Upon that loom the Tree’s wet-whiteners moisten,
Woven in the linen-webbèd skein
Of gossamerèd undergarments first
The fresh and fallen fruit, a shooting star
A’landed in the marshes of the crane
And white stork’d fields of Fensalir, is cloth’d,
Which all its scintillating fate enclothes,
(---They say those strangely sweet and shrouded maids
who crone enclothe the soul with fate are fierce
and monster-borne, from out of time’s imagine :
cruel, some say, to steal a star, and lock
it fast within the binds of matter’s fetters,
when it once within the sway of upper
boughs did leaf-enfolded lightly dance,
but such indeed is growth from humble seed --)
And cradled in this swaddl’d matrix, lies
Within the arms of fairy-follow, wing’d
And swan-and-stork encloakèd maiden, who,
When shrouded triune loom-enchanters’ dance
Decides in secret congress whom the soul
Shall mother meet in womb’d embrace, and then,
Deliver’d to the dwarves the lunar-linen-
Clad and stellar-blossom’d soul, to forge
And form an embryonic mold, shall then
With swift and upward wings deliver fresh
Into the waiting mother’s womb, where she,
Who carried soul from depths, enchants a song
The step of which the wyrded sisters danc’d,
Within whose lilt the embryo now dreams.
We rise up, then, from lowest low, below
The earth’s foundations, then upon the lap
Of Mother Earth we mother-birth-bestowèd
Find ourselves from first and never-knowing
Twinkle, upper-foilage fallen, here.