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 were banks of a few feet high, showing where the yearly winter flood was most commonly stayed.

You must know that this great clearing in the woodland was not a matter of haphazard; though the river had driven a road whereby men might fare on each side of its hurrying stream.  It was men who had made that Isle in the woodland.

For many generations the folk that now dwelt there had learned the craft of iron-founding, so that they had no lack of wares of iron and steel, whether they were tools of handicraft or weapons for hunting and for war.  It was the men of the Folk, who coming adown by the river-side had made that clearing.  The tale tells not whence they came, but belike from the dales of the distant mountains, and from dales and mountains and plains further aloof and yet further.