THE KING OF ELFLAND’S DAUGHTER
poet has sung. Further North he might find the frontier, unmoved, lying sleepy with twilight, and come under the pale-blue mountains and see his wife again: full of these thoughts he went over the misty mellow fields.
And full of his dreams and plans about that phantasmal land he came in the afternoon to the woods that brood above Erl. He entered the wood, and deep though he was amongst thoughts that were far from there, he soon saw the smoke of a fire a little way off, rising grey among the dark oak-boles. He went towards it to see who was there, and there were his son and Ziroonderel warming their hands at the fire.
“Where have you been?” called Orion as soon as he saw him.
“Upon a journey,” said Alveric.
“Oth is hunting,” Orion said, and he pointed in the direction whence the wind was fanning the smoke. And Ziroonderel said nothing, for she saw more in Alveric’s eyes than any questions of hers would have drawn from his tongue. Then Orion showed him a deerskin on which he was sitting. “Oth shot it,” he said.
There scemed to be a magic all round that fire of big logs quietly smouldering in the woods upon Autumn’s discarded robe that lay brilliant there; and it was not the magic of Elfland, nor had Ziroonderel called it up with her wand: it was only a magic of the wood’s very own.
