Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/176

"Drink," said the lady, grave and slow,
"World's use behoveth thee to know."
He drank the bitter wave below.

The third pool, girt with thorny bushes,
And flaunting weeds, and reeds and rushes
That winds sang through in mournful gushes,

Was whitely smeared in many a round
By a slow slime: the starlight swound
Over the ghastly light it found.

"Drink," said the lady, sad and slow—
"World's love behoveth thee to know."
He looked to her, commanding so.

Her brow was troubled, but her eye
Struck clear to his soul. For all reply
He drank the water suddenly,—

Then, with a deathly sickness, passed
Beside the fourth pool and the last,
Where weights of shadow were down-cast

From yew and cypress, and from trails
Of hemlock clasping the trunk-scales,
And flung across the intervals

From yew to yew. Who dareth stoop
Where those moist branches overdroop,
Into his heart the chill strikes up:

He hears a silent, gliding coil—
The snakes breathe hard against the soil—
His foot slips in their slimy oil:

And toads seem crawling on his hand,
And clinging bats, but dimly scanned,
Eight in his face their wings expand.

A paleness took the poet's cheek:
"Must I drink here?" he questioned meek
The lady's will, with utterance weak.