WARDEN of the great trench, kin to the Hand of Ice that long ago withdrew, who keepeth the wound it cut and will not let the wound close. He appeareth as a valley lit from within, the conifer slopes risen up in pale fire on either flank, the deep cleft running back into the mountains that stand about it as guards about a relic. Above their bare shoulders the heaven gathers into ash, and the high snow burns whiter than the stone. His office is to remember the ice: the slow tongue that sliced the earth clean through and went away, leaving the shape of its passage carved for the ages. He holdeth the valley as a reliquary holdeth a bone. The ice is gone; the cut it made still glows; the warden keepeth watch, and the watch is the whole of the Work.
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