Yea, thou art Oliver, full of all kindness! Have patience, for now is the cloud passing over—     Have patience and hearken—yet shalt thou be shamed.

Thou shalt shine through thy shame as the sun through the haze When the world waiteth gladly the warm day a-coming:     As great as thou seem'st now, I know thee for greater Than thy deeds done and told of: one day I shall know thee:     Lying dead in my tomb I shall hear the world praising.

Stay thy praise—let me speak, lest all speech depart from me.     —There is a place in the world, a great valley That seems a green plain from the brow of the mountains, But hath knolls and fair dales when adown there thou goest:     There are homesteads therein with gardens about them, And fair herds of kine and grey sheep a-feeding, And willow-hung streams wend through deep grassy meadows, And a highway winds through them from the outer world coming:     Girthed about is the vale by a grey wall of mountains, Rent apart in three places and tumbled together In old times of the world when the earth-fires flowed forth:     And as you wend up these away from the valley You think of the sea and the great world it washes; But through two you may pass not, the shattered rocks shut them. And up through the third there windeth a highway, And its gorge is fulfilled by a black wood of yew-trees. And I know that beyond, though mine eyes have not seen it, A city of merchants beside the sea lieth.——     I adjure thee, my fosterer, by the hand of my father, By thy faith without stain, by the days unforgotten, When I dwelt in thy house ere the troubles' beginning, By thy fair wife long dead and thy sword-smitten children, By thy life without blame and thy love without blemish, Tell me how, tell me when, that fair land I may come to! Hide it not for my help, for my honour, but tell me, Lest my time and thy time be lost days and confusion!

O many such lands!—O my master, what ails thee? Tell me again, for I may not remember.     —I prayed God give thee speech, and lo God hath given it—     May God give me death! if I dream not this evil.

Said I not when thou knew'st it, all courage should fail thee? But me—my heart fails not, I am Pharamond as ever. I shall seek and shall find—come help me, my fosterer!      —Yet if thou shouldst ask for a sign from that country What have I to show thee—I plucked a blue milk-wort From amidst of the field where she wandered fair-footed—     It was gone when I wakened—and once in my wallet I set some grey stones 

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