Lo! as the people were crying aloud and tossing their hands aloft and
the many--so many!--were fleeing away, came the Beloved Twain, and
with voices strong-sounding and sure, bade them cease from their clamor
and terror, saying--
Look now, ye faithless and witless!
The mothers who love not their offspring
And cherish them not through all danger,
Must lose them anon, as the woodbird,
Who sits not her nest, doth her broodlings!
Fear not, but cleave fast to your children
Though they strange-turn and frightful of seeming!
'Tis the magic of water, and wildness
Of heart, and will pass (as men's laughter
Doth pass when the joy-thought is sobered),
As ye win your way forth from the waters.
Thus spake they, and continued speaking; whereupon the people who
were yet left, took heart, even the women, and stayed their thoughts,
clinging stoutly to their little ones as they fared through the
waters, what though the terror and hurt was sore. Thus passed they all
safely over, and--even as had been said--as they won their way up from
the waters and sat them down to rest on the farther shore below the
mountains, lo! the little ones grew warm and right again. But never
were the thoughts of womenkind beguiled wholly from that harrowing
journey. Wherefore they be timid of deep places, startled (as is the
voice of a vessel by any shrillness of sound) and witless-driven by
the sight of reptile-creatures. Lo! and so their anxieties are like to
press themselves on the unripe and forming children of their bowels.
Wherefore, also, we guard their eyes from all weird-seeming things when
they be with child.