Sauron Defeated (46 page)

where dwell the Elven-kind:

in seven long years the road to Heaven

or the Living Land did you find?' 20

'The things I have seen, the many things,

have long now faded far;

only three come clear now back to me:

a Cloud, a Tree, a Star. 24

We sailed for a year and a day and hailed

no field nor coast of men;

no boat nor bird saw we ever afloat

for forty days and ten. 28

We saw no sun at set or dawn,

but a dun cloud lay ahead,

and a drumming there was like thunder coming

and a gleam of fiery red. 32

Upreared from sea to cloud then sheer

a shoreless mountain stood;

its sides were black from the sullen tide

to the red lining of its hood. 36

No cloak of cloud, no lowering smoke,

no looming storm of thunder

in the world of men saw I ever unfurled

like the pall that we passed under. 40

We turned away, and we left astern

the rumbling and the gloom;

then the smoking cloud asunder broke,

and we saw that Tower of Doom: 44

on its ashen head was a crown of red,

where fires flamed and fell.

Tall as a column in High Heaven's hall,

its feet were deep as Hell; 48

grounded in chasms the waters drowned

and buried long ago,

it stands, I ween, in forgotten lands

where the kings of kings lie low. 52

We sailed then on, till the wind had failed,

and we toiled then with the oar,

and hunger and thirst us sorely wrung,

and we sang our psalms no more. 56

A land at last with a silver strand

at the end of strength we found;

the waves were singing in pillared caves

and pearls lay on the ground; 60

and steep the shores went upward leaping

to slopes of green and gold,

and a stream out of the rich land teeming

through a coomb of shadow rolled. 64

Through gates of stone we rowed in haste,

and passed, and left the sea;

and silence like dew fell in that isle,

and holy it seemed to be. 68

As a green cup, deep in a brim of green,

that with wine the white sun fills

was the land we found, and we saw there stand

on a laund between the hills 72

a tree more fair than ever I deemed

might climb in Paradise:

its foot was like a great tower's root,

it height beyond men's eyes; 76

so wide its branches, the least could hide

in shade an acre long,

and they rose as steep as mountain-snows

those boughs so broad and strong; 80

for white as a winter to my sight

the leaves of that tree were,

they grew more close than swan-wing plumes,

all long and soft and fair. 84

We deemed then, maybe, as in a dream,

that time had passed away

and our journey ended; for no return

we hoped, but there to stay. 88

In the silence of that hollow isle,

in the stillness, then we sang -

softly us seemed, but the sound aloft

like a pealing organ rang. 92

Then trembled the tree from crown to stem;

from the limbs the leaves in air

as white birds fled in wheeling flight,

and left the branches bare. 96

From the sky came dropping down on high

a music not of bird,

not voice of man, nor angel's voice;

but maybe there is a third 100

fair kindred in the world yet lingers

beyond the foundered land.

Yet steep are the seas and the waters deep

beyond the White-tree Strand.' 104

'0! stay now, father! There's more to say.

But two things you have told:

The Tree, the Cloud; but you spoke of three.

The Star in mind do you hold?' 108

'The Star? Yes, I saw it, high and far,

at the parting of the ways,

a light on the edge of the Outer Night (80)

like silver set ablaze, 112

where the round world plunges steeply down,

but on the old road goes,

as an unseen bridge that on arches runs

to coasts than no man knows.' 116

'But men say, father, that ere the end

you went where none have been.

I would hear you tell me, father dear,

of the last land you have seen.' 120

'In my mind the Star I still can find,

and the parting of the seas,

and the breath as sweet and keen as death

that was borne upon the breeze. 124

But where they bloom those flowers fair,

in what air or land they grow,

what words beyond the world I heard,

if you would seek to know, 128

in a boat then, brother, far afloat

you must labour in the sea,

and find for yourself things out of mind:

you will learn no more of me.' 132

In Ireland, over wood and mire,

in the tower tall and grey,

the knell of Cluain-ferta's bell

was tolling in green Galway. 136

Saint Brendan had come to his life's end

under a rainclad sky,

and journeyed whence no ship returns,

and his bones in Ireland lie. 140

When Frankley stopped there was a silence. If he had hoped for critical comments, adverse or favourable, he got none.

'Very odd indeed! Very odd!' said Lowdham at last. 'Have you been in touch with our minds on the Ramer-system, Philip?

Anyway, when did you write that, and why?'

'There have been many more minds than yours, Arundel, working on this theme, as has been pointed out before,' said Ramer. 'Tell us about it, Philip!'

'There's nothing much to tell,' said Frankley. 'I woke up about four days ago with the thing largely fixed, and the name Brendan running in my head. The first dozen lines were already made (or were still remembered), and some of the rest was too.

The pictures were quite clear for a while. I read the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, of course, once upon a time, years ago, as well as that early Anglo-French thing, Benedeit's Vita. But I've not looked at them again - though perhaps if I did, I might find them less dull and disappointing than I remember them.'

'I don't think you would,' said Lowdham; 'they're rather dismal. Whatever merits they may have, any glimmer of a perception of what they are talking about is not one of them, trundling the magnificent theme to market like bunches of neatly cut and dried flowers. The Old French thing may be very interesting linguistically, but you won't learn much about the West from that.

'Still that seems to be where you got your Volcano and Tree from. But you've given them a twist that's not in your source.

You've put them in a different order, I think, making the Tree further west; and your Volcano is not a hell-smithy, but apparently a last peak of some Atlantis.(81) And the Tree in St.

Brendan was covered with white birds that were fallen angels.

The one really interesting idea in the whole thing, I thought: they were angels that lived in a kind of limbo, because they were only lesser spirits that followed Satan only as their feudal overlord, and had no real part, by will or design, in the Great Rebellion. But you make them a third fair race.'

'And that bit about the "round world" and the "old road",'

said Jeremy, 'where did you get that from?'

'I don't know,' said Frankley. 'It came in the writing. I got a fleeting picture, but it's faded now.'

'The Parting of the Ways!' muttered Lowdham. 'What do you know of that?'

'Oh, nothing. But, well - well, but you cannot really find or see Paradise by ship, you know.'(82)

'No,' said Lowdham. 'Not in the High Legends, not in those that have power. No longer. And it was seldom permitted anyway, even before.' He said no more, and we all sat still for a while.

The silence was finally broken by Markison. 'Well,' he said, 'I hope you're not going to take the line of St. Brendan to the monk: "you will learn no more of me." Have you two nothing more to say? '

'Yes indeed!' said Jeremy. 'But we've not been to Paradise.'

'Where have you been then?'

'We ended up at Porlock (83) on the 13th, that's last Saturday week,' said Jeremy.

'Why Porlock? Not a very exciting place, is it?'

'Not now, maybe,' Lowdham answered. 'You'll see a sort of reason for it, though. But if you mean: did we wittingly pick on Porlock? the answer is no.'

'We started off down in Cornwall, Land's End,' said Jeremy.

'That was just before the end of June.'

'Started off?' said Guildford. 'I got your letter on June 25th, but that still leaves a bit of a gap. We last saw you on the night of June 12th: not a date we're likely to forget in a hurry. What happened during the next ten days?'

'Was it as long as that?' said Lowdham blankly. 'I don't really know. We landed in a cove. I seem to remember the boat grinding on rocks and then being flung up on the shingles. We were damned lucky. She was holed and sinking, and we ought to have been drowned. Or did I dream it?' He knitted his brows.

'Bless me, if I'm sure. D'you remember, Trewyn?'(84)

'No,' said Jeremy, thinking. 'No, I don't. The first thing I can remember is your saying: "We'd better let Nick have a line to know that we haven't been drowned." Yes, yes of course: we'd been caught at sea in a storm of wind and lightning, and as you all knew we had gone sailing, we thought you might be anxious.'

'Don't you remember the night up in my rooms, the night of the great storm?' said Ramer.

'Yes, I remember bringing some texts round,' said Lowdham.

'And I remember the Eagles. But surely the storm came afterwards, after we had started on our research tour?'

'All right,' said Dolbear. 'Don't bother with all that now; there will be plenty of time to talk about it later. Get on with your own tale.'

'Well,' said Jeremy, 'we stuck to the west coasts as much as we could, staying by the sea, and walking as near to it as possible, when we did not go by boat. Arry is an able seaman, and you can still get small sailing craft in the West, and sometimes an old sailor to help who can still handle a boat without petrol. But after our wreck we did not sail again till we got round to North Devon. We actually crossed by boat from Bideford to South Wales in July, and then we went on to Ireland, right up the west coast of it by stages.

'We took a look at Scotland, but no further north than Mull.

There seemed nothing for us there, no feel in the air at all. So we went back to Hibernia.(85) The great storm had left more traces there than anywhere, and not only in visible damage. There was a good deal of that, but much less than you would expect, and it did not interest us so much as the effect on the people and the stories that we found going about. People in Galway - well, for the matter of that, from Brandon Hill to Slieve (86) League seemed to have been pretty well shaken by it, and were still scared for weeks afterwards. If the wind got up at all, as of course it did from time to time, they huddled indoors; and some would begin to trek inland.

'We both heard many tales of the huge waves "high as hills"

coming in on the Black Night. And curiously enough, many of the tale-tellers agreed that the greatest waves were like phantoms, or only half real: "like shadows of mountains of dark black wicked water". Some rolled far inland and yet did little damage before, well, disappearing, melting away. We were told of one that had rolled clean over the Aran Isles (87) and passed up Galway Bay, and so on like a cloud, drowning the land in a ghostly flood like rippling mist, almost as far as Clonfert.

'And we came across one old man, a queer old fellow whose English was hardly intelligible, on the road not far from Loughrea.(88) He was wild and ragged, but tall and rather impressive. He kept pointing westward, and saying, as far as we could gather: "It was out of the Sea they came, as they came in the days before the days". He said that he had seen a tall black ship high on the crest of the great wave, with its masts down and the rags of black and yellow sails flapping on the deck, and great tall men standing on the high poop and wailing, like the ghosts they were; and they were borne far inland, and came, well, not a soul knows where they came.

'We could get no more out of him, and he went on westward and vanished into the twilight, and who he was or where he was going we did not discover either. Apart from such tales and rumours we had no real adventures. The weather was not too bad generally, and we walked a lot, and slept pretty well. A good many dreams came, especially in Ireland, but they were very slippery; we couldn't catch them. Arry got whole lists of ghost-words, and I had some fleeting pictures, but they seldom fitted together. And then, when we thought our time was up, we came to Porlock.

'As we crossed over the Severn (89) Sea earlier in the summer, Arry had looked back, along the coast to the south, at the shores of Somerset, and he had said something that I couldn't catch.