e Thomas the Rhymer, on his way to Fairyland--

"We saw neither sun nor moon,
But we heard the roaring of the sea."

This eternal "swowing of a flode" was the sound made by the circling
stream of Oceanus, as he turns on his bed, washing the base of the White
Rock, and the sands of the region of dreams. So we fleeted onwards till
we came to marvellous lofty gates of black adamant, that rose before us
like the steep side of a hill. On the left side of the gates we beheld a
fountain flowing from beneath the roots of a white cypress-tree, and to
this fountain my guide forbade me to draw near. "There is another
yonder," he said, pointing to the right hand, "a stream of still water
that issues from the Lake of Memory, and there are guards who keep that
stream from the lips of the profane. Go to them and speak thus: 'I am
the child of earth and of the starry sky, yet heavenly is my lineage, and
this yourselves know right well. But I am perishing with thirst, so give
me speedily of that still water which floweth forth of the mere of
Memory.' And they will give thee to drink of that spring divine, and
then shalt thou dwell with the heroes and the blessed." So I did as he
said, and went before the guardians of the water. Now they were veiled,
and their voices, when they answered me, seemed to come from far away.
"Thou comest to the pure, from the pure," they said, "and thou art a
suppliant of holy Persephone. Happy and most blessed art thou, advance
to the reward of the crown desirable, and be no longer mortal, but
divine." Then a darkness fell upon me, and lifted again like mist on the
hills, and we found ourselves in the most beautiful place that can be
conceived, a meadow of that short grass which grows on some shores beside
the sea. There were large spaces of fine and solid turf, but, where the
little streams flowed from the delicate-tinted distant mountains, there
were narrow valleys full of all the flowers of a southern spring. Here
grew narcissus and hyacinths, violets and creeping thyme, and crocus and
the crimson rose, as they blossomed on the day when the milk-white bull
carried off Europa. Beyond the level land beside the sea, between these
coasts and the far-off hills, was a steep lonely rock, on which were set
the shining temples of the Grecian faith. The blue seas that begirt the
coasts were narrow, and ran like rivers between many islands not less
fair than the country to which we were come, whi