The Lay of Ardina and Ardhor
 
 

When Arkan deemed an endless cold
And greenwoods rotted bleak and sere
The moon wept high above the world
                 To see its beauty dwindling:
To earth fell down a single tear
And there stepped forth a shining girl
Like moonlight that through alabaster
                 Wells, its pallor kindling.

Such beauty made all beauty dim
And homage called from voiceless stone:
Like whitest samite was her skin
                 Or seafoam softly glimmering:
A star that lit the night alone
She stepped the winter woods within,
A pearl a-glisten in the gloam,
                 A moonbeam fleetly shimmering.

Then wild amazement fastened on 
The Moonchild’s heart, and far she ran,
Through all the vales of Lirion
                 Her voice like bellnotes echoing:
And from the branches blossom sprang
In iron groves of leafmeal wan,
And Spring herself woke up and sang,
                 The gentle Summer beckoning.

She passed into the mountain keeps
Where stormdogs guard the ravined walls,
A moonbeam piercing dismal deeps,
                 Down jagged ridges clambering:
Until she found a crystal fall,
A river frozen in its leap,
And in its depths a marble hall
                 Of lofty spires was trembling.

In wonderment she silent fell,
And stood before the wall of glass
Enraptured by the citadel,
                 Its endless, sparkling mullions:
Like lilies caught in sudden frost
Which grow no more, but comely still,
Forlornly cast those towers of ice
                 Their cold and lifeless brilliance.

She knew not that the hours passed
Nor noticed that the darkness fell;
And as she looked, she thought at last
                 Her heart must break with heaviness:
She wept, though why she could not tell:
For love unborn, for beauty lost,
For all that lives and breathes and will
                 Grow cold and lose its loveliness. 

And in the icy halls a king
Woke from his spellbound sleep and saw
A vision of the banished spring,
                 A form so fair and luminous
That from his frosted eyes the hoar
Ran down like tears and, marvelling,
He felt the chains of winter thaw
                 And years of thraldom ruinous.

Ardina met his eyes, and through
Her moonlit veins a shudder ran
That kissed her skin with fiery dew,
                 Its marble pallor chastening:
A doom it seemed to see this man
In whose dark eyes such ardour grew,
A grief stored up through summer's span,
                 From joy to winter hastening.

Between them stood the wall of ice
And round them barren winter waste,
But each saw in the other's face
                 The light of springtime lingering:
Like thunder broke the charméd frost,
And freed at last to bitter bliss
Immortal maid and man embraced,
                 Their light and shadow mingling.

So swore Ardina and Ardhor
That ever would the other cleave,
And heavy was the doom they bore 
                 Through war and clamour perilous:
Through grief and death they passed alive
To meet on the immortal shores
And still in starry glades their love
                 Shines ever strong and sorrowless.
 
 
 

By Tulkan of Lirion, translated from the inel-fardhalen of Old Lironese