of the lawn, but his eyes looked straight before him at that which was amidmost of the lawn:  and little wonder was that; for there on a stone chair sat a woman exceeding fair, clad in glittering raiment, her hair lying as pale in the moonlight on the grey stone as the barley acres in the August night before the reaping-hook goes in amongst them.  She sat there as though she were awaiting some one, and he made no stop nor stay, but went straight up to her, and took her in his arms, and kissed her mouth and her eyes, and she him again; and then he sat himself down beside her.

As an example of the beauty of the verse we would take this from the song of the Wood-Sun.  It at least shows how perfectly the poetry harmonises with the prose, and how natural the transition is from the one to the other: 

   In many a stead Doom dwelleth, nor sleepeth day nor night: 
   The rim of the bowl she kisseth, and beareth the chambering light
   When the kings of men wend happy to the bride-bed from the board. 
   It is little to say that she wendeth the edge of the grinded sword,
   When about the house half builded she hangeth many a day;
   The ship from the strand she shoveth, and on his wonted way
   By the mountain hunter fareth where his foot ne’er failed before: 
   She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river’s shore: 
   The mower’s scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep
   Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep. 
   Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot,
   But her will with the lives of men-folk and their ending know we not. 
   So therefore I bid thee not fear for thyself of Doom and her deed,
   But for me:  and I bid thee hearken to the helping of my need. 
   Or else—­Art thou happy in life, or lusteth thou to die
   In the flower of thy days, when thy glory and thy longing bloom on
   high?

The last chapter of the book in which we are told of the great feast made for the dead is so finely written that we cannot refrain from quoting this passage: 

Now was the glooming falling upon the earth; but the Hall was bright within even as the Hall-Sun had promised.  Therein was set forth the Treasure of the Wolfings; fair cloths were hung on the walls, goodly broidered garments on the pillars:  goodly brazen cauldrons and fair- carven chests were set down in nooks where men could see them well, and vessels of gold and silver were set all up and down the tables of the feast.  The pillars also were wreathed with flowers, and flowers hung garlanded from the walls over the precious hangings; sweet gums and spices were burning in fair-wrought censers of brass, and so many candles were alight under the Roof, that scarce had it looked more ablaze when the Romans had litten the faggots therein for its burning amidst the hurry of the Morning Battle.