is With the manifold trouble that met us full often, E'en we ourselves. Of nought else hast thou memory?

Of many such tales that the Southland folk told us, Of many a dream by the sunlight and moonlight; Of music that moved me, of hopes that my heart had; The high days when my love and I held feast together.     —But what land is this, and how came we hither?

Nay, hast thou no memory of our troubles that were many? How thou criedst out for Death and how near Death came to thee? How thou needs must dread war, thou the dreadful in battle? Of the pest in the place where that tale was told to us; And how we fled thence o'er the desert of horror? How weary we wandered when we came to the mountains, All dead but one man of those who went with us? How we came to the sea of the west, and the city, Whose Queen would have kept thee her slave and her lover, And how we escaped by the fair woman's kindness, Who loved thee, and cast her life by for thy welfare? Of the waste of thy life when we sailed from the Southlands, And the sea-thieves fell on us and sold us for servants To that land of hard gems, where thy life's purchase seemed Little better than mine, and we found to our sorrow Whence came the crown's glitter, thy sign once of glory:     Then naked a king toiled in sharp rocky crannies, And thy world's fear was grown but the task-master's whip, And thy world's hope the dream in the short dead of night? And hast thou forgotten how again we fled from it, And that fight of despair in the boat on the river, And the sea-strand again and white bellying sails; And the sore drought and famine that on ship-board fell on us, Ere the sea was o'erpast, and we came scarcely living To those keepers of sheep, the poor folk and the kind? Dost thou mind not the merchants who brought us thence northward, And this land that we made in the twilight of dawning?     And the city herein where all kindness forsook us, And our bitter bread sought we from house-door to house-door.

As the shadow of clouds o'er the summer sea sailing Is the memory of all now, and whiles I remember And whiles I forget; and nought it availeth Remembering, forgetting; for a sleep is upon me That shall last a long while:—there thou liest, my fosterer, As thou lay'st a while since ere that twilight of dawning; And I woke and looked forth, and the dark sea, long changeless, Was now at last barred by a dim wall that swallowed The red shapeless moon, and the whole sea was rolling,     

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