As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waisthigh, broad in the blade,

Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,

Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.

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Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

By the length and the breadth and the

sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

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Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go

All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern,

And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eye-balls shone,

As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see.

'Now, now, grim henchman, what is 't with thee?'

Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown.

'Three does and a ten-tined buck made out,' spoke Hamish, full mild, And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast.'

Cried Maclean: 'Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!' Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all:

'Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let

fall,

And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong !'

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. 'Now I'll to the burn,' quoth Maclean, 'for it still may be,

If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me,

I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!'

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame;

And that place of the lashing full quiet became;

And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he.

'But now 't was black, 't was a river, this rill,'

('Black?' quoth Love)

'Ay, black, but lo! the lilies grow,
And yon-side where was woe, was woe, —
Where the rabble of souls,' cried
Sense,

'Did shrivel and turn and beg and burn,
Thrust back in the brimstone from above
Is banked of violet, rose, and fern:'
'How?' quoth Love:

For lakes of pain, yon pleasant plain
Of woods and grass and yellow grain

Doth ravish the soul and sense:

And never a sigh beneath the sky, And folk that smile and gaze above''But saw'st thou here, with thine own eye,

Hell?' quoth Love.

'I saw true hell with mine own eye, True hell, or light hath told a lie,

50

True, verily,' quoth stout Sense. Then Love rode round and searched the ground,

The caves below, the hills above; 'But I cannot find where thou hast found Hell,' quoth Love.

There, while they stood in a green wood And marvelled still on Ill and Good,

Came suddenly Minister Mind. 'In the heart of sin doth hell begin: 'T is not below, 't is not above, It lieth within, it lieth within:' (Where?' quoth Love)

'I saw a man sit by a corse; Hell's in the murderer's breast: remorse! Thus clamored his mind to his mind: Not fleshly dole is the sinner's goal, Hell's not below, nor yet above, "T is fixed in the ever-damnèd soul’'Fixed?' quoth Love —

Fixed: follow me, would'st thou but see: He weepeth under yon willow tree,

Fast chained to his corse,' quoth
Mind.

Full soon they passed, for they rode fast,
Where the piteous willow bent above.
'Now shall I see at last, at last,

Hell,' quoth Love.