Emblems Of Love

Excerpt

PRELUDE

Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs athwart the slope. The earthwork is manned by warriors clad in hides. Two warriors, BRYS and GAST, talking.

Gast.
This puts a tall heart in me, and a tune
Of great glad blood flowing brave in my flesh,
To see thee, after all these moons, returned,
My Brys. If there's no rust in thy shoulder-joints,
That battle-wrath of thine, and thy good throwing,
Will be more help for us than if the dyke
Were higher by a span.—Ha! there was howling
Down in the thicket; they come soon, for sure.

Brys. Has there been hunger in the forest long?

Gast.
I think, not only hunger makes them fierce:
They broke not long since into a village yonder,
A huge throng of them; all through the night we heard
The feasting they kept up. And that has made
The wolves blood-thirsty, I believe.

Brys.
     O fools
To keep so slack a waking on their dykes!
Now have they made a sleepless winter for us.
Every night we must look, lest the down-slope
Between us and the woods turn suddenly
To a grey onrush full of small green candles,
The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh.
And well for us then if there's no more mist
Than the white panting of the wolfish hunger.

Gast.
They'll come to-night. Three of us hunting went
Among the trees below: not long we stayed.
All the wolves of the world are in the forest,
And man's the meat they're after.

Brys.
     Ay, it must be
Blood-thirst is in them, if they come to-night,
Such clear and starry weather.—What dost thou make,
Gast, of the stars?

Gast.
     Brother, they're horrible.
I always keep my head as much as I may
Bent so they cannot look me in the eyes.

Brys.
I never had this awe. The fear I have
Is not a load I crouch beneath, but something
Proud and wonderful, that lifteth my heart.
Yea, I look on a night of stars with fear
That comes close against glee. 'Tis like the fear
I have for the wolves, that maketh me joy-mad
To drive the yellow flint-edge through their shags.
So when I gaze on stars, they speak high fear
Into my soul; and strangely I think they mean
The fear must prompt me to some unknown war.

Gast.
Be thou well ware of this. I have not told thee
How the stars, with their perilous overlooking,
Have raught away from all his manhood Gwat,
Our fiercest strength. For when the conquering wolves
Into that village won, we in our huts
Lay hearkening to their rejoicing hunger;
But Gwat stayed out in the stars all night long.
I peered at him as much as that whipt dog,
My heart, had daring for; and he stood stiff,
With all his senses aiming at the noise.
Some strong bad eagerness kept tightly rigged
The cordage of his body, till his nerves
Loosed on a sudden. He yelled, "What do we here,
High up among bleak winds, always afraid
Of murder from the wolves? I will be man
No more; the grey four-footed fellows have
The good meats of the world, and the best lodging,
Forest and weald." And then he wolfish howled,
And hurled off towards the snarling and the baying.
And now his soul wears the strength and fury
Of a huge dun-pelted wolf; he's the wolves' king;
And the fiends have learnt from him to laugh at our flints....