Harold, Book 12. The Last Of The Saxon Kings

e was situated, a gloomy pool reflected upon its stag

mosses and whitening canker-stains, or wreaths of ivy, spoke of the most remote antiquity: but the boughs which their lingering and mutilated life put forth, were either thin and feeble with innumerable branchlets, or were centred on some solitary

nd conies stealing forth to sport or to feed; or the bat wheeling low, in chase of the forest moth. From the thickest part of the copse came a slow human foot, and Hilda, emerging, paused by the waters of the pool. That serene and stony calm habitual to her features was gone; sorrow and passion had seize

roken-hearted-withering down to the grave under the shade of the barren cloister! Is mine heart, then, all a lie? Are the gods who led Odin from the Scythian East but the juggling fiends whom the craven Christian abhors? Lo! the Wine Month has come; a few nights more, and the sun which all prophecy foretold should go down on the

len trunk of a tree, or a trough in which the herdsman waters his cattle, so still, and shapeless, and undefined it had lain

ne of a human form; and the Prophetess beheld the wit

r Harold the Earl? Why didst thou lay aside that labour of love for Harold the King? Hie thee home, and bid thy maidens ply all night at the work; make it potent with rune and w

t pride of place, that instead of the scorn with which so foul a pretender to the Great

ng before them their shadowy flocks? one of those of whom no man knoweth whether they are of earth or of Helheim? whether they have

head, as if refusing to ans

up all thy wrongs, fill thyself with hate, and let thy thoughts be curses. Nothing is str

en us there is no union. I am of the race of those whom priests and kings reverenced and honoured as the oracles of heaven; and rather let my lore be di

thine Edith, that all the schemes of thy life are undone, and yet feel no hate for the man who hath wronged her an

ded abruptly, as if eager to escape from her own impulses, "didst thou not tell me, even now

dard of a king; for I tell thee, that where that banner is planted, shall Edith clasp with bridal arms her adored. An

shown to me hath ever come to pass, but in a sense other than that in which my soul read the rune and the dream, the leaf and the fount, the star and the Scin-laeca. My husband slain in his youth; my daughter maddened with woe; her lord murdered on his hearthstone; Sweyn, whom I loved as my child,"-the Vala paused, contending against her own emotions,-"I loved them all," s

ddle the rede of my masters, unknown and unguessed, whom thou hadst duteously served

There was only seen in the dull pool, the water-rat swimming through the rank sedges; only in the forest, the

, through the ruined peristyle-howled in rage and in fear. And under the lattice of the room in which the maids broidered the banner, and