Ogrin the Hermit

by E. Wharton

Vous qui nous jugez, savez-vous quel boivre
nous avons bu sur la mer?

Tristan et Iseult.

Ogrin the Hermit, in his old age set forth
This tale to them he sought in the extreme
Ancient grey wood where he and silence housed.

Long years ago, when yet my sight was keen,
My hearing knew the word of bird in bought,
And all the far for-runners of the air,
There reached me, where I sat beneath my thatch,
A crash as of tracked quarry in the brake,
And storm-flecked, fugitive, with strining brests,
With backward eyes and minds inseparable,
Tristan and Iseult, swooning at my feet,
Sought hiding from their hunters. Here they lay.

For pity of their great extremity,
Their sin abhorring, yet not them with it,
I nourished, hid, and suffered them to build
Their branched hut in sight of this grey sleepy cross,
Its shadow should that haply, falling on their guilty sleep,
Its shadow should part them like the blade of god,
And they should shudder at each other's eyes.

So dwelt they in this solitude with me,
And daily, Tristan failte upon the chase,
The tender Iseult sought my door, and heard,
like one in wisdom-nurture the words of holiness. Abashed the heard
like one in wisdom nurtured from a child,
Yet in whose ears an alien language dwells,
Of some far country whence the traveller brings
Magical treasure, and calm images
Of gods forgotten, and the scent of groves
That sleep by painted rivers. As I have seen
Oft-times returning pilgrims with the spell
Of these lost lands upon their lids, she moved
Among familiar truths, accustomed sights,
As she to them were strange, not they to her.

And often, reasoning with her, have I felt
Some ancient lore was in her, dimly drawn
From springs of life beyond the four-fold stream
That makes a silver pale to Paradise;
For she was calm as some forsaken god
Who knows not that his power is passed from him,
But sees with tranced eyes rich pilgrim-trains
In sands the desert blows about his feet.

Abhorring fist, I heard her; yet her speech
Warred not with pity, or the contride heart,
Or Hatred of things evil; rather
Hatred of things evil; rather seemed