me back, and the sun arising to give
new life to the world, shone instead upon the hideous things that
the sword of Welleran had done. And Rold said: 'O sword, sword!
How horrible thou art! Thou art a terrible thing to have come among
men. How many eyes shall look upon gardens no more because of thee?
How many fields must go empty that might have been fair with
cottages, white cottages with children all about them? How many
valleys must go desolate that might have nursed warm hamlets,
because thou hast slain long since the men that might have built
them? I hear the wind crying against thee, thou sword! It comes
from the empty valleys. It comes over the bare fields. There are
children's voices in it. They were never born. Death brings an end
to crying for those that had life once, but these must cry for ever.
O sword! sword! why did the gods send thee among men?' And the
tears of Rold fell down upon the proud sword but could not wash it
clean.

And now that the ardour of battle had passed away, the spirits of
Merimna's people began to gloom a little, like their leader's, with
their fatigue and with the cold of the morning; and they looked at
the sword of Welleran in Rold's hand and said: 'Not any more, not
any more for ever will Welleran now return, for his sword is in the
hand of another. Now we know indeed that he is dead. O Welleran,
thou wast our sun and moon and all our stars. Now is the sun fallen
down and the moon broken, and all the stars are scattered as the
diamonds of a necklace that is snapped off one who is slain by
violence.'

Thus wept the people of Merimna in the hour of their great victory,
for men have strange moods, while beside them their old inviolate
city slumbered safe. But back from the ramparts and beyond the
mountains and over the lands that they had conquered of old, beyond
the world and back again to Paradise, went the souls of Welleran,
Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young Iraine.

The Fall of Babbulkund

I said: 'I will arise now and see Babbulkund, City of Marvel. She is
of one age with the earth; the stars are her sisters. Pharaohs of
the old time coming conquering from Araby first saw her, a solitary
mountain in the desert, and cut the mountain into towers and
terraces. They destroyed one of the hills of God, but they made
Babbulkund. She is carven, not built; her palaces are one with her
terraces, there is neither join nor cleft. Hers is the bea