Now is her sandalled foot upon the edge Of a loud-leaping stream, that flings its damp To cool the sorrel shaking on its ledge Under the squirrel's pine, and in a swamp Goes dumb among the heron-haunted sedge, Where the swift kingfisher, a moment seen, Flashes and fades, a flame of sudden green.
At length she stands within the appointed place, Where leafy boughs in odorous dusk are blent. But wherefore now across her trancéd face Pass the quick fingers of bewilderment, And doubt on doubt like shadows shadows chase? Faintly she speaks, "Ailill I came to see. Who art thou--for thou art yet art not he?"
From her soft eye no loosened glances tell Desire or dread, to him whose cloudless gaze Knows from what heights of old her footsteps fell Out of clear light, into this web of days And nights and mystery inscrutable, And marks how in the calm of inner power She moves unmoved to meet her destined hour.
"Etain," he whispered, and again, "Etain." Such utter love went throbbing through her name That nigh beyond her doubt her foot had gone; Yet stood she wavering like a lonely flame Outburning night, that feels the shake of dawn; Then said, "Thy name, that doubt aside he cast?" "Mider," he answered, "come for thee at last."
"Mider?" she echoed, "Mider?" and the sound Smote upon hidden doors, and roused from sleep Faint eyes that dreamed, vague hands that groped around The thought behind her thought, and from the deep Beneath her thought climbed upward, to the bound Whose shadowy marge like midnight gloom is cast Between the passing moment and the past.
Then Mider said, "For no poor worm's desire, Nor aught of earth, thou comest, O beloved! But for another's good thy thoughts conspire; And far from self thy feet have hither moved To the high purpose of the sacred fire That burns thine upward path through joy and pain, Through birth, through life, through death, to me again."
Then asked she all bewildered: "Who art thou Whose eyes have read my soul?" And answered he, "Thine am I by the immemorial vow That made thee mine, beloved! eternally, When for a bride-price, on thy peerless brow I set a diadem beyond the worth Of all the crowns of all the queens of earth."
Swiftly her thought divining, "Where, and when, And wherefore parted, thou, beloved! shalt know. That land which gleams in the rapt poet's ken, Set in a sea that has no ebb or flow, Beyond the spear-cast of the dreams of men, Is mine, and from all changings far withdrawn There spreads the realm of Mider--and Etain.