'
Spake Face-of-god: 'Then shall we rise up and wend first through a
wide treeless meadow, wherein amidst the night we shall behold the
kine moving about like odorous shadows; and through the greyness of
the moonlight thou shalt deem that thou seest the pink colour of the
eglantine blossoms, so fragrant they are.'
'O nay,' she said, 'but it is meet that we go by the Portway.'
But he said: 'Then from the wide meadow come we into a close of
corn, and then into an orchard-close beyond it. There in the ancient
walnut-tree the owl sitteth breathing hard in the night-time; but
thou shalt not hear him for the joy of the nightingales singing from
the apple-trees of the close. Then from out of the shadowed orchard
shall we come into the open town-meadow, and over its daisies shall
the moonlight be lying in a grey flood of brightness.
'Short is the way across it to the brim of the Weltering Water, and
across the water lieth the fair garden of the Face; and I have dight
for thee there a little boat to waft us across the night-dark waters,
that shall be like wavering flames of white fire where the moon
smites them, and like the void of all things where the shadows hang
over them.
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