The Roots of the Mountains, page 399 by William Morris
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n by the shoulders, and drew her to him, and she nothing loth; and in that while he said to her:
'Come then, my friend; lo thou! they go each their own way toward the halls of their houses; and for thee have I chosen a way--a way over the foot-bridge yonder, and over the dewy meadows on this best even of the year.'
'Nay, nay,' she said, 'it may not be. Surely the Burgstead grooms look to thee to lead them to the gate; and surely in the House of the Face they look to see thee before any other. Nay, Gold-mane, my dear, we must needs go by the Portway.'
He said: 'We shall be home but a very little while after the first, for the way I tell of is as short as the Portway. But hearken, my sweet! When we are in the meadows we shall sit down for a minute on a bank under the chestnut trees, and thence watch the moon coming up over the southern cliffs. And I shall behold thee in the summer night, and deem that I see all thy beauty; which yet shall make me dumb with wonder when I see it indeed in the house amongst the candles.'
'O nay,' she said, 'by the Portway shall we go; the torch-bearers shall be abiding thee at the gate.'
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.
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