VESSEL of the gathered country, the wide hollow into which the gilded land is poured. She appeareth as a great bowl opened between sheer cliffs of grey stone, the amber-gold wood spilling down every slope and brimming at her mouth, a thin white fall along one wall, her center receding into blue shadow where the gold runs out. Her office is to be the holder and not the held: to give the giants of stone a place to stand and the gilded wood a place to pour. At her gate keeps the Warden of Light, who takes the first gold upon his brow; far at her end the Cleft Duke keeps watch, cloven in two and a lord of stone alone. She is strongest at the gateway, where the whole gilded vale is given at a single look, and least herself in her depths, where the gold has not yet reached.
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