





Transcribed from the 1904 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





THE HOUSE OF THE WOLFINGS
A TALE OF THE HOUSE OF THE WOLFINGS AND ALL THE KINDREDS OF THE MARK
WRITTEN IN PROSE AND IN VERSE
by William Morris


   Whiles in the early Winter eve
   We pass amid the gathering night
   Some homestead that we had to leave
   Years past; and see its candles bright
   Shine in the room beside the door
   Where we were merry years agone
   But now must never enter more,
   As still the dark road drives us on.
   E'en so the world of men may turn
   At even of some hurried day
   And see the ancient glimmer burn
   Across the waste that hath no way;
   Then with that faint light in its eyes
   A while I bid it linger near
   And nurse in wavering memories
   The bitter-sweet of days that were.




CHAPTER I--THE DWELLINGS OF MID-MARK


The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside
a great wood.  Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as
it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the
flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for
hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the
earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at
whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.

On either side, to right and left the tree-girdle reached out toward the
blue distance, thick close and unsundered, save where it and the plain
which it begirdled was cleft amidmost by a river about as wide as the
Thames at Sheene when the flood-tide is at its highest, but so swift and
full of eddies, that it gave token of mountains not so far distant,
though they were hidden.  On each side moreover of the stream of this
river was a wide space of stones, great and little, and in most places
above this stony waste