"George Bidder - Merlin's Youth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bidder George)

Thought of my sudden speech. For she was mine,
I cared not how so great her pride or power,
Nor did her lips smile or her forehead lower,
Or tears or fire beneath her eyelids shine.

Proud of my power, I knew her ever mine,
Willing or unwilling; so the sun should shine
The morrow, or the winter bring us snow.
Strength must bow down to greater strength; and none,
My proud youth told me, breathed our Western sun
Woman or man, my subtle force could know.

5

Turned she, a-rustle in the dewy grass: --
"Strange things, methinks, are come abroad to-night,
When a poor stripling deems my heart in fright
For wolves, that every woodland hind would pass
And send them snarling back. Yet wolves, fair boy,
Perchance the more than you such meeting would enjoy!"

With that she raised her white arms in the wind,
And waving cried aloud. By lonely mere,
When the night sleep is deep, somewhiles a sound,
Unearthly and unheavenly, fills the round
Of the starred sky, and earth is filled with fear:
Such sounds she sent through moonlight and through shade,
Waving her white arms toward the forest glade;
And my heart beat beside her, fragrant-skinned.

Three times she called, once to the moony South,
Once to the mountain woods; and once she turned,
And where the North Star by his chariot burned,
Once more that strange wail came from that curved mouth:
And my arms ached her filmy weight to bear,
And in my blood was tangling all her golden hair.

6

But from the South there came an answering cry
I knew ere yet it ceased. For that reply
I heard when with my cousins we had found
A she-wolf in her lair, and on a fire
Had tied the dam to burn out her desire
For human flesh, and on the gory ground

Had killed her cubs before her. Then that sound
Had answered the last cry of that sad mother bound;
And cousins stout cared not to stay and see
What cheer her spouse should give them; so they ran