Oh, manifold is their kindred, and who shall tell them all? There are they that rule o’er men folk, and the stars that rise and fall.” Sigurd the Vol… - William Morris

Eve shall kiss night, And the leaves stir like rain As the wind stealeth light O'er the grass of the plain. Unseen are thine eyes Mid the dreamy night's sleeping, And on my mouth there lies The dear rain of thy weeping.

When I was journeying (in a dream of the night) down the well-remembered reaches of the Thames betwixt Streatley and Wallingford, where the foothills of the White Horse fall back from the broad stream, I came upon a clear-seen mediæval town standing up with roof and tower and spire within its walls, grey and ancient, but untouched from the days of its builders of old. All this I have seen in the dreams of the night clearer than I can force myself to see them in dreams of the day. So that it would have been nothing new to me the other night to fall into an architectural dream if that were all, and yet I have to tell of things strange and new that befell me after I had fallen asleep.

Whilom, as tells the tale, was a walled cheaping-town hight Utterhay, which was builded in a bight of the land a little off the great highway which went from over the mountains to the sea. The said town was hard on the borders of a wood, which men held to be mighty great, or maybe measureless; though few indeed had entered it, and they that had, brought back tales wild and confused thereof.