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

Downward to the abyss from whence the thunders call;

And there were monstrous, mountainous, cloudy forms,
Whose eyes were lightnings, and whose breaths were storms;
Writhing and twisting through the unbounded deep,
Now strove they at their chains, and now would sleep:
When they be loosed the mountains pass to air,
And all the solid earth to windy, dark despair.

And sometime would we sit beneath the trees;
And I would kiss the blushes to her face,
And wind her hair in many a wandering grace,
And set it flowing to the evening breeze;
And bury her with flowers, scenting of spring,
And hear the white-barred winter-finch his love-bell ring.

THIRD PART

18

And so there went three years: and I was grown
Stronger than she, more daring in my spells,
Calling the spirits of the rugged fells
As shepherd calls his dogs. Our troth was known;
Merlin would wed Yberha of the Mount,
Child of the silent man men held of small account.

Yet never had he yielded to our troth,
Nor ever took her dower at my hand;
But called me wastrel of an ill-lived land,
Profitless in labour, diligent in sloth,
No husband for his daughter; but a curse
To make good bad in her, and make bad worse.

That time the foe came on us. Fiery light
Shone forth from every hill-top, and all day
Men drove their women and their herds away,
And digged to wall about them all the night.
About Yberha's tower they digged the wall;
Yon moody man was leader of them all.

19

And from the sacred places came a chant
From daybreak to nightfall; and fierce-eyed priests
Tore from the rout the best of all the beasts,
Made ox and sheep up the long stoneway pant,
Till all the altars, set in crimson mire,
Clouded the sky with smoke and marred the night with fire.