I'm writing a longish ballad poem about a Beryl of magic Crystal—a story with, I hope, good
emotions and surprises in it. To show you what the metre is, I'll copy the description of the
Beryl. I had originally meant to intercept the stanzas with a running and very varied burden,
but I found the poem was too long and intricate for such treatment, as the mind was overtaxed
with a double current of ideas. However I copy one section of this proposed burden (I had
written a good many such before discontinuing the idea), after the stanzas. The burden was to
be used with one line after the couplet and one after the triplet of each stanza. Thus, either
of the two specimens I copy would just suffice for the four stanzas I send. The burdens were to
be distantly allusive to the story in a sort of gradually culminating way.
Ever yours
D. G. R.
I copy two for variety.
Burdens
1
Water-willow and wellaway,
With a wind blown night and day.
2
The willow's wan and the water white,
With a wind blown day and night.
3
The willows wave on the waterway,
With a wind blown night and day.
4
The willows wail in the waning light,
With a wind blown day and night.
1
Honey-flowers to the honeycomb
And the honey-bee's from home.
2
A honey-comb and a honey-flower,
And the bee shall have his hour.
3
A honeyed heart for the honeycomb,
And the humming bee flies home.
4
A heavy heart in the honeyflower,
And the bee has had his hour.
1
The lady unbound her jewelled zone,
And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone.
Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere,—
World of our world, the sun's compeer,
That bears and buries the toiling year.
2
With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewn
Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon:
Freaked it was as the bubble's ball,—
Rainbow-hued through a misty pall
Like the middle light of the waterfall.
3
Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth
Of the known and unknown things of earth;
The cloud above and the wave around,—
The central fire at the sphere's heart bound,
Like doomsday prisoned underground.
4
A thousand years it lay in the sea
With a treasure wrecked from Thessaly:
Deep it lay 'neath the ocean's wrack,
But the water-spirits found the track:
A soul was lost to win it back.