for thought,
Simple and endless as the moving fall,
Surprising as the springs that bubbled up
Now here, now there, among the coiling weeds.
As milky roses at the end of day
In some deserted bower seem still alight
With their own luminous pallor, so she cast
A softened brightness and a pearly light
On that wild place, in which she sate and sang.
She wore a shift of whitest silk, that stirred
With her song's breathing, and a girdle green
As emerald or wettest meadow-grass.
Her blue-veined feet played in the watery space
Slant in its prism-vision like white fish
Darting together. When she stretched them out
The water made her silver anklet-chains
Glancing with diamond-drops and lucid pearls
Which shone as bright as those about her neck
Carelessly cast, a priceless brilliant rope
Of sapphire, emerald, and opaline.
Her living hair was brighter than chill gold
With shoots of brightness running down its mass
And straying out to lighten the dun air
Like phosphorescent sparks off a pale sea,
And while she sang, she combed it with a comb
Wrought curiously of gold and ebony,
Seeming to plait each celandine-bright trees
With the spring's sound, the song's sound and the sound
Of its own living whisper, warm and light
So that he longed to touch it, longed to stretch
If but a finger out across the space
That stood between his blood-stained, stiffened self
And all this swaying supple brilliance,
Save that her face forbade.
It was a face
Queenly and calm, a carved face and strong
Nor curious, nor kindly, nor aloof,
But self-contained and singing to itself.
And as he met her eyes, she ceased her song
And made a silence, and it seemed to him
That in this silence all the murmuring ceased
Of leaves and water, and they two were there,
And all they did was look, no question,
No answer, neither frown nor smile, no move
Of lip or eye or brow or eyelid pale
But all one long look which consumed his soul
Into desire beyond the reach of hope
Beyond the touch of doubt or of despair,
So that he was one thing, and all he was,
The fears, the contradictions and the pains,
The reveller's pleasures and the sick man's whims,
All gone, forever gone, all burned away
Under the steady and essential gaze
Of this pale Creature in this quiet space.