And as
for him, he took all in patience, abiding what the lapse of days
should bring forth.
CHAPTER XIX: HALLBLITHE BUILDS HIM A SKIFF
After Hallblithe had been housed a little while, and the time was
again drawing nigh to the twelfth moon since he had come to the
Glittering Plain, he went in the wood one day; and, pondering many
things without fixing on any one, he stood before a very great oak-
tree and looked at the tall straight bole thereof, and there came
into his head the words of an old song which was written round a
scroll of the carving over the shut-bed, wherein he was wont to lie
when he was at home in the House of the Raven: and thus it said:
I am the oak-tree, and forsooth
Men deal by me with little ruth;
My boughs they shred, my life they slay,
And speed me o'er the watery way.
He looked up into that leafy world for a little and then turned back
toward his house; but all day long, whether he were at work or at
rest, that posy ran in his head, and he kept on saying it over, aloud
or not aloud, till the day was done and he went to sleep.
Then in his sleep he dreamed that an exceeding fair woman stood by
his bedside, and at first she seemed to him to be an image of the
Hostage. But presently her face changed, and her body and her
raiment; and, lo! it was the lovely woman, the King's daughter whom
he had seen wasting her heart for the love of him.
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