and the garden-flowers faded away, and the familiar shrubs
disappeared, until the moving bases of those cold mist-mountains were
fixed at my very feet. Then said to me the glorious Power, standing in
stature as a giant,--'Come! why tarriest thou? Come!'--and instantly
there rushed up to us a huge golden throne of light filigree-work, borne
upon seven pinions, whereof each was fledged above with feathers fair
and white, but underneath they were ribbed batlike, and fringed with
black down: and all around fluttered beautiful winged faces, mingled and
disporting with grotesque figures and hideous imps. Then she mounted in
her pomp the steps of the throne, and sat therein proudly. Again she
said to me, 'Come!'--and I feared her, for her voice was terrible; so I
threw myself down on the lowest of the seven golden steps, and the
border of her dark robe touched me. Then was I full of dread, hemmed
about with horrors, and the pinions rustled together, and we rushed
upward like a flame, and the hurricane hastened after us: my heart was
as a frozen autumn-leaf quivering in my bosom, and I looked up for help
and pity from the mighty Power on her throne; but she spurned me with
her black-sandalled foot, and I was thrust from my dizzy seat, and in
falling clutched at the silver net-work that lay upon the steps as a
carpet,--and so I hung; my hands were stiffly crooked in the meshes like
eagle's talons, my wrists were bursting, the bones of my body ached, and
I heard the chill whisper of Death (who came flitting up to me as a
sheeted ghost) bidding my poor heart be still: yet I would live on, I
would cling on, though swinging fearfully from that up-rushing throne;
for my mind was unsubdued, and my reason would not die, but rebelled
against his mandate. And so the pinions flapped away, the dreadful
cavalcade of clouds followed, we broke the waterspout, raced the
whirlwind, hunted the thunder to his caverns, rushed through the light
and wind-tost mountains of the snow, pierced with a crash the thick sea
of ice, that like a globe of hollow glass separates earth and its
atmosphere from superambient space, and flying forward through the
airless void, lighted on another world.

"Then triumphed my reason, for I stood on that silent shore, fearless
though alone, and boldly upbraided the dread Power that had brought me
thither,--'Traitress, thou hast not conquered; my mind is still thy
master, and if the weaker body failed me, it hath been fil