I

The dawn, faint-tinted as a yellow rose,
Peeped behind mountains purple-black as sloes;
O'er these—a tuft of thick short shreds (not rays)
Of brilliancy, the Morning Star ablaze
On the funereal darkness seemed to gaze,—
Awe-struck forerunner of the Sun beneath,—
Checked at his sudden entrance on a scene
Solemn with all the sable pomp of death,
The thousand lights still burning for the Queen
Laid out in state—the just departed Night—
Then Amo, starting from her brief repose,
Urged upon Ranolf their immediate flight;
For fly they must from that dread Priest she said,
Or even her Father by his counsels led.
Vain Ranolf's reasoned wish to try his skill
Upon her sire, and bend perchance his will
Into approval of their love.—" Nay—nay—
Fly—fly!" she prayed, and he of course gave way:
A power there's no resisting or ignoring,—
A loving, loved and lovely one imploring 1
True, the romance of her proposal charmed;
As o'er its possibilities he ran,
page 226 Visions of risks defied his fancy warmed:
To steal by night through unsuspecting foes,
Or baffle them suspecting, was a plan
At which his buoyancy of spirit rose.
His followers therefore quickly paid—dismissed
Were Northward with his light effects sent back.
One lad of Amo's tribe would still insist
(Te Manu 'twas, who brought the fish that day,
And served him since for pleasure and some pay)
Out of new love for him and old for her—
He should not from their side be forced to stir;
Pleading his usefulness—to bear a pack,
Cook—work—provide such comforts they would lack
Nay, to their safety sometimes minister.
So be it then. What needs is promptly done;
Revolver trim and double-barrell'd gun,
Powder and shot and fish-hooks not a few,
And axe, and matches, most essential too,
Some extra mats for tent-roofs against rain,
And—better currency than minted gold,
A savage's best treasures to unfold—
Allowance good of treacle-smelling cakes
Of jammed tobacco-plaits; with odds and ends,
The boy at cost of carrying would retain
Of fancied value to himself or friends-
Light shoulder-burdens—he or Ranolf takes.

Prosaic details, truly! Lady mine—
Who hold etherial Love a power divine;
O let it not your fervid faith displease,
Romance so realistic' stoops to these/
Love is the prime of Gods—O clearly!
A Thaumaturge and Master-mage is he;
page 227 Let all confess him as puissant—(nearly)—
As he conceits himself to be!
Yes! yes! we know, and none deny,
All risks, all ventures, He will try,
All checks and chances, dare—defy!
To his great heart and hope elate
What are the threats of adverse Fate!
How fade the frowns of Circumstance
Before his forward-leaping glance!
His course that ever forth and far
Seems trained by some triumphant
Star Shall rivers bound, shall mountains bar?—
One look, and lo I from mouth to fountain
Uprising from its gravelly bed,
Each river, shrunk to a silver thread
Floats gossamer-like across the lea;
One waive or nod of hand or head,
And every forest-puckered mountain
Rocked from its base uneasily
Goes crab like lumbering to the Sea!—
Shall not the Ocean heave up pearls
To deck one Beauty's golden curls?
Shall not the Stars come trickling down
If one dear brow demand a crown?—
Yes, fair ones! so shall you decree,
And youthful hearts shall all agree
In Love's divine supremacy!
Though duller Deities the while
May at his proud pretensions smile;
Bid Cold and gaunt-eyed Hunger clip
The splendour of his purple wings;
And from his graceful shoulders strip
The golden bow, the ivory quiver,
page 228 Unless across them too he flings
The wallet vile and vulgar scrip,
Replete with gross substantial things;
Nay, make the beauteous stripling shiver
Unless to some frieze cloak he clings;
Nor, jealous, let the bright Joy-
Giver From Psyche's mouth the honey sip,
And purse and press her sweet lips out
To semblance of a tempting pout,
Or round them bud-like for the bliss
Of a playful passionate kiss,
Till with his own he first have blown
Each rosy frozen finger-tip.
Ah sad! this glowing glorious God to see,
And think what paltry hests and heeds may be
Importunate, imperative as he!

II.

So to the forests on Taupiri s Face
O'er the low cliffs at first the three retreat;
There they can find a handy hiding-place,
And Amohia rest through noonday heat
At nightfall they retrace their steps at first
Uncertain—guided by immediate need
Of shelter—and resolve their course to shape
By Amo's counsel for the land that nursed
Her mother, whose great brother ruled indeed
O'er all the tribes about the earliest Cape
The Sun salutes when his resplendent hair
Shakes off the foam-flakes of his Ocean-lair;
There she was well-beloved; and both might there,
She for her mother's, he for her sake, share
The nigh-related Chiefs protecting care,
page 229 Secure alike from rescue and pursuit
With one so potent of such good repute.
So North of Roto-iti, East away,
And for the seaside by the Bounteous Bay,
Though from the route direct still given to stray,
They travel; resting in the woods by day
When needful, and by villages at night
Passing with cautious speed; and none the less
On Ranolf's part, with undisguised delight
At all the shifts, suspenses, and success
And stealthy freedom of their dexterous flight.

III

And thus o'er many a mountain wood-entangled,
And stony plain of stunted fern that hides
The bright-green oily anise; and hill-sides
And valleys, where its dense luxuriance balks
With inter clinging fronds and tough red stalks
The traveller's hard-fought path—they took their way.
Sometimes they traversed, half the dreary day,
A deep-glenned wilderness all dark and dank i
With trees, whence tattered and dishevelled dangled
Pale streaming strips of mosses long and lank;
Where at each second step of tedious toil
On perfect forms of fallen trunks they tread,
And ankle-deep sink in their yielding bed—
Moss-covered rottenness long turned to soil:—
Until, ascending ever in the drear
Dumb gloom forlorn, a sudden rushing sound
Of pattering rain strikes freshly on the ear—
Tis but the breeze that up so high has found
Amid the rattling leaves a free career!
To the soft, mighty, sea-like roar they list:—
page 230 Or else 'tis calm; the gloom itself is gone;
And all is airiness and light-filled mist,
As on the open mountain-side, so lone
And lofty, freely breathing they emerge.
And sometimes through a league-long swamp they urgi
Slow progress, dragging through foot-sucking slush
Their weary limbs, red-painted to the knees
In pap rust-stained by iron or seeding rush;
But soon through limpid brilliant streams that travel
With murmuring, momentary-gleaming foam
That flits and flashes over sun-warmed gravel
They wade, and laughing wash that unctuous loam
Off blood-stained limbs now clean beyond all cavil
And start refreshed new road-knots to unravel.
And what delight, at length, that glimpse instils,
That wedge-shaped opening in the wooded hills,
Which, like a cup, the far-off Ocean fills!—
Anon they skirt the winding wild sea-shore;
From woody crag or ferny bluff admiring
The dim-bright beautiful blue bloom it wore—
That still Immensity—that placid Ocean—
With all its thousand leagues of level calm,
Tremendously serene; he, fancying more
Than feeling, for tired Spirits peace-desiring,
With the world-fret and life's low fever sore—
Weary and worn with turmoil and emotion—
The soothing might of its majestic balm.
Or to the beach descending, with joined hands
They pace the firm tide-saturated sands
Whitening beneath their foot press as they pass;
And from that fresh and tender marble floor
So glossy-shining in the morning sun,
Watch the broad billows at their chase untiring—
page 231 How they come rolling on, in rougher weather—
How in long lines they swell and link together,
Till, as their watery walls they grandly lift,
Their level crests extending sideways, swift
Shoot over into headlong roofs of glass
Cylindric—thundering as they curl and run
And dose, down-rushing to a weltering dance
Of foam that slides along the smooth expanse,
Nor seldom, in a streaked and creamy sheet
Comes unexpected hissing round their feet,
While with great leaps and hurry-skurry fleet,
His louder laughter mixed with her's so sweet,
Each tries to stop the other's quick retreat
Or else on sands that, white and loose, give way
At every step, they toil; till labor-sped
Their limbs in the noon-loneliness they lay
On that hot, soft, yet unelastic bed,
With brittle seaweed, pink and black o'erstrewn,
And wrecks of many a forest-growth upthrown,
Bare stem and barkless branches, clean, sea-bleached,
Milk-white—or stringy logs deep-red as wine,
Their ends ground smooth against a thousand rocks,
Dead-heavy, soaked with penetrating brine;
Or bolted fragment of some Ship storm-breached
And shattered—all with barnacles o'ergrown,
Grey-crusted thick with hollow-coned small shells—
So silent in the sunshine still and lone,
So reticent of what it sadly tells;
Which Ranolf then imagines till he shocks
Quick-sympathising Amo with a tale
Of brave men lost, and haply lovers gone
For ever—never heard of nor forgot;
And so beguiles the bright one of her tears,
page 232 Which, while he kisses the wet cheek so pale
He charms away, and the sweet mourner cheers,
Hinting the contrast of their happier lot:
Then turns to livelier sights the scene supplied;
And near some river-mouth—shoal—marshy-wide—
Would mark the swarming sea-birds o'er the waste
Tremble across the air in glimmering flocks;
Or how, long-legged with little steps they plied
Their yellow webs, in such high-shouldered haste
Pattering along the cockle-filled sandbanks,
Some refuse dainty of the Sea to taste;
Or standing stupefied in huddled ranks
Still rounded up by the advancing tide—
White glittering squadrons on the level mud
Dressing their lines before the enclosing flood;
Or what strange instinct guided them so well,
Posed by their mollusk, up in air to start,
And soaring, on the rocks let fall the shell
Whose stubborn valves they could not force apart.
And once, hard by a gloomy forest-side,
How Amo clapped her hands in pure delight
At Ranolf s puzzled wonder when he spied
What seemed so surely—for 'twas clear in sight—
Some furry three-legged thing without a head,
Fixed to the ground—a tripod!—how amazed
Was he to find when serpent-like it raised
Long neck and bill, and swiftly running fled, '
Twas nothing but that wing-less, tail-less bird
Boring for worms—less feathered too than furred—
The kiwi—strange brown-speckled would-be beast,
Which the pair hunted half the day at least,
While needful look-out young Te Manu kept
Or else the lovers, tired or cautious, stepped
page 233 From the chalk-bouldered, pumice-crumbling strand
On to black broken-edged o'erlapping land,
And o'er the flax-swamped rushy level then
Betook themselves to some Inviting wood
Just at the black-green opening of a glen
Where mighty trunks like shadowy columns stood,
Solemn, expectant—promising so meet
A shelter for their day or night retreat;
Shore-loving vine-trees, púriri, they were
The enormous mounds that with such swelling state
Arose—in masses so consolidate
And caked, the light-green foliage, here and there,
Seemed cracking only from its very weight.

How free—how free it was! nothing it seemed,
Between themselves and God! so Ranolf felt;
That world of Man, how oft it seemed to melt
Wholly away! his Soul in contact brought
With Nature's nakedness, exulting teemed
With raptures Life refined had never bought;
Proud vigor from her vivid touches caught;
And from the exhilarating hale embrace
Drew hardier, wilder will to set at nought
All risks—and dauntless every danger face!—
Yet little this was needed now—although
Amo could not her anxious fears forego;
For dread of all that Priest might prompt destroyed
Half of the pleasure she bad else enjoyed

IV

Now, through some dim white days of ceaseless rain,
They waited till the sky should clear again,
page 234 Roofed by a hut no woodman would demur
To call a palace for a forester.
Amid the trees—where loftiest towering grew
Some spiny-leaved tetáras like the yew,
Root-buttressed, forty yards or so in height,—
They—ere the mist first gathering blanched the blue,
Though many a sign that threatened rain they knew,—
Had built a hasty homestead snug and tight
Some of these trees, notch-circled near the ground,
That for such end their bark might well be dried,
Or trunks be seasoned for canoes, they found;
Their stringy coats were easily off-stripped,
In stripes, long, broad and heavy, upward ripped;
These, fastened on a frame of poles flax-tied,
Slant roof and walls against the windward side-
Made such a pleasant dwelling in three hours
As had withstood a month of drenching showers;
Thick fern and broom were fragrant floor and couch;
And to the sweet clean roof and walls upslung,
Guns, shot-belt, matches, flints and powder-pouch
And change of raiment, dry and safely hung.

In this retreat three quiet days they passed
In perfect shelter; and the time flew fast,
Though to the hut they mostly were confined,
And spite of care that lurked in Amo's mind.
Love wrapped in sunshine that rain-beaten bower
Made prisoned solitude and silence dear;
Her care diverted, half-assuaged her fear;
Surcharged e'en trivial chat with eloquent power
To slight details of daily intercourse
Gave magic sweetness and electric force;
Nay, lent to weeping Nature's gloomier hour
page 235 A gentle charm they ne'er before descried
When bathed in brilliant light her features smiled:
So Ranolf felt when over wood and wild
That quiet sadness first began to creep;
And sheltered safe within their mountain-nook
On his fern-pillow he could lie and look
Past forest tree-tops surging down the steep,
With rocks out-slanting bold, dark-red and grey—
Through the glen's mouth, o'er yellow plains outside,
Mixed with the skies, it seemed, so high and wide—
Melting to misty dimness far away;—
Look—but to feel with more supreme content
That luxury of loneliness profound—
No human soul but theirs for miles around!
Feel how serenely, pensively forlorn
The lender silence of the tearful Morn;
Of those unmoving trees as still as thought,
And leaves imbibing in their happy sleep
Rich greenness ever more refreshed and deep;
Each branch with bright drops hung that would not fall
The faint blue haze upon the grass; while nought
But the slight tremble, shimmering on the shade
So glowing dark about their stems, betrayed
The fine soft rain's inaudible descent.
Then, as the thickening weather with its pall
Of gloom shut out the distant hills and sky,
How pleasant there to lounge secure and mark
Emerging from the mists in forests high
Black jutting trees to shadows turn, and fade,
Where sullen, ragged, smothering vapors weighed
Upon the nearer summits; or when wind
Arose, and hurried up the storm, behind
Their hill-protected hut and roof of bark—
page 236 To mark each sudden, snowy, crooked skein
With fibres opening here and there, appear
Along the sloping hollows—all pure green
But now—inlaid between round knolls, and seen
White through thin clouds of level-driving rain.
And then within their wildwood home, what cheer—
What manifold amusements might be found!
What pleasure in the necessary round
Of primitive provisions for so rude
A life—whose mere privations still endued
The hours that flew so fast, with fleeter wings;
The merry makeshifts, and the thousand things
To tax contrivance, whence ingenious tact
A double comfort from discomfort wrings;
Scant implements still put to novel use;
Forced partnership in many a little act
For which e'en Love had else scarce found excuse.
Then Ranolf had in note-book to record
Brief hints of many an incident or word
That might the vivid memory reproduce
Of these bright scenes far hence when they should be
Forgotten into freshness. Or he made
Upon the inside smoothness of a square
Of that stripped bark, with pistol-barrel ruled,
Draft-chequers—clipping flat for draftsmen rare
Hard violet drupes of the great laurel-tree
And gold karaka-dates—and soon had schooled
His quick companion in the game they played
For kisses like Campaspe! though, he said,
Amo from Cupid had not cared to win
Cheek-bloom—lips bow-curved—tender turn of chin—
Hers sweeter far already! Or he strove
With taste, and skill—but not in like degree—
page 237 Still quickened, still impeded by his love—
Sketchbook on knee, to reproduce, though slight,
Some glimpses of the spirit-winning light
That danced in dazzling depths of Amo's eyes—
Some of her shape's enchanting symmetries;
While she, with wondering bright compliance bore
The frequent interruptions and delay
To the immediate work she had in hand,
As he so oft entreated her to stay
In that position just one moment more—
Just to continue so to kneel or stand—
Reach up—bend over—let him seize the charm
Of some fine posture, planted foot, or arm
Upraised, that any Sculptor's heart might warm.
And truly, every instant she displayed
A look or attitude that would have made
A Phidias turn admiring, though intent
On one fastidious finishing touch, the last—
One pumice-polish, warm wax-stain, that lent
Perfection to some wonder, now complete,
Some marble miracle or famous feat
Chryselephantine, all the world to beat,
And stamp his own surpassing self surpassed—
Though on his ears, already charmed, he felt
Aspasia's clear Milesian accents melt
In critic subtleties of praise that seize
The heart of his conception, and excite
The stoic soul of stately Pericles
Into confest emotions of delight:
For, as the busy Maid would oft look round
With brows and high-upcurling lashes raised,
And such a glance, what Ranolf wished, to ask—
Bright glance of innocent enquiry, sweet
page 238 Alert attention; or would leave her task,
And throw herself beside him on the ground
To see what 'twas that he would sometimes look
Half-pleased with, proud of, in the fast-leaved book
Where he "wrote images"—then with such heat
Would "pish" and "pshaw" at, as on her he gazed,
Abused the work so much—the model praised—
There, as she watched him, toying all the while
With those light locks she loved so, with a smile
Where such a depth of playful fondness shone;
Might not her aspect then almost have fired
Some later living Phidias of our own,
Some Foley, with such fancies as inspired
His Ino, feeding her maternal joy
On purple temptings of her grape-fed boy?
Almost have made his great compeer conceive
An added loveliness for listening Eve?—
And could wise Nature's so conspicuous Art,—
Lavish of might divinest to unfold
The linked glory of mere human limbs
Which all beside of form and hue bedims,—
If ever, fail with this susceptive heart
And fiery Sense, in her design to raise
That fervid admiration, uncontrolled
And uncontrollable, she must intend
Should ne'er he foiled for fairest moral end?—
No! well might that pure form, as he surveys
Its rich proportions cast in such a mould—
The perfect mould of Beauty, that combines
Rare lightness with luxuriance, and displays
What subtle joy can lurk in sinuous lines
That in their delicate winding wavure seem
Self-singing of their fine felicities
page 239 Like musical meanderings of a stream—
Well might its melodies of movement thrill
His soul with rapture—dash his baffled skill
With blank despair—so distanced in the chase,
The fond attempt to seize on and pourtray
Some one perfection from the plastic play
Of flitting statue-pictures that displace
Each other—and successive charms efface
Tn ever new varieties of grace!

V.

So in the glen three days had well-nigh passed;
The pelting rain seemed holding up at last.
Ranolf and Amo in their bark-built tent
Were busy; she, in sylvan arts adept,
With scraps of fern dry brown from where they slept,
And moss from underneath thick boughs, in spite
Of damp, preparing her quick fire to light;
But with grave brow half-puzzled how to glean
A savory meal from viands well-nigh spent:
And he, in prospect of the brightening weather,
Intent, but leisurely, with loitering mien,
On ferreting with purple-glossed green feather—
The wild-duck's, moistened with its searching oil—
Into the fastenings of his rifle's lock,
The shining intricacies rust would spoil;
Still pausing in his task, with banter fond
Her over-anxious care for him to mock,
To which, no whit disturbed, she would respond
Her fixed conviction what to him was due;
Or, if a longer silence intervened
Wondering what strange wild tameness towards him drew
The large red-breasted robin—kinsman true
page 240 Of England's delicate highbred bird of home,—
So fine-limbed, full of spirit!—how?twould come
After a little startled flight or two
And perch upon the very gun he cleaned—?
Twas then, Te Manu—who, sent off to scout,
A cloak of perfect thatch about him thrown,
Had fetched a wary compass wide about
To a far village off their route—prepared
With preconcerted tale—was seen alone
Returning from the journey safely dared,
O'er the dim plain—a shadow: till as near
He drew, the triumph on his face was clear:
Laden he came—though nought for loads he cared
When self-imposed by fancy for good cheer—
Cray-fish—plump pigeons in their fat preserved,
Neat-packed in pottles of dark wood, adorned
With carvings arabesque so quaintly curved—
Store of that tiny fish like whitebait, dried
In sunshine on hot stones—with scraps beside
Of native dainties nowise to be scorned;—
And when his shoulders from the pack were freed,
With joyous face he told them news indeed:
How he had met a traveller newly come
From Rotorua, and from him had learnt the sum
Of all that there had happened; how at first
When missing Amohia's clothes were found
Upon the shore, all had believed her drowned:
Then what a wailing had ensued—a burst
Of genuine grief—no counterfeiting show—
What gashing of the breast with shells,
and flow Of blood had marked the matrons' gory woe;
How Tangimoana, had torn his hair
And curst his gods in frenzy of despair,
page 241 And raved against the Priest whose scheming greed
His own too ready confidence had wronged,
And driven his darling to the desperate deed—
(From Miroa was that certain fact derived);
Then what a coolness rose between the two:
And how when Ranolf's absence so prolonged.
Begun that very day, had roused more true
Suspicions, fresh inquiry set on foot
Led to the knowledge that the pair had been
By accident upon their journey seen:
And then the Priest so hotly urged pursuit
His obvious spite provoked a new dispute;
For Tangi's heart such great revulsion swelled
Of rapture that his dearest Child survived,
It found no room for thoughts of hate and rage,
And all the vengeful Priest's advice repelled
Almost with scorn; whereat the other turned
Livid with sulky wrath that inly burned,
And no amends of Tangi's could assuage;
At which all wondered; (here in Amo's breast
An undivulged remembrance more than guessed
The jealous fury that his heart possessed:)
And how the Priest soon from the Island went,
None knew when, whither, or with what intent—
Went mutely maddening with his fancied wrong
Though muttering vengeance and return erelong;
At which in hardy confidence so strong Stout
Tangi only laughed; and longed to see
His hoary age's pride again, and press
Her brow against his own in fond caress;
Yearned for her home—companioned should she be
By husband, fair or tawny—what cared he!—

VI.

page 246

5.

So in this pleasant islet, O no longer will I stay-

And the shadowy summer-dwelling, I will leave this very day;

On Arara I'll launch my skiff and soon be borne away

From all that feeds this feeling, O this fond sweet pain!

VII.

So with much grief for Miroa's fond distress,
The pair recalled full many a sign that might
Have helped them read her simple heart aright,
page 247 Had both not been too much pre-occupied
With fancies of their own at hers to guess:
And they remembered with what eyes—how wide—
Of eager wondering gladness she had seemed
To feed and fasten on all Ranolf's ways
And looks and movements, when, those two first days,
They met at Rotorua; how they beamed
When with such giggling blushes of delight
She bent her head as carelessly he tied
The ribbon round it he declared less fair
And tasteful than the wreath already there,
Of crimson feathers and the snowy rays
Of clematis—while all might see she deemed
The present of less value than the praise.
And then it flashed on Amo's mind, as sped
Her memory back, with such a cue supplied,
How artfully and oft the Maid would guide
Their talk the way that to the Stranger led:
And when that theme was reached, how glibly ran
Her tongue, unceasing when it once began
In Ranolf's favour mostly, or would raise
Some point against him—find some fault—aver
Some blemish—that she, Amo, might demur
More warmly—more unguardedly be brought
To sound his dear deserts for whom she fought.
And his light-jesting enemy upbraid:
All which the unsuspecting Amo thought
She did to humour, not herself but her—
The foolish Mistress, not the foolish Maid;
(With an arch glance at Ranolf this was said)
And then she recollected once, when turning
Suddenly, with what surprise she caught
Poor Miroa's bloodshot eyes fixed on her, burning
page 248 With envy, almost hate; with what swift check
She changed that look to one of passionate yearning,
And wildly flung her arms round Amo's neck
And burst into a flood of tears, and cried:
"My good, good Mistress—O how good and kind
And always dear—O do not mark or mind
The passion of your worthless slave—too had
Tor such a mistress—O too false and mad!
Kill, kill me if you will—you should—you may—
But tear this blackness from my breast away!"-—
"And then she lavished on me little acts
Of kindness and attention all that day.
And I, still blind to these so patent facts,
Thought 'twas the memory of her home afar
And friend?, from whom long years ago in war
She had been torn, a captive, that oppressed
Her fancy then, with fond regrets distressed;
Although I rather wondered she was moved
By that so deeply—scarcely could ascribe
Such passion to such cause; for she had known
Nothing but kindness, since, so terrified
That day she came she shuffled to my side,
And I scarce older, set her numbed limbs free
From bonds, and said she should belong to me.
But since that day so merry had she grown—
She, sprung too from a chief of good degree—
That all our people looked upon and loved
The Child as a true daughter of the tribe,
I always as a sister of my own."

VIII

Well, so they grieved for Miroa: yet no less
Perhaps, and shall we blame her if 'twere so?
page 249 This very feeling for poor Miroa's woe,
Though Amo's love for her was true indeed,
In her unconscious heart could not but breed
A secret feeling she would not confess
Of greater joy in her own happiness.
And cheering up, she said—" You may depend
On this—from what Te Manu says, our friend
Has overcome and shaken off her pain;
That song would tell it—but still more the power
To burn the keepsake—what was it? the flower
Or ribbon you bestowed in luckless hour.
And she has lovers, O in plenty—she!
And there was one on whom she always smiled,
I thought; a lad who lives or I mistake,
A fine good lad, beside that very Lake
And near the friends she must have gone to see;
She will be happy soon—dear merry Child!
Though how she could get o'er such love "—the rest
Was hidden with her face on Ranolf's breast.

IX

Then, as they marked the sky still growing bright;
The distant mountains visible once more,
Black-blue, with smothering fleeces flattened o'er
Their ridges—sprawling harpies snowy white
With claws that clutched their summits hid from sight;
Or like a sudden foam-sea, o'er each brow
Arrested in its branching overflow;
The pair made ready for a happier start,
Free to obey each prompting of the heart,
Go where they list—all apprehension flown—
And give themselves to Love and Joy alone.