Then they all went by winding up and up the hill roads, and, when the last of them had departed out of our sight, we put down our heads and wept, and I said, “Sing us one of the songs of the Hollow Land.”  Then he whom I had called Swerker put his hand into his bosom, and slowly drew out a long, long tress of black hair, and laid it on his knee and smoothed it, weeping on it:  So then I left him there and went and armed myself, and brought armour for him.

And then came back to him and threw the armour down so that it clanged, and said: 

“O Harald, let us go!”

He did not seem surprised that I called him by the right name, but rose and armed himself, and then be looked a good knight; so we set forth.  And in a turn of the long road we came suddenly upon a most fair woman, clothed in scarlet, who sat and sobbed, holding her face between her bands, and her hair was very black.

And when Harald saw her, he stood and gazed at her for long through the bars of bis helmet, then suddenly turned, and said: 

“Florian, I must stop here; do you go on to the Hollow Land.  Farewell.”

“Farewell.”  And then I went on, never turning back, and him I never saw more.

And so I went on, quite lonely, but happy, till I had reached the Hollow Land.

Into which I let myself down most carefully, by the jutting rocks and bushes and strange trailing flowers, and there lay down and fell asleep.

FYTTE THE THIRD

And I was waked by some one singing; I felt very happy; I felt young again; I had fair delicate raiment on, my sword was gone, and my armour; I tried to think where I was, and could not for my happiness; I tried to listen to the words of the song.  Nothing, only an old echo in my ears, only all manner of strange scenes from my wretched past life before my eyes in a dim, far-off manner:  then at last, slowly, without effort, I heard what she sang.

   “Christ keep the Hollow Land
   All the summer-tide;
   Still we cannot understand
   Where the waters glide;

   Only dimly seeing them
   Coldly slipping through
   Many green-lipp’d cavern mouths. 
   Where the hills are blue.”

“Then,” she said, “come now and look for it, love, a hollow city in the Hollow Land.”

I kissed Margaret, and we went.

Through the golden streets under the purple shadows of the houses we went, and the slow fanning backward and forward of the many-coloured banners cooled us:  we two alone:  there was no one with us.  No soul will ever be able to tell what we said, how we looked.

At last we came to a fair palace, cloistered off in the old time, before the city grew golden from the din and hubbub of traffic; those who dwelt there in the old ungolden times had had their own joys, their own sorrows, apart from the joys and sorrows of the multitude:  so, in like manner, was it now cloistered off from the eager leaning and brotherhood of the golden dwellings:  so now it had its own gaiety, its own solemnity, apart from theirs; unchanged, and changeable, were its marble walls, whatever else changed about it.