It is the fawn that fled him, and that late to Alice led him,
But now it does not dread him, as it feigned to do before,
When down the mountain gliding, in that sheltered meadow hiding,
It left his heart abiding by wild Glengariff’s shore: 
For it was a gentle fairy who the fawn’s light form thus wore,
        And who watched sweet Alice o’er.

But the steed is backward prancing where late it was advancing,
And his flashing eyes are glancing, like the sun upon Lough Foyle;
The hardest granite crushing, through the thickest brambles brushing,
Now like a shadow rushing up the sides of Slieve-na-goil! 
And the fawn beside him gliding o’er the rough and broken soil,
        Without fear and without toil.

Through woods, the sweet birds’ leaf home, he rusheth to the sea foam,
Long, long the fairies’ chief home, when the summer nights are cool,
And the blue sea, like a syren, with its waves the steed environ,
Which hiss like furnace iron when plunged within a pool,
Then along among the islands where the water nymphs bear rule,
        Through the bay to Adragool.

Now he rises o’er Berehaven, where he hangeth like a raven—­
Ah!  Maurice, though no craven, how terrible for thee
To see the misty shading of the mighty mountains fading,
And thy winged fire-steed wading through the clouds as through a sea! 
Now he feels the earth beneath him—­he is loosen’d—­he is free,
        And asleep in Ceim-an-eich.

Away the wild steed leapeth, while his rider calmly sleepeth
Beneath a rock which keepeth the entrance to the glen,
Which standeth like a castle, where are dwelling lord and vassal,
Where within are wind and wassail, and without are warrior men;
But save the sleeping Maurice, this castle cliff had then
        No mortal denizen![104]

Now Maurice is awaking, for the solid earth is shaking,
And a sunny light is breaking through the slowly opening stone
And a fair page at the portal crieth, “Welcome, welcome! mortal,
Leave thy world (at best a short ill), for the pleasant world we own: 
There are joys by thee untasted, there are glories yet unknown—­
        Come kneel at Una’s throne.”

With a sullen sound of thunder, the great rock falls asunder,
He looks around in wonder, and with ravishment awhile,
For the air his sense is chaining, with as exquisite a paining
As when summer clouds are raining o’er a flowery Indian isle;
And the faces that surround him, oh! how exquisite their smile,
        So free of mortal care and guile.

These forms, oh! they are finer—­these faces are diviner
Than, Phidias, even thine are, with all thy magic art;
For beyond an artist’s guessing, and beyond a bard’s expressing,
Is the face that truth is dressing with the feelings of the heart;
Two worlds are there together—­earth and heaven have each a part—­
        And of such, divinest Una, thou art!