b, that I could not yet leave carving it; and so that
I might be near them I became a monk, and used to sit in the choir and
sing, thinking of the time when we should all be together again. And as
I had time I used to go to the westernmost arch of the nave and work at
the tomb that was there under the great, sweeping arch; and in process of
time I raised a marble canopy that reached quite up to the top of the
arch, and I painted it too as fair as I could, and carved it all about
with many flowers and histories, and in them I carved the faces of those
I had known on earth (for I was not as one on earth now, but seemed quite
away out of the world). And as I carved, sometimes the monks and other
people too would come and gaze, and watch how the flowers grew; and
sometimes too as they gazed, they would weep for pity, knowing how all
had been. So my life passed, and I lived in that Abbey for twenty years
after he died, till one morning, quite early, when they came into the
church for matins, they found me lying dead, with my chisel in my hand,
underneath the last lily of the tomb.

LINDENBORG POOL. {21}

I read once in lazy humour Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_ on a cold May
night when the north wind was blowing; in lazy humour, but when I came to
the tale that is here amplified there was something in it that fixed my
attention and made me think of it; and whether I would or no, my thoughts
ran in this way, as here follows.

So I felt obliged to write, and wrote accordingly, and by the time I had
done the grey light filled all my room; so I put out my candles, and went
to bed, not without fear and trembling, for the morning twilight is so
strange and lonely. This is what I wrote.

* * * * *

Yes, on that dark night, with that wild unsteady north wind howling,
though it was May time, it was doubtless dismal enough in the forest,
where the boughs clashed eerily, and where, as the wanderer in that place
hurried along, strange forms half showed themselves to him, the more
fearful because half seen in that way: dismal enough doubtless on wide
moors where the great wind had it all its own way: dismal on the rivers
creeping on and on between the marsh-lands, creeping through the willows,
the water trickling through the locks, sounding faintly in the gusts of
the wind.

Yet surely nowhere so dismal as by the side of that still pool.

I threw myself down on the ground there, utterly exhausted with my
struggle again