‘Nay,’ cried he, ’but fix your own fee.’—­
She laughed, ’You may give the full moon to me; 80
Or else sit under this apple-tree
  Here for one idle day by my side;
After that I’ll let you go free,
    And the world is wide.’

Loth to stay, but to leave her slack,
He half turned away, then he quite turned back: 
For courtesy’s sake he could not lack
  To redeem his own royal pledge;
Ahead too the windy heaven lowered black
    With a fire-cloven edge. 90

So he stretched his length in the apple-tree shade,
Lay and laughed and talked to the maid,
Who twisted her hair in a cunning braid
  And writhed it shining in serpent-coils,
And held him a day and night fast laid
    In her subtle toils.

At the death of night and the birth of day,
When the owl left off his sober play,
And the bat hung himself out of the way,
  Woke the song of mavis and merle, 100
And heaven put off its hodden grey
    For mother-o’-pearl.

Peeped up daisies here and there,
Here, there, and everywhere;
Rose a hopeful lark in the air,
  Spreading out towards the sun his breast;
While the moon set solemn and fair
    Away in the West.

‘Up, up, up,’ called the watchman lark,
In his clear reveillee:  ’Hearken, oh hark! 110
Press to the high goal, fly to the mark. 
  Up, O sluggard, new morn is born;
If still asleep when the night falls dark,
    Thou must wait a second morn.’

‘Up, up, up,’ sad glad voices swelled: 
’So the tree falls and lies as it’s felled. 
Be thy bands loosed, O sleeper, long held
  In sweet sleep whose end is not sweet. 
Be the slackness girt and the softness quelled
    And the slowness fleet.’ 120

Off he set.  The grass grew rare,
A blight lurked in the darkening air,
The very moss grew hueless and spare,
  The last daisy stood all astunt;
Behind his back the soil lay bare,
    But barer in front.

A land of chasm and rent, a land
Of rugged blackness on either hand: 
If water trickled its track was tanned
  With an edge of rust to the chink; 130
If one stamped on stone or on sand
    It returned a clink.

A lifeless land, a loveless land,
Without lair or nest on either hand: 
Only scorpions jerked in the sand,
  Black as black iron, or dusty pale;
From point to point sheer rock was manned
    By scorpions in mail.

A land of neither life nor death,
Where no man buildeth or fashioneth, 140
Where none draws living or dying breath;
  No man cometh or goeth there,
No man doeth, seeketh, saith,
    In the stagnant air.

Some old volcanic upset must
Have rent the crust and blackened the crust;
Wrenched and ribbed it beneath its dust
  Above earth’s molten centre at seethe,
Heaved and heaped it by huge upthrust
    Of fire beneath. 150